Metaethics: The Frege-Geach Problem

[@KaneB]

Noncognitivism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eHquZaFppL6ZqNU kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaPbkICJgahppcU Deflationism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aWa0pIluot2Ar5I

[@HerrEinzige]

I love doing math with feelings.

[@KaneB]

You'd think more philosophers would appreciate HOA for this reason

[@aaronchipp-miller9608]

Hooray to this video

[@KaneB]

H!(H!(this video))

[@СергейМакеев-ж2н]

The "hiyo problem" made me think of a particular well-known example, which seems perfectly intelligible: "And in case I don't see you today, good afternoon, good evening and good night!"

[@AvaEvaThornton]

Congratulations on 50,000 subscribers!

[@KaneB]

Thanks!

[@BumbleTheBard]

There must be a way to resolve the Frege-Geach problem without cognitivism, if only because aesthetic judgments have the same indicative form, but few people if any would subscribe to aesthetic realism. We can use statements such as, "This painting is beautiful" in unasserted contexts. "If this painting is beautiful then that one is too". Disagreeing with the latter sentence would presumably be described by Blackburn as having a fractured aesthetic sensibility.

[@elwoodash4625]

R.M. Hare’s prescriptivism would seem to meet the Frege-Geach objection. If “stealing is wrong” means “one ought not to steal” then “If it is wrong to steal, it is wrong to pay someone to steal” means “If one ought not steal, one ought not to pay someone to steal” which makes grammatical and logical sense. But the bigger problem is that the post-war linguistic turn caused philosophers to suppose that grammatical analysis would provide substantive ethical or meta ethical conclusions. It does not. The more pressing question is the question of moral psychology: out of all the possible prescriptions, which do I have a reason to follow? The “objective” vs “subjective” question in ethics doesn’t hinge on whether moral expressions are propositions or imperatives. (They’re obviously imperatives because they’re intended to guide action.) Rather it hinges on whether there are reasons to allow oneself to be guided by some imperatives rather than others. There are a variety of ways one might approach this. I am personally fond of Aristotelean ethical strategies along the lines of: 1. I want to be happy 2. Part of living a happy life is having friends and family, and pursuing interesting projects with others 3. In order to have friends and family and to pursue interesting projects with others, I have to be the sort of person who can understand the perspective of others, who can take their interests into account along with my own, who can be honest with them, etc. In other words the sort of person who has a sense of fairness, justice, honesty, etc. The only conditional part is the “if you want to live a happy life” but if you accept that one premise, then you have an “objective” reason to behave in some ways rather than others. It’s somewhat analogous to the situation in which you decide to play a game of chess, intending to win. No rule of reason forces you to make that decision, but once you do some moves and strategies are “objectively” better (more winning) than others. And some moves are “objectively” bad - if, for instance, they expose you to instant checkmate.

[@gingerbreadzak]

