Declarativism: a relatively defensible representationalist position
Dual to “descriptivism” which too narrowly construes representation as description (which is too constricted a notion of representation).
This too broadly understands what all declarative sentences do in terms of fact-stating / truth-aptness (‘representation’ becomes too expansive). Expressivism is one way of negating this (by declaring “X is good”, one is commending rather than fact stating).
Intuition: the question of truth can be raised for whatever is expressed by declarative sentences.
Geach’s 1960 embedding argument: “If X is good, then …” a hallmark of fact-stating (if we had close the door or praise god, it wouldn’t make grammatical sense)
We can embed moral statements that 1st wave expressivists said were not fact-stating.
QUESTION: are there any grammatically declarative sentences which cannot be embedded? Would a counterexample have to be a non-truth-apt, declarative sentence?
Declarative sentences that may not fit into the fact-stating mold of “the frog is on the log”:
Logical (e.g. negative/conditional facts), modal (e.g. necessity), probabilistic, semantic (what expressions mean or represent), intentional (possibly about non-existent objects like golden mountains / round squares), normative, abstract / mathematical.
Are these all types of facts? Do they represent features of the world?