ABSTRACT
Fictionalism can be thought of as a way of trying to rescue morality from the threat of error theory. But fictionalism comes in different stripes, forcing the need to delineate upon anyone wishing to discuss it. The first distinction has come to have the somewhat unfortunate pair of labels "revolutionary" versus "hermeneutic". The revolutionary fictionalist thinks that the moral error theory is correct: our moral discourse really does involve systematic falsehood from which first-order moral truths cannot be salvaged. The hermeneutic fictionalist maintains that our actual moral discourse should be interpreted in a manner similar in some fashion to familiar fictional discourse. This chapter focuses on the noncognitivist brand of hermeneutic fictionalism. Revolutionary moral fictionalism depends on the contingent fact that we tend to fall well short of satisfying this list of admirable qualities.
