The semantic challenge to non-realist cognitivism overcome

Abstract Recently, non-realist cognitivism has been charged with failing to meet various semantic challenges. According to one such challenge, the non-realist cognitivist must provide a non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. In this paper, we discuss the various strategies proposed to overcome this challenge. Our aim is to propose a new semantics, a Meinongian referential semantics that is based on truthmaker theory. The consequences of our proposal are two-fold. First, it alleviates objections raised against previous Meinongian semantic approaches. Second, adopting the novel semantics highlights the great theoretical flexibility of non-realist cognitivism.