00:00 📚 The video discusses the Frege-Geach Problem, a central challenge to non-cognitivism in meta-ethics. 01:07 🤔 Non-cognitivism posits that moral judgments express emotional attitudes or commands rather than beliefs about the world. 03:00 🧐 The Frege-Geach Problem asks how to explain the meaning of moral sentences in unasserted contexts or complex sentences. 05:06 📖 Language relies on compositionality, where the meaning of complex sentences is derived from the meanings of their parts. 08:05 🤯 Non-cognitivists struggle to account for moral sentences' meanings in complex sentences, especially when they don't express approval or disapproval. 09:54 🤔 Moral arguments pose a challenge for non-cognitivism as the meaning of moral sentences must validate logical inferences. 12:01 🔄 Imperatives (commands) provide an example of non-cognitive sentences that can embed into complex sentences and remain meaningful. 16:43 🚫 However, not all constructions that work for imperatives apply to moral sentences, indicating limitations in using imperatives as a model for non-cognitivism in morals. 21:20 📚 Simon Blackburn's higher-order attitudes account is a proposal to solve the Frege-Geach problem, a challenge in moral philosophy. 22:25 🧐 Blackburn's theory involves attitudes not just towards actions but also towards attitudes themselves, such as disapproving of approval of slavery. 23:50 🤔 Blackburn explains that conditionals in moral language express higher-order attitudes, like disapproval of the state of disapproving of something while not disapproving of something else. 26:44 🤯 Blackburn's theory allows for the determination of the meaning of moral conditionals based on the attitudes expressed by their parts, aiding in the compositionality of moral language. 29:13 😲 Rejecting the conclusion of a moral argument while accepting its premises results in a fractured sensibility, which Blackburn sees as a problem in understanding moral facts. 31:32 🤨 Some objections to Blackburn's higher-order attitudes account include concerns about whether inconsistency is adequately explained and difficulties in handling mixed conditionals. 36:18 🤔 Critics question whether the higher-order attitudes account accurately reflects the mental states expressed when making complex moral judgments and whether it aligns with psychological evidence. 42:11 🧐 An objection arises when considering cases where one might prefer someone to have specific attitudes towards attitudes, challenging the simplicity of Blackburn's theory. 43:07 🤔 The Frege-Geach Problem questions how diverse opinions can be seen as good while disapproving of certain actions associated with those opinions. 46:11 💬 Deflationism, a different approach to moral language, suggests that moral sentences have minimal truth conditions, similar to sentences about facts, which allows for embedding them in complex sentences. 50:07 ➡ Complex moral sentences can be analyzed using standard logical accounts once the minimal truth conditions are assigned to atomic moral sentences. 54:01 🤨 Critics of deflationism argue that having appropriate grammatical form and minimal truth conditions alone do not make sentences meaningful or account for their actual meanings.

[@brandonsaffell4100]

What a hero.

[@KaneB]

Analytical Table of Contents:

[@ReasonWithRainer]

Genius, not only does this help everyone, it is also like taking notes, helping you learn the content taught within the video better.

[@yoavco99]

​@@ReasonWithRainerit's obviously AI

[@zapazap]

Ethics is a very dull subject. But metaethics is fascinating.

[@BiznizTrademark]

A pedagogical exposition of a difficult subject. Very good!

[@KaneB]

Thanks!

[@kenthartig7065]

Maybe I should script something and rant about the "objections to the hoa account" section myself. I have way too much to say about what has been said so far and I'm not even halfway through the section. Trying to hold off and see if my thoughts are addressed, though.

[@kenthartig7065]

Got through the hiyo problem just now. For now, I'll leave the TLDR as follows: this is all really only a problem for moral objectivists.

[@silverharloe]

4:12 of course, our bodies are already being constantly repaired by nano machines. I guess the assumption is that we will make better ones, but generally our constructions are more resource intensive to operate than natural equivalents.

[@zapazap]

If ethics is refusable to desire, we might pose this question; 'are your desires *well ordered*' So: is the adjective "well ordered" itself teducible to a claim of desire? We can say that an engine is in good order, or that a kitchen is well ordered. These seem to soeak of states of the world, and that our desires are well ordered precisely when they have, as its object, well ordered world-states.

[@KaneBsBett]

19:51 Moore

[@justus4684]

22:55 Most based thing I have ever heard

[@KaneB]

Hooray for the hooray operator!

[@justus4684]

​​​​@@KaneB Indeed! We may even say B! (~H! v ~B!) That's not formally correct in the framework I hear you saying? But I am just expressing myself! And my theory of truth reduces truth to my expressions, so the above is actually very accurate, as I truly feel it!!!

