Parasites and Disgust

What is the evolutionary origin of the emotion of disgust, along with its behavioral expression? Why was it selected? I will suggest that parasites played a vital role.[1] A desideratum of any theory is to distinguish disgust from two other emotions easily confused with it: fear and aesthetic revulsion. Fear is much broader than disgust and not all disgust is accompanied by fear. Nor is disgust the same as revulsion at the ugly or deformed or merely kitsch; we don’t feel nausea when confronted by a burn victom, say. Disgust is something quite specific; it has a specific type of stimulus. So, what in particular in the environment of our ancestors called for the selection of this emotion? What perceptible thing made it a useful emotion to have? I hypothesize two principal types of triggering stimulus: intestinal worms and corpse-feeding maggots. There was a time when these were common sights—the time before toilets and graveyards. Feces strewn about; bodies left to rot. It would be easy to become infected in such an environment, especially by the eggs of these revolting creatures. One might tread on a turd or consume rotting flesh (food being short). Imagine a time when our hominid ancestors felt no disgust at these things, scarcely even understanding their nature: feces and corpses were not avoided or felt to be revolting. There would be rampant parasitism by the organisms in question—as by lice, bed bugs, ticks, and fleas. Those infected would suffer the consequences—malnutrition, diarrhea, bowel pain, etc. This would not be good for survival and reproduction. Such individuals would be selected against. There would be no medical treatment and no knowledge of causation. The worms would have it their way. There would be a desperate need for an anti-parasite adaptation. Thus, disgust arose—the feeling and the behavior. Worms in stool would henceforth become the object of intense revulsion and avoidance. Rotting corpses riddled with maggots would be run a mile from. Both would come to have an appalling smell. It isn’t that these things scare you like saber-toothed tigers or perilous precipices, or that they evoke strong aesthetic distaste; rather, they encourage sedulous avoidance and a powerful disinclination to eat in their presence. In the human arms race against intestinal worms, disgust became a powerful motive to take appropriate evasive action. Call this the parasite theory of (the origin of) disgust: the emotion of disgust is parasite-specific, parasite-directed; it isn’t some general danger-avoidance emotional reaction. If there were no parasites, there would be no disgust—though plenty of fear and ugliness aversion.

Unlike the pathogen theory, the parasite theory locates disgust in perceptible facts—not in invisible germs (bacteria and viruses). People had no knowledge of such things back when disgust evolved, and certainly no idea of their role in causing disease. But worms and maggots are all too perceptible, especially if they appear in one’s own stool (sorry, sensitive readers). Notice that it is not morphology alone that triggers the disgust reaction—spaghetti doesn’t elicit disgust. It is morphology in the presence of feces and corpses. The parasite would be just as abhorrent if it were shaped like a leaf or even looked like a flower. It’s the context that matters—worms in feces. This configuration would likely generalize or radiate outwards—anything to do with feces or corpses would be tainted by the disgusting. Raw meat, urine, blood, decay, the anus, bodily fluids, internal organs, insects, snakes, rotten food, certain animals, the slimy, the squirming, the dirty—all these would come to be found disgusting to different degrees. But none so much as the primal objects of disgust—intestinal worms and flesh-eating maggots. The very word “parasite” would come to elicit feelings of revulsion (it just means “one who eats at another’s table” etymologically). It is easy to attach disgust to quite innocent things by likening them to the primal objects of disgust—calling someone a “worm” or a “piece of shit” or simply a “parasite”. It is not so much that shit itself is disgusting, or even dead bodies; it is their tendency to provide a home for parasites. We don’t find caterpillars disgusting despite their similarity to worms, simply because they are never found in shit or dining on corpses. Parasitism is the culprit not its physical components. That is what revolts us, nauseates us, makes us scurry away. What are we least disgusted by? Rocks, clear water, mathematical objects—things that know nothing of parasites. We love diamonds and gold—neither parasites nor parasitized. But what if diamonds became parasitic (or always had been)—finding their way into our bowels, exiting in our stool, causing illness and discomfort? Would we be quite so happy to display them about our person? It’s not the physics; it’s the parasitic nexus. Anything behaving like an intestinal worm is going to disgust us, because it was the original reason for developing the disgust reaction; and these creatures cause a good deal of suffering and death. It is perhaps imaginable that in some possible world these self-same creatures, with the same intestinal life-style, might not be objects of disgust, simply because they are good for the host, maintaining a healthy gut, fighting off infection, preventing colon cancer, and so on. Natural selection dislikes only what hinders survival and reproduction, and in our history intestinal parasites certainly do that.[2]

