Term coined by the English philosopher Simon Blackburn (1944– ) to identify a position holding that an expressivist or projectivist account of various domains can explain and make legitimate sense of the realist-sounding discourse within which we promote and debate views in those domains. A prime application is in ethics, although there are many others. This is in opposition to writers who think that if expressivism is correct then our ordinary ways of thinking in terms of a moral truth, for example, or of moral knowledge, or the independence of ethical facts from our subjective sentiments, must all be in error, reflecting a mistaken realist metaphysics.

The quasi-realist seeks to earn our right to talk in these terms on the slender, projective or expressivist basis. One tool would be a deflationary theory of truth; others might include expressivist accounts of the concept of knowledge, meaning that expressivism need not accept the common title of ‘non-cognitivism’. The view is an example of pragmatist approaches to the philosophy of different areas (see also Peirce) The possibility of quasi-realism complicates the methodology of realist/anti-realist debates in many areas.