[@childintime6453]

Maybe making sense of our moral talk is more like a mix of attitude expression and actually making some (false) claims in indirect/complex contexts. So expressivism may not be the whole story, and can not account for our moral talk as a whole, but I think it still gets many things right

[@KaneBsBett]

58:25 58:33 58:46 Moore

[@TheoEvian]

The phrase "Verity is hiyo" reminds me of some constructions that are actually possible in Japanese like the line from a poem by Tanikawa Shuntaro: そしておはようの朝が来る, soshite ohayou no asa ga kuru, which taken literally translates to something like "And a morning of "good morning" comes". I feel like that sentences like "If I am near verity then verity is hiyo" should be possible in some language. But as far as I know it isn't possible to construct a sentence like that in Japanese ベリチーに近いならば、ベリチーはおはようである or something like that doesn't really mean anything I am afraid but we shouldn't underestimate the richness of posibilities that languages can provide.

[@KaneB]

Interesting! Yeah, I share your sentiment: so much of the more technical work on the Frege-Geach problem strikes me as putting far too much weight on what might be just idiosyncrasies of the English language. It's not clear that the sorts of inferences licensed by grammatical rules map neatly onto the relationships between judgments and concepts. In any case, I don't really see any issue with "If Verity is near, then Verity is hiyo." We're stipulating that "Verity is hiyo" is used to accost Verity. There are situations where it is appropriate to use the word, such as when Verity is near. So why shouldn't I state that in a conditional? That seems intelligible to me. It's also intelligible to inquire further about whether that conditional is right. After all, we might argue, I don't accost Verity anytime that Verity is near. So perhaps we need to add to the antecedent: "If Verity is near and I want to get Verity's attention, Verity is hiyo"... If all of this is intelligible, and I think it is, then it looks like "Verity is hiyo" is suitable for use in embedding and inference.

[@jatter2]

I was wondering whether in English, the way to embed an imperative like: "If [shut the door!], then [close the blinds!]" is to reformulate it with a "should" or "ought" structure, as in: "If you should shut the door, then you should close the blinds" (I assume "you" given that imperatives are second person directed) This would also speak in favour of "should"-sentences (which might be even more central to morality than "right" and "wrong" sentences) just being hidden imperatives. And any theory of linguistic meaning (maybe rather than theory of logic, B!(always conflating the two)) should be able to account for how imperative sentences can be embedded like this, and how it does and doesn't affect their meaning (e.g. semantic vs pragmatic). Maybe something similar can be said for interrogative (questions), expressive or declarative sentences. What do you think?

[@optini1422]

Hey kane, I have a generell question about the distinction between Cognitivism and Non- cognitivism. What exactly is the diatinguishing factor by wich we calssify a theory into cognitivist or Non- cognitivist? Is it about what people mean when they engange in Moral Talk? Or is it more about the ontological Nature of Moral Statements? Seems Like its Not quite clear. Moral Error theory for example. Moral Error theory is officially classified as cognitivist but does Not think that Morality is actually a factual Feature about the world. Moral Error theory only says that people Express belief as if they we're factual. So why would Error theory be cognitivist then? That always confused me... 😅

[@KaneB]

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate is about what we mean when we make moral judgements. Non-cognitivists hold that moral judgements do not express beliefs; when I judge that stealing is wrong, I don't attribute the property of wrongness to stealing, but rather express a negative attitude to stealing. Moral error theorists are cognitivists because they think that moral judgements do express beliefs about moral properties. It's just that, on their view, there are no moral properties. So all moral judgements are false. Both noncognitivists and error theorists agree that there are no moral properties. In terms of ontology then, they hold the same view. The difference is that noncognitivists say that moral judgements aren't even aiming to describe moral properties. So the fact that there are no moral properties does not make all moral judgements false.

[@optini1422]

@@KaneB mhh ok, I See. So its more about what people think they expressing? Not what is actually the Case? So could there theoratically be a non-cognitvist View then, that asserts that people believe they are merely expressing emotions when making moral statements, while also maintaining that moral statements go beyond mere emotion and represent real moral facts?