How does the parasite theory bear on the meaning of disgust—the thoughts it occasions, its mode of presentation to the sufferer? In particular, how does it bear on the idea that intimations of life and death are integral to feelings of disgust? It bears on it quite naturally: intestinal worms and corpse-eating maggots areliving things ensconced in dead organic matter. Is there anything more disgusting than worms writhing in feces (yet they are just living their natural evolved life)? The living intertwined with the dead, contrasting with it. Or maggots feasting on dead flesh, deriving life from death. There is nothing inherently disgusting in life consuming death—that’s what eating is—but the parasite evokes a strong feeling of revulsion, because we are all too vulnerable to parasites ourselves. We think of ourselves parasitized, weakened, on the brink of death—that is what it means to us, what it symbolizes. Parasites could be as fatal to our ancestors as predators, and the genes know this; they must adapt or die, so they engineer a counterattack, viz. disgust. Disgust is thus hedged about with looming death, squirming life, the fight to survive—all the apparatus of mortal existence. The gods are never disgusted because they cannot be parasitized; nor do they have to worry about death. For us, though, disgust and death are never far apart—death at the hands of those nasty little parasites. There is an urgency about it, because parasites are urgent business, not to be trifled with. We are largely free of parasites these days (though not all of us), but once they were the bane of our existence—we needed defenses against them. Thus, we acquired a gene for disgust. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.[3]

Like many of our emotions, disgust can seem extreme, hyperbolic, overly dramatic. Do we really need to have such a strong reaction to rodents and earthworms? That seems true of us in our present environment, but we have to remember the environment in which our emotions evolved, many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Back then, life was exposed, dirty, uncivilized, and full of unpleasantness; and it was ridiculously short and often malnourished. Disease was rampant and often fatal. In these circumstances extreme emotions were the order of the day, precisely calibrated to deal with the harsh realities of daily life. We needed to feel well and truly disgusted, or else. God knows what kind of intestinal ill-health these poor people had to put up with! Quite possibly, they all suffered from intestinal parasites from an early age—contagion would have been as easy as sneezing. Just consider a typical family’s lavatory arrangements! Then the parasite theory comes to seem eminently plausible, because the problem was so widespread and terrible (is that why Neanderthals died out?). Intestinal worms would be on everyone’s mind, because in everyone’s body, though I doubt they had much idea about what they really were (they had only de re beliefs with respect to them). The human animal needed a specific weapon to fight against them, and disgust is what natural selection came up with (killing the worms by hand would hardly be a solution). We carry the same emotion in our brains today, extreme though it may be. It is easily evoked, protean, and powerful; it can be exploited unscrupulously. If you liken immigration to parasitic invasion, you get a visceral result (literally). We need to tame the emotion while recognizing its primal evolutionary origins. We should not assume it is always rational in the world in which we now live.[4]

[1] I had not thought of this theory when I wrote The Meaning of Disgust (2011) and had not encountered it in the literature I consulted. I don’t know if anyone else has thought of it in the interim. I now wonder why I missed it.

[2] Maggots (fly larvae) can infest the skin and be hard to remove (myiasis); they too are creatures that need to be avoided and are easily contracted. Our ancestors would be as much victims of these as intestinal worms, though with fewer debilitating symptoms. And there are other types of worms that can get inside the human body and cause problems, more or less severe. Parasites are a fact of life and need their own method of resistance, beginning with the emotional.

