Value and Implicature

Implicature is 'cancellable', in Grice's sense, iff the same sentence can be uttered, without linguistic impropriety, without expressing that content. An implicature is explicitly cancellable iff a speaker can (without abusing the meaning of his words) legitimately deny that he means to express that content; it is contextually cancellable iff there are contexts of use in which the utterance of that sentence wouldn't even seem to suggest that content. To me it seems clear that the attitudinal content of moral assertions is cancellable in both these ways: here we encounter the figure of the amoralist, familiar in this literature, who sincerely makes assertions about the moral value of things but doesn't subscribe to those moral standards herself and doesn't express approval (etc.) by her moral speech acts. Attitudinal content can be cancelled explicitly, if she merely explains that she is an amoralist, or that she is contemptuous or indifferent towards morality. It is contextually cancelled if her audience already knows of her amoralism (particularly if they themselves are amoralists, rendering amoralism contextually uncontroversial).