[@lelouchvibritannia8172]

​@@optini1422 No, a non-cognitivist would say that moral statements do not represent anything, they just express attitudes (emotions, commands...). But you're right that, in principle, there could be a non-cognitivist who believed that moral statements just express attitudes but there are moral facts/properties. I don't know if someone holds this position though (maybe Hume could be read in this way)

[@KaneBsBett]

30:45 Moore

[@danwylie-sears1134]

My take after about two and a half minutes: Suppose that "is wrong" is really just a "boo to this". Then it depends what end we're looking at things from. My "boo to this" category presumably consists of those actions and conditions with a particular (albeit somewhat vague) set of characteristics. When I contemplate what constitutes stealing, and consider whether to say it's wrong, I'm evaluating whether it has those characteristics. If I'm already very clear about what characteristics delineate my "boo to this" category, but think there's still a lot to be figured out about existing property norms, then I'm evaluating something in the world. If I consider property norms to be straightforward and well-established, but I'm unsure about the criteria that justify saying boo, then we have the world-to-mind direction. Now to listen to the rest. --- Now I'm at 12:35. The "equivocates and is therefore invalid" just sounds like nonsense. Any way of framing expressions of sentiment as though they were propositions will necessarily include a way of handling logical operators on them. A particular framing might not work in a way that preserves modus ponens, but you can't just say that the framing doesn't work without even considering how it attempts to work. Even if it doesn't preserve modus ponens, there may be some other benefit to the framing scheme that justifies using it in contexts where it does license framing those expressions as propositions. --- And at 18:41, if we decide to paraphrase "shut the door" as "I command you to shut the door", then "if shut the door, then it's cold" actually works: it just says that there's currently no other reason why I would command you to shut the door. Likewise, "if shut the door, then close the blinds" analyzes as "every reason for me to command you to shut the door is also a reason for me to command you to close the blinds." We don't say things that way, but that's just a matter of our habits of speech. --- "It's ok to X" doesn't paraphrase as H!(X). It paraphrases as ~B!(X), or maybe ~H!(~X), depending on how we feel about indifference. --- 36:18 A way of framing expressions of sentiments as though they were propositions doesn't have to license every possible use of such pseudo-propositions. It seems as though "If being friendly is wrong, then my parents lied to me" is one that some people just wouldn't want to license. They can perfectly well respond, 'no, that's not a valid statement, because the framing scheme only licenses such-and-such range of sentences'. --- As of 44:17, I'm wondering where we got the premise that there has to be only one kind of "boo" and only one kind of "hooray". Of course the libertarian is saying something like B!(B!(S)&~B!(T)). But the outer "boo" is 'you're being inconsistent if', and the inner "boo" is 'you're behaving immorally if'. Because I think that stealing and taxation are topics worth thinking about, and I know that people are fallible beings who inevitably sometimes think inconsistent things on a topic, if they think about the topic at all, I therefore want people to think inconsistent things about stealing and taxation. But if I find someone being inconsistent about an important topic, I also want them to think further and get the inconsistency sorted out.

[@moxie.6832]

There's a difference between expressing an attitude and reporting that I have an attitude. Sentences like "Go away!" or "Boo, stealing!" aren't reporting beliefs -- they don't seem to be truth-apt. Whereas sentences like "I want you to go away!" or "I hate when people steal!" can be true or false, their truth just depends on one's desires and preferences. If it turns out that moral judgments express beliefs, the truth of which depends on one's subjective attitudes, then that would be subjectivism rather than non-cognitivism. So if moral judgments are more analogous to "I command you to shut the door" than "Shut the door!", and if "I wonder whether stealing is wrong" means something like "I wonder whether I'm justified in saying 'boo' to stealing," that would seem more in line with the subjectivist view.