[3] Disgust is akin to pain: an unpleasant feeling installed to prevent damage to the organism. We feel pain in response to damaging physical stimuli and we feel disgust in response to damaging parasitic organisms. And isn’t there something phenomenologically similar about the two, as if disgust were a subspecies of pain (it is certainly highly disagreeable)? Punishment can take the form of inflicting pain or inflicting disgust.

[4] The problem of disgust presents itself as a riddle (hence philosophically interesting): what biological function does it serve, why is it so extreme, why are its objects so various and seemingly disjointed? What is it really about (we know what fear is about)? I think the theory presented here does much to solve the riddle, to make sense of a puzzling psychological phenomenon. At bottom (so speak) it is about worms in the gut, though it ramifies alarmingly. It has more specificity than we might have supposed.

Economics and Ethics

Economics is the domain of the selfish. Ethics is the domain of the selfless. So we have been schooled to think. In economic activity (exchange, purchase) we acquire goods: we benefit from what we receive; we get what we want. The act is essentially selfish—self-interested, even greedy. Ethics doesn’t come into it, except negatively. We may be berated for our lack of concern with less fortunate others. Charity belongs to ethics: to give selflessly, expecting no return. We benefit others not ourselves. The charitable person is a good person; the regular consumer is something less than that—morally neutral or morally deficient. It is better to give than to receive, we are told. The person who gives, gives, and gives is better than the person who buys, buys, and buys. The buyer is self-indulgent; the giver is self-sacrificing. The buyer cares only for himself; the giver cares for others. Egoism versus altruism, me versus you. This fits with our puritanical streak: we shouldn’t indulge ourselves; we should help others. It’s not Christian to buy, but it is Christlike to give—to sacrifice for others. What you give away you cannot spend on yourself, so charity is an act of ascetism. And the more you give the better you are. There are some who maintain that we should all give away as much of our income as will lead to material equality and stop our rabid consumerism. The charitable act is the right act; the purchasing act is the wrong act (given the state of the world).

Is all this true? There are two sides to the question: is buying morally questionable, and is giving morally unquestionable? The first question has obvious and well-known replies: in buying we give as well as receive; we stimulate the economy leading to greater prosperity; we treat others as equals not victims or incompetents. Our motives may be selfish, but selfishness can lead to good consequences; and anyway, we may take pleasure in benefitting the seller (what will happen to her if we refuse to buy from her?). A thriving active economy benefits all. In buying we give the other employment, self-respect, and a source of wealth. That is why spending is morally better than saving: saving benefits no one; spending encourages economic progress. A society of rich misers is a stagnant society. Thus, the invisible hand, accidental altruism, selfish selflessness. Egoism entails altruism. Buying is not ipso facto an immoral act; in fact, it is quite admirable in its way. But is it as admirable as pure giving (buying is impure giving)? On reflection, charity looks uncomfortably close to theft. Someone else takes from you and gives you nothing in return—they benefit from your labor. They steal time from you, in effect. That may not be their motive but they end up in the position of the thief—better off at your expense. They do no work, yet they benefit from your work. You might be a coalminer giving to a charity for unemployed miners—you work at the coal face while they lounge at home, funded by you. You may also be pressured to give in this way by social sanctions, even ostracism. You may resent it. It doesn’t feel right to you. But it’s better to give than to receive etc. What if charity were mandatory by law? Would that be a good law? Robin Hood used to rob from the rich and give to the poor—yes, but he did rob the rich. What about robbing the moderately well off to give to the slightly less well off? It’s still robbery, and isn’t robbery wrong? Isn’t giving to charity really like working for no pay? And isn’t the recipient of charity in the enviable position of being paid to do nothing?

