Where might norms be found in a world of facts? We can observe social practices, express personal ideals, criticize behavior, enforce laws, and consult rule books. But in the process, we never seem to encounter normative facts, whatever they would be.

Perhaps philosophers should not look for normative facts behind these social phenomena. Given the natural facts, and facts about language and meaning, there may already be facts enough to sustain our normative practices – and searching for normative facts would be hunting a red herring. That attractive idea motivates a diverse collection of philosophical approaches to domains of human discourse and practice known as noncognitivism. Allan Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings represents the splendid flowering of this idea into a powerful and instructive contribution not only to philosophy, but also to the broad enterprise of coming to grips with human life. No one interested in such questions will want to miss it.

Philosophers frequently talk of the need to give “philosophical explanations,” but it is rare to come across work that is genuinely explanatory and at the same time fully alive to philosophical questions. Gibbard's discussion of rationality and ethics affords an astonishing amount of insight into such diverse phenomena as linguistic representation, evolutionary rationales for various human emotions, and discursive conceptions of objectivity. In this paper, I will take shameless advantage of Gibbard's hard work to make some remarks about the difficulties I see in noncognitivism. Regrettably, this will mean focusing narrowly on but a few aspects of a very ambitious book, and passing over much that I agree with in it.