[@KaneB]

>> The "equivocates and is therefore invalid" just sounds like nonsense... I'm unsure what your point is here. I'm assuming that you agree that equivocation would render an argument invalid. It seems like you're suggesting that it doesn't really matter if, on the noncognitivist analysis, it turns out that these arguments are invalid, because the noncognitivist analysis has other benefits or works in other contexts. I suppose this is fine if we're just proposing noncognitivism as a theory that is instrumentally useful in specific contexts. But that's not how card-carrying noncognitivists see their own work. They take themselves to be giving a theory that correctly accounts for what the meaning of moral statements actually is. If (a) these arguments are valid but (b) on the noncognitivist analysis, these arguments are invalid, then this tells us that the noncognitivist analysis is not correct. >> But the outer "boo" is 'you're being inconsistent if', and the inner "boo" is 'you're behaving immorally if' I agree that one plausible way of solving the problem would be to distinguishing different kinds of approval and disapproval. However, we can't make the distinction in the way that you suggest, because the point of the HOA account is to show how we can cash out judgments of inconsistency and immorality in terms of approval and disapproval. If we take inconsistency and immorality as primitives in the analysis, then it hasn't done its job.

[@danwylie-sears1134]

@KaneB Equivocation would render an argument invalid, if it really were an argument in the format it looks like. But people abbreviate stuff all the time, and it works as long as everyone is on the same page. You can just say "by induction" in a mathematical proof. As long as people know how to fill in that you mean 'P(0), and [P(n) --> P(n+1)]' rather than 'here's a value of n for which it's true, and there's another and another, so let's call it good enough', you've communicated a proof. People also have to know how to fill stuff in when you talk about expressions of sentiment as though they were propositions. You're not making the kind of argument that you would have been making if you had really been asserting propositions. So it doesn't make sense to respond to some expressions of sentiment by disputing the validity of an argument that wasn't being made. Of course, I'm not saying that's what we actually are doing when we say things that look like propositions about morality. I personally believe they look like propositions because that's what they really are. And of course I'm suspicious of any line of reasoning that's trying to tell me something I already wanted to believe: if we want to refute the idea that our ordinary language embodies a nebulous scheme of disguising complex expressions of sentiment as simple syllogisms, we have to give the idea the benefit of the doubt and then rebut every plausible version of the whole scheme, not just refute the putative syllogisms. (I hope it's clear that I was taking the introductory remarks as being about the whole idea that what seem to be moral propositions are instead some kind of expression of sentiment, not to Blackburn's specific formulation of how to unpack them.)

[@404no57]

Isn't a simple, maybe suspiciously too simple, solution to just hold that moral statements express a belief about an attitude? Rather than "stealing is wrong" being "x disapprove(s) of stealing" it'd be "I believe x disapproves of stealing"?

[@KaneB]

If we say that moral statements express beliefs, then we're giving up non-cognitivism. So while this is a view that some people have defended (see my video on subjectivism in my metaethics series), it's not an option available to non-cognitivists.

[@exalted_kitharode]

Great

[@tariktijanovic2646]

Why is the photo of Geach on the thumbnail, rather than the photo of Frege or both? I am just curious.

[@ivaniliev929]

These arguments do not originate with Frege. He has no work in Meta ethics

[@KaneB]

@@ivaniliev929Yeah, it should really just be called "the Geach problem". I guess Geach was generous with crediting others.

[@kunakos9062]

I wonder whether i like strawberry? My parents told me they dont like strawberry If i dont like strawberry then i also dont like stawberry flavored cake Why wouldnt you be able to make complex sentences about someones attitude? And why would this be a problem? Its just language we use language however we want i dont get it :/

[@kunakos9062]

(1) If you dont like strawberry than you dont like the taste of strawberry (2) Strawberry cake also has the property of tasting like strawberry (3)so if you dont like strawberry than you also dont like strawbery cake Why wouldnt you be able to make arguments about attitude?

[@micahbelew8129]

Hi Kane, Reaching out to see if you received my email.