There are other questionable aspects of charity. When does it become folly not generosity? Suppose someone of moderate means decides to give away most of his money to his well-off friends: he thus suffers a significant reduction in his quality of life while benefitting those who need no more income (they buy fancy hi-fi equipment with his donations to them). Is that charity? If it is, it is pretty stupid charity, certainly not morally required. But when does giving slide into the silly category? There seems to be no principled answer except when the recipients are in dire straits (how dire?). Second, there is the question of respect: it is natural to feel embarrassment or shame when receiving charity (some reject it on principle); and the giver can easily slip into a sense of superiority. That doesn’t happen in economic exchange. Each party both gives and receives, but in charitable giving there is an asymmetry: the giver has the better hand, is morally and financially superior, can feel a glow of self-satisfaction. No one really wants to be the object of other people’s charity. It would be better if no charity were needed. Third, charity can be morally wrong if it discourages self-sufficiency and creates dependence. It can stifle economic development. It treats people like children. It undermines self-esteem and energetic activity. It is best seen as a stop-gap measure not an ongoing policy. Fourth, it creates obligation: the recipient is obliged to be grateful and to show gratitude. Not so in the case buying and selling—no such obligation is conferred. No one is doing anyone a favor. But doing someone a favor is not doing them a favor, because favors need to be repaid. Beware of favors—they will need to be returned, sometimes with interest. Letters of thanks were the traditional way of responding to an act of giving: these took time and energy to write, and they had to be good. You don’t have to do that if you buy something from someone. The recipient becomes indebted, and nobody enjoys that. Don’t you feel a touch queasy when receiving presents that you don’t reciprocate (birthdays as opposed to Christmas)? You become the object of someone else’s generosity; you feel a powerful obligation to express gratitude in fulsome terms, not always sincerely. You are put in an awkward situation. Doesn’t a part of you not want to receive presents—to become the recipient of someone else’s charity. Charity is thus hedged about with moral perils, not always clearly avoided. It would be a better world if it were not needed or practiced.

The general point is that buying gets a bad name while charity is overly prized. I’m not saying charity is never morally indicated or required, only that it is not the unalloyed virtue it is commonly supposed to be. It is in the nature of a regrettable necessity as the world stands not an indispensable component of the ideal society (in that society charity does not exist). Nor am I saying that all buying is good; it depends on the consequences (also the motives). But it is not bad in virtue of being self-interested—that is a misplaced indictment of the economic act. The economic act is a bit like the sexual act—a two-way street in which both participants benefit (ideally). It is reciprocal, symmetric, mutually beneficial, not a sacrifice by one to bring aid to another. Economics is ethical in this sense—generally a good thing. It is not a domain in which the ethical is irrelevant (or “unscientific”). The conventional division between the amoral economic and the moral charitable is too simple. John Maynard Keynes viewed economics as a “moral science”, and he was right to do so. So was Adam Smith right to emphasize the power for good inherent in economic activity, as opposed to pure altruism. The idea of the virtue of self-sacrifice plays too large a role in the old (Christian) way of thinking. Selfishness can be good, and unselfishness less than good.[1]

[1] Smith and Keynes were both interested in economics as a means for improving the human condition, and therefore morally motivated. Economic action is a type of moral action, to be assessed as such, positively or negatively. Sound economics is sound ethics. We don’t hear much about this in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition—entrepreneurial virtue, business ethics. It’s mainly prohibition and self-denial, not enterprise and self-assertion. One does not hear any commandments to build and develop, invest and labor, keep interest rates down, avoid inflation and deflation. Wherein is it stated that it is God’s will to divide thine labor? On the contrary, the money changers are regarded as the epitome of depravity; but aren’t they just currency traders with a place in a thriving economic system? Money is not the opposite of morality but one of its tools. Charity is what we resort to when economics fails. Economics should recognize its ethical dimension and ethics should welcome economics to the fold. Productivity is good.

