Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn is a British philosopher who taught at Oxford and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Working in a broadly Humean tradition, he developed quasi-realism: the project of showing how an expressivist, who holds that moral judgements express attitudes rather than describe moral facts, can nonetheless earn the right to talk of moral truth, knowledge and error as realists do. He is also a widely read writer of introductory philosophy.

Key ideas

• Moral judgements express attitudes rather than describe independent moral facts.
• Quasi-realism explains why expressivists may still speak of moral truth and mistakes.
• Our attitudes are projected onto the world, which is why ethics looks like description.
• Deflationism about truth makes room for moral truth without heavy metaphysics.

Major works

• Spreading the Word (1984)
• Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993)
• Ruling Passions (1998)
• Think (1999)

In the conversation

• Question What is quasi-realism, and is it a form of realism or a clever way of avoiding it? Sam Ellery · 4 replies
• Question Can someone walk me through the Frege–Geach problem without the jargon? Siobhán Keane · 4 replies