[@italogiardina8183]

Atomic sentences have arguable various forms of understanding which could be tested through observing functional roles of core syntactic structures within an in-group (sub culture within a linguistic community of native speakers) where key members of the group have super powers. These persons seem to understand atomic sentences more than other members do through being prototypical but that does not by members who have super powers to understand any complex sentence only within the sub culture. Therefore all members are dumb in a significance sense as have no authentic voice, as in being voiceless in relation to the most prototypical member of the group. The evidence for this social phenomenology lies in the theory of member/leadership relations where prototypical members as the leader my necessity has ostensible powers (by hook or by crook) to understand complex sentences. This is the moo theory as in all members moo by token of being listening to an ostensible legitimate member denoted as leader. Theory of self evaluative maintenance is a micro social knock down set of arguments of who really understands an atomic sentence as true (tiger in the woods today) entails the only as select set of members to have powers to utter complex sentences such as tiger in the woods today who is a vegan. The basic view is convergence theory of language where the force and meaning content converge based on regional typologies. So in a party the tiger is a man in a mask, but not so for hunter gathers in the Kalahari where what it means to high tail it out of the woods has a survival mode in contrast to a political identity mode. So if being eaten by a tiger is wrong then making false identity claims about a tiger is wrong seems to have a force to content correlation as just the sentence 'being eaten by a tiger is wrong'. Similar in that in sentence one the wrongness picks out a political identity that is the culprit of wrongness and of interest to a criminologist. However sentence two is of no interest to a criminologist but has a primordial force to it given most humans avoid being eaten by a tiger, unless crazy or sacrificial. So wrongness is correlated to a social form of life embedded in ostracising persons who seem to make wrongness happen. The intrinsic wrongness of being eaten by a tiger is not the case of crazy or sacrificial persons or stupidity but as a social function of care where the conclusion pivots on persons being non cognitive of social existence to a point where harm is at least perceived to be incurred by their intensional states. This might be a form of maligned social intentionalism that forces individual deviancy on meaning content of a sentence which entails moral panic as members come to know the other member is not aligned to a form of non cognitive interpretation resulting in social fragmentation at the core to periphery. So in this model moralism exists at the core but vaguely at the periphery of a social system and for an individual there is no morality if not part of a social system, such as on a deserted island. So in a sense the core is akin to boo the periphery of a social system who says hooray as a form of push back to the status quo. This suggest why holding beliefs about certain other is taboo as in the case of 'my parents lied to me' as it puts those persons at the periphery and ostracised leaving the child at the social core which seems odd. So the parents claim was minimally true within their social form of life which turns out through social change to be a relative truth to a social norms set by the adult child who claims a maximal truth about social convention. This also could explain the 'near by problem' by token certain persons tend to be locally near by through the passage of time but become disjointed through social normative change over time where truth variables are construed through social forces such as world political events which include war and famine.

[@SumNutOnU2b]

-Okay, I haven't watched the whole thing through yet, so maybe this is answered later (EDIT: Spoiler, it's not), but I want to get this down so I don't forget it- 8:24 "in the cases listed above, 'stealing is wrong' is clearly not being used to express a negative attitude…" Uhh.... That doesn't seem so "clearly" to me. First off, maybe I'm misunderstanding (or mis-applying) the label of "non-cognitivism". To my understanding "stealing is wrong" is definitely an expression of an opinion, but linguistically it's also a direct attribution. It says stealing (an action) is (equates to or adheres to the category of) wrong (something I feel people should generally avoid doing). It's slightly less informative but essentially the same to say "wrong" means "something I disapprove of". This is definitely an expression of opinion. ★Alternately, "stealing is always wrong" is potentially ambiguous because it could be an attempt to claim it as an objective fact or it might be simply implying that the disapproval is more extreme. ((EDIT)But this never comes up in the video so never mind I guess) So… with that explanation in mind, the statements would translate as follows: I wonder whether stealing is wrong? I wonder whether I ought to disapprove of stealing? (note this is different from wondering whether I actually disprove - but I think that's a linguistic artifact, not a cognitivism issue) My parents told me that stealing is wrong. My parents wanted me to disapprove of stealing. If stealing is wrong, then paying somebody to steal is wrong. (Note that this actually refers to a separate belief that causing somebody else to do a wrong action is also wrong. This is an additional proposition which does not automatically follow from the previous one). Translates to: If I disapprove of stealing then I also disapprove of paying somebody to steal. In all of these cases it seems fairly obvious (to me) that one is still making (or more accurately, referring to) an expression of disapproval. EDIT: An additional comment... At 40:53 we translate "if stealing is wrong then taxation is wrong" into B!(B!(stealing) & ~B!(taxation)) This is incorrect. It should be ~(B!(stealing) & ~B!(taxation) )