On Cancelling

Here is a thought experiment for you. Suppose your top ten philosophers had all been cancelled: removed from pedagogical employment, prevented from publishing, and generally shunned. This possibility could cover the philosophers of the last hundred years or of all time. Suppose that their thoughts had therefore never seen the light of day. Suppose too that no one else had ever had them. No Plato, no Socrates (who was rather drastically cancelled), no Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant (you can make your own list). Philosophy would have had a very different history. These luminaries might or might not have been guilty of this or that (e.g., blasphemous speech); the thought experiment is more piquant if we suppose they were not but that the spirit of the times required it. Do you think that would be a bad thing? Do you think an effort should have been made to mitigate the effects of their cancellation? Suppose they had all gone on to become rich successful men living happy lives, but unable to contribute to philosophy (they clearly had brains). Meanwhile other second-rate individuals formed the philosophical tradition, perhaps those most responsible for doing the cancelling. Nobody worries much about this, however, since the cancelled philosophers never had the chance to do their work and hence never became known as the great thinkers they could have been. Do you think this would be a tragedy for philosophy or just a negligible historical hiccup?

I have existed in a state of professional cancellation for over ten years now. Before that I had normal access to teaching positions, publishers, conferences, professional contacts, and so on. Not anymore. I contributed to philosophy continuously for nearly forty years. If I had been cancelled earlier, that would not have been possible—my teaching, publications, and professional activities would have been cut off even earlier than they actually were. Let’s suppose it happened before 1989 when I published “Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?”—that article would never have existed. My other books, articles, reviews, and lectures would never have existed. Do you think that would have been a bad thing or not? Do you think that if it had not happened, I would have continued to produce what I used to produce? Of course I would have. So, many things I would have done I have not been able to do—books written, talks given, students taught. All that has been expunged from intellectual history. That is the cost of cancellation (and it’s not just me). Do you think that is all fine and dandy? Have you been complicit in it? (I hope not.)

As it happens, I have not been completely silenced by cancellation, though certainly much muffled. Because I have this blog. If I did not, none of the ideas contained herein would have reached the minds of interested parties. It is sheer luck that I have this place to make my results public. There has been a concerted campaign to keep me from exercising my normal rights to communicate my ideas to others in the usual ways. I couldhave gone completely silent. I could have decided to admit defeat and simply given up thinking about philosophy and writing it. Then nothing of my thoughts over the last ten years would ever have entered the historical record. Those thoughts would never have existed in all probability. And don’t think I have never considered it—what is in it for me in the time and effort it takes to write these pieces? So, why do I write them? I could be having fun, playing tennis, kite surfing, throwing knives, making music, travelling, reading novels, living the life of Riley. I write them for you—for other people, for posterity, for the good of the human race. That’s why I do it. Fortunately, I am strong-willed and resilient enough to face down the cancellation, to disdain it, to rise above it. This is my gift to the world, my moral duty as a thinker. I believe these papers have intellectual value. I believe people benefit intellectually from reading them. I believe it would be a tragedy if I never bothered to produce them. That may sound immodest to some (“narcissistic”), but it seems to me the simple truth. Before cancellation I was a very successful and esteemed philosopher; that has not changed. If anything, I am a better philosopher than I used to be. I have not allowed my present cancelled status to deflect me from my intellectual calling. True, I write with bitterness in my heart, with anger and disgust, but I still do it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. I have never felt so altruistic in my life, so philanthropic, so generous (it’s not a particularly good feeling). Not a penny do I make from these writings, these uncounted hours of labor; not a promotion, not a pay increase, not even professional recognition. I do it because it is the best part of me, my God-given talent. I should be thanked for it, but of course stony silence is all I get from the American philosophy profession. Friends appreciate my efforts and so do many readers from across the globe who are not complicit in the cancellation (joyfully reveling in it in fact). I have not allowed the cancellers and their enablers to rob the world of the products of my labor, as I could so easily have done. I have continued to contribute to philosophy, despite the attempts to prevent it, successful as they have undoubtedly been. This is no mere thought experiment.[1]

[1] I could name many names, recount many incidents, indict many conspirators; but I will refrain from doing so. I think the bare facts speak for themselves. I do wonder if the responsible individuals even think about what they have done and are still doing; or is that too difficult? Notice the silence.

