Irrealist Cognitivism

This paper argues that normative claims are truth-apt contents of cognition--propositions about what there is reason to believe, to do or to feel--but that their truth is not a matter of correspondence or representation We do not have to choose between realism about the normative and non-cognitivism about it. The universality of reasons, combined with the spontaneity of normative responses. suffices to give normative claims the distinctive link to a 'convergence commitment' which characterises any genuine judgement; an accurate epistemology of normative discourse need postulate no faculty of receptivity to a special domain of normative fact. Some general arguments for the view that cognitivism about a domain of discourse imposes realism about it are considered and rejected.