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

" First off, maybe I'm misunderstanding (or mis-applying) the label of "non-cognitivism"." I feel like this is what's going on. There is a very specific reason why non-cognitivism translates a sentence such as "Stealing is wrong." or "You ought not steal." as "Boo stealing/don't steal." instead of as "I disapprove of stealing.". And it's because the latter is, arguably, a descriptive rather than normative statement. Its truthmaker is *your brain function* , not how morality works, and its truth-aptness is conditional on whether your brain is capable of having preferences, rather than on whether moral realism is true or false. Here's an example of how this doesn't work: Adam: Stealing is wrong. Do you agree? Bob: Well I've known you for years and you seem tough on crime, so yes, I agree. This dialogue makes perfect sense if "Stealing is wrong" means "I disapprove of stealing.", but doesn't make sense if "Stealing is wrong" means "Boo stealing". "Alternately, "stealing is always wrong" is potentially ambiguous because it could be an attempt to claim it as an objective fact or it might be simply implying that the disapproval is more extreme. ((EDIT)But this never comes up in the video so never mind I guess) " Noncognitivism is the position that moral statements are *mere* expressions of emotion/preference. The position that a moral statement is *both* an expression of emotion/preference *and* a belief/factual claim at the same time is a subset of cognitivism. "In all of these cases it seems fairly obvious (to me) that one is still making (or more accurately, referring to) an expression of disapproval." The difference between expressing and referring to disapproval is massive, it's not just a slight inaccuracy. There's a reason why desirism, a moral theory which holds all immoral actions as worthy of disapproval, is considered cognitivist.

[@SumNutOnU2b]

@@tudornaconecinii3609 your probably right about most of that. But that last bit - "the difference between expressing and referring to disapproval is massive"... Well, yeah, but that's not on me. The statements he gave, such as "my parents told me stealing is wrong" are not moral claims. They are statements that _refer to_ moral claims that aren't actually being claimed.

[@KaneB]

@@SumNutOnU2b The other commenter is correct that many metaethicist see a significant difference between expressing an attitude and reporting an attittude. That's the difference between noncognitivism and subjectivism, which is a form of cognitivism. Yes, they're not moral claims, but that's exactly where the problem arises. While it's easy enough to come up with interpretations of these more complex sentences within a noncognitivist framework, it's often taken to be a condition of adequacy on the noncognitivist account that it preserves compositionality, so that the meaning of the more complex sentence is a function of the meaning of its parts. The meaning of "stealing is wrong", when used to make a moral claim, is simply: "boo to stealing!", but that's not what it means in "my parents told me that stealing is wrong." Or so the Frege-Geach challenge goes, at least.

[@KaneB]

>> This is incorrect. It should be ~(B!(stealing) & ~B!(taxation) ) No, Blackburn's recipe, applied to "if stealing is wrong, then taxation is wrong", gives us: B!(B!(stealing) & ~B!(taxation) In general, "if X is wrong then Y is wrong" = B!(B!(X) & ~B!(Y))

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@KaneB Just to make sure I'm not misremembering past videos, you are a cognitivist error theorist, right?