Correlational Semantics

I will describe some possible uses of correlational semantics. I don’t say I subscribe to these uses; I offer them as a gift to those with anti-realist or fictionalist yearnings in certain areas.  It may help ease some discomfort caused by such yearnings. Let’s begin with a relatively simple case: feature-placing sentences like “It’s raining”. The utterance of such a sentence can be true yet contain no reference to the place at which it is raining—for example, London. The sentence is not semantically comparable to “London is rainy”. The word “it” is not a referential singular term denoting London, even though the truth of the utterance depends on the fact that rain is falling in London. There is a correlation between uttering “It’s raining” while in London and the statement “Rain is falling in London”, but nothing in the former denotes London. The former is true in virtue of the latter but it isn’t about what the latter is about in the sense that it contains a term that refers to what “London” refers to: the two sentences don’t mean the same thing even at the level of reference. The phrase “It’s” is a kind of dummy subject expression, not a genuine referential term. Correlation is not same as denotation, even though truth may depend on correlation. We may say that our sample sentence alludes to its correlate (it presupposes a particular place, typically known to the speaker), but it contains no term that denotes that place. We know that it rains at places (where else might it rain?) and we assume that that is what is going on in the present instance, but epistemics is not semantics. We might even say that our sentence connotes a place where it is raining while not denoting any such place.[1] Places belong in its semantic periphery, so to speak. Now consider fictional names like “Hamlet” as it may occur in a sentence like “Hamlet is a prince”. That sentence seems true (Hamlet isn’t a pauper or a porcupine): we can insert it into the formula “s is true if and only if p”. Yet Hamlet does not exist, so (we might say) the sentence ought not to be true. What is it that makes it true? The obvious answer is Shakespeare’s intentions: he decided to create a character named “Hamlet” who was a prince. The name “Hamlet” doesn’t denote Shakespeare or his intentions, but anything true of Hamlet is due to Shakespeare’s intentions. There is semantic correlation but not semantic denotation. And anyone familiar with fictional names understands this kind of dependence-without-denotation; it is part of our linguistic competence. Thus, statements containing fictional names are true in virtue of the author’s intentions, which are correlated with the name; but they don’t refer to such intentions—quite possibly they refer to nothing. The correlation explains the truth of the statement, but there is no denotation relation connecting the two. Truth and denotation come apart; the former doesn’t require the latter. It is therefore possible to maintain both that the statement is true and that it has no reference, because reference comes from elsewhere, in the shape of a correlated statement that does refer. The connoted (not denoted) statement does the truth-conferring work, leaving the original statement to luxuriate in its non-referential indolence. We can combine fiction with truth by availing ourselves of correlational semantics. Otherwise, we are saddled with truth without reference, or no truth at all. Hamlet doesn’t exist, but statements about him can still be true, because “Hamlet” is correlated with Shakespeare’s intentions, which do exist. Thus, anti-realism does not imply lack of truth (or weird kinds of truth). The anti-realist does not have to deny the obvious.

Now that the form and point of correlational semantics is made clear, we can extend it to other areas. Some philosophers (named “positivists”) have maintained that theoretical entities are mere fictions: but then how can statements about them be true? Correlational semantics supplies an answer: these statements are correlated with other statements about existent non-theoretical entities such as experimental results, sense-data, retinal stimulations, or what have you. These entities confer truth even when the statement correlated with them refers to nothing real. Correlation steps in where denotation fails. Statements about electrons, say, can be true even if there are no electrons, because they are made true by non-electrons—non-existence is no bar to truth. We simply detach truth from reference and existence; and, indeed, there is nothing in the concept of truth itself to compel a rigid connection, because truth simply requires correspondence (or the possibility of disquotation) not reference and existence. No sentence is true but reality makes it so, but the sentence need not denote this reality. We can have a correspondence or redundancy theory of truth without building in reference in the sentence declared true; for we can appeal to correlated sentences or states of affairs. The concept of truth itself doesn’t even require a referential structure (grammar). Truth is more general than reference, more capacious. Similarly, it can be maintained that folk psychology refers to nothing real and yet its propositions are true, since they are made true by propositions about the brain.[2] It is true that I believe that snow is white even though there are no such things as beliefs, because that statement is made true by the condition of my brain as it controls my behavior. Thus, one can consistently be a mental eliminativist and also ascribe truth to mental propositions—rather like the anti-realist about fictional characters. For there is something other than mental reality that can confer truth on such propositions; and surely it is true that I believe that snow is white (even though that phrase refers to nothing, according to the eliminativist). Correlational semantics allows you to have it both ways (if both ways appeal to you). Correlation not reference; connotation not denotation.

