The first video that comes up in relation to this problem just goes on and on and on, but this sums it up clearly and concisely in less than a minute. Brilliant!

@barszczpop

6 жыл бұрын

Exactly what I thought :D

Wow, a whole week from my teacher and I understood nothing, and then after watching your video suddenly I understand it. Thanks much! Very concise and easy to understand.

Four years later and this is still useful. Thank you for this!!! I rewatched my lecture a few times with no progress and then this finally made it clear to me in just one minute. Amazing.

Got my finals tomorrow, you just saved me!!!!!

Thank you sir, exactly what I needed to hear.

That was so clear. I watch a few 10 minute videos and didn't really get it. Thanks

Wouldn't the "if-then" statement just look like "If one approves of giving to charity then one will also approve of working for charity" ? It seems to me that logical statements still apply with Expressivism, they just apply to one's approval instead. Similarly it seems logical to assume that if someone likes chocolate and ice cream then they will like chocolate ice cream. If it turned out they didn't like chocolate ice cream then we would question if they truly liked chocolate or ice cream to begin with. I suppose it is not obvious to me what the philosophical inconsistency is here.

@brantbechtel1164

8 жыл бұрын

Upon further investigation it seems that Non-Cognitivists (the parent philosophy to expressivism) state that moral language does not provide description of the action, which still seems to be consistent with my argument above as "one's approval of charity" describes the person and not charity. So I am still not sure why this is a problem.

@Locrian08

8 жыл бұрын

+brant bechtel All very well stated. I have the same doubts about how this can actually be a problem.

@Locrian08

8 жыл бұрын

+Neil Sinclair I'm genuinely trying to understand this Frege-Geach issue, but it seems that Brant has clearly stated a strong objection to it--an objection that is in line with my own take. 1. It's not clear that Brant's depiction assumes, requires or benefits from the assertion "Giving to charity is good." 2. Perhaps I don't understand expressing boredom. A yawn does not necessarily express boredom (perhaps no action necessarily expresses e.g., boredom or approval): For example, a yawn could be an agreed upon surreptitious signal between two or more people, it could function to mock someone for being too tired to go out, it could be a reflexive reaction to someone else yawning etc. It doesn't seem that one can hold that A's yawn expresses boredom without also holding that "A is bored." There is nothing strange about asserting that 'If "A is bored" then X." The same can be said of moral expressions of approval or disapproval.

@splatted6201

8 жыл бұрын

+Neil Sinclair _"But that's a problem, because what could it possibly mean to put something like a yawn, or an expression of an attitude, within an 'if...then...statement'."_ We don't express attitudes about expressed attitudes? Can't the expressivist simply say that one is expressing (relative) approval