On Yong Huang’s “How Can Moral Expressivism Be Based on Moral Realism: The Case of Wang Yangming”
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Yong Huang argues for understanding the metaethics of Wang Yangming as moral expressivism, which he distinguishes from emotivism, moral realism, and quasi-realist expressivism. Huang argues that Wang’s metaethics is not an emotivism because the latter renders moral truths impossible, yet Wang maintains normative judgements can be either true or false. Neither is Wang’s metaethics a moral realism because he believes moral values are in our mind rather than features of external objects. Huang also distinguishes Wang’s metaethics from quasi-realist expressivism because while the latter relies on feelings as a basis for normative judgements regarding moral values, Wang is agent-focused and is concerned not with whether actions are “right or wrong” but whether a person is “good or bad.” In order to further develop Wang’s moral expressivism, Huang appeals to the key concepts of “innate moral knowing” (liangzhi), “intentions” (yi), and the conceptual pair of “substance and function” (tiyong) to argue that since “innate moral knowledge” is a part of human nature therefore bad intentions are artificial and not representative of true human nature.
Authors: Yanyan Zhao, Kevin J. Turner
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Award: G3622934281
OpenAlex ID: W7130586522