[@zapazap]

The wird desire has different grammatical affordanves "I desire to [verb]" has an aim of changing states of affairs (I desire to win the lottery). "i desire [noun]' has as its aim an object on the world ("I ddsire my wife"). Such desire may be fully satisfied in the *current* states of affairs and so have no aim of changing states of affairs.

[@newtonswig]

I see Frege Geach I click

[@warrendriscoll350]

Ah, just introduce a modifier. If we take stealing is wrong to be an expression of emotion, well, I'm having an academic debate. I didn't want to express emotion. So I'll just analyze stealing is actually wrong. I want to know if stealing is wrong for an objective reason, or a subjective reason which is grounded. Which is what the actually modifier adds.

[@justus4684]

Late is better than never, lol

[@KaneB]

One day I'll finish the "Quine's objections to modal logic" series.

[@justus4684]

​@@KaneB 💀 The taunting is real

[@martinbennett2228]

Yea to logical thought! Boo to illogicality! I think it possible to attribute non-cognitivism to all statements making all statements a kind of value judgement. The problem with non-cognitivism is does not account for anything beyond what we already know. If someone says 'I don't like eating prawns' or even 'I think eating prawns is wrong', we know s/he has the disposition 'Boo to eating prawns', we can easily accept this without accepting that we cannot investigate or speculate over the foundations of this disposition. I cannot see that non-cognitivism adds anything to our understanding.

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

The position that all statements make value judgments is perfectly compatible with cognitivism. Cognitivism doesn't deny that moral statements are subjective or lensed through subjective value judgments, it merely claims that moral statements express *beliefs* .

[@danielyihan]

I don't think a philosophical position in anything can give "beyond what we already know".

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@danielyihan Hm. Not sure. If you believe that what is materially true about our reality is a strictly smaller subset of what is metaphysically possible, then proving the metaphysical *impossibility* of something saves you the time to prove its physical impossibility. Which is knowledge gain. For example, let's say that a philosopher somehow proves that consciousness is necessarily substrate-dependent. If that happens, it would imply that any efforts to develop brain upload technology are useless, so all the scientists researching that could drop it and focus on something else.

[@danielyihan]

@@tudornaconecinii3609 To me metaphysical possibility is just a concept that philosophers came up with to carve out conceptual space. So scientists would need to buy into this notion first before they accept the conclusion. I also doubt any claim in which a philosopher "proves" something. Usually in a philosophy proof all of the work is done by assumptions and the formalisms are just dressing to make it look respectable. In the consciousness case I am pretty much sure it would come down to the definitions of consciousness, physical, substrate etc. If you buy into the definitions given then sure its a proof.

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@danielyihan You and me have a very different definition of philosophical proofs then. To me, a philosophical proof is simply any proof that uses pure reason (logic, thought experiments, conceptual engineering) without any empirical data or experiment to reach a conclusion. This covers mumbo jumbo topics like arguments for the existence of god or idealism, but it also covers perfectly practical things like the proof of the undecidability of the halting problem, or aumann agreement, or even arguably the second law of thermodynamics. To reject the notion of metaphysical possibility is to reject the notion that projects can be discarded before they actually fail. You'd *actually* have to fail at hundreds of perpetuum mobile projects, and clearly delineate and model the parameters under which they failed, rather than merely, you know, doing the math.

[@rogerwitte]

I have great difficulty taking Frege's ethical arguments seriously, given his antisemitic statements (although, from all accounts, his personal behaviour was inconsistent with his statements on both topics)

[@BiznizTrademark]

Maybe this is a good cue to make a video about some logical fallacies, like ad hominem or poisoning the well.

[@ivaniliev929]

These are not moral arguments. They are Meta ethical arguments. But more importantly they are not Frege's

[@whatsinaname691]

Frege never made the argument. It’s not an ethical argument. Frege’s private opinions make no difference in the argument

[@radscorpion8]

noncognitivism, the undisputed, most rational position to hold in moral philosophy

[@KaneB]

Undisputed? I mean, I like noncognitivism too but I think there's plenty of dispute!