I suspect the philosophers most well disposed towards correlational semantics will be ethical expressivists. Their official view is that ethical sentences do not report facts, are not true, and cannot be said to be known; there are no values “in the world”. Or better put: since there are no values in the world, ethical utterances cannot be true, even though they appear to be true. Wouldn’t it be better to accept that they are true but that they don’t denote values-in-the-world? That is what correlational semantics allows: expressivism combined with truth. Suppose an experience of pleasure occurs and someone remarks “That’s good”: the expressivist says that no evaluative property is thereby ascribed to the pleasure, since there are none such; instead, the utterance is like an outburst of emotion or an order to act in a certain way. But there is an alternative story: the utterance is true in virtue of the existence of the pleasure but no property is ascribed by the word “good”. The word isn’t even a predicate (in some versions of the doctrine). The sentence is not true in virtue of a denoted evaluative property but in virtue of the correlated pleasure property—correlation not denotation. The world does contain pleasure and it makes such propositions true, but evaluative discourse does not refer to this property. The evaluative force comes from the attitude expressed not from the state of affairs that makes the sentence true. Thus, truth is compatible with expressivism concerning value; we are not forced to reject ethical truth just because ethical propositions don’t refer to ethical properties. Put differently, the truth-makers belong to the supervenience base not the supervening values (they are add-ons derived from human psychology). Again, I am not saying I accept this position, only that it exists in logical space and has attractions for a convinced expressivist, particularly one who refrains from withholding truth-values from ethical statements. Something objective is involved in making ethical statements true, but it isn’t the denotation of ethical words; rather, it is what those words connote in the way of correlation. We know these correlations, so we accept the truth of what is said; but this doesn’t entail that the correlated facts are denoted by moral terms—they are not. Accordingly, we get to be moral anti-realists and accept objective ethical truth-makers. Everyone is happy (well, not everyone). Some words don’t denote anything real, but that doesn’t stop them appearing in true statements, thanks to suitable correlated realities. Only referentially empty sentences with no correlates will turn out not to be true or be incapable of truth, such as ungrammatical or meaningless types of sentences. The sentence jumble “It thing number gone” is not true and has no true correlate; nor does “All mimsy were the borogroves”; nor “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. But it is possible for a sentence to contain empty terms (no denotation) and the sentence be perfectly true; it has, we might say, parasitic truth. Correlational semantics is designed to accommodate these cases. We must give up the dogma of denotational truth.[3]

[1] See my “On Denoting and Connoting”.

[2] See my “Semantical Considerations on Mental Language” and “Ontology of Mind”.

[3] There are other reasons we might want to give up the dogma of denotational truth: a devotion to hard redundancy theories, adherence to coherence or pragmatic theories, skepticism about the notion of reference (itself having several sources). The point I would emphasize is that nothing in the concept of truth analytically implies that true sentences or propositions must have a referential semantics: truth does not require referential relations between sentence parts and whatever in the world makes the sentence true. In principle, a sentence could have no such structure and still be true. Some linguists and others have toyed with the idea of a pre-referential level of meaning in the child’s understanding of language (“RED!”, “COW!”, “MAMA!”); such a level would not preclude application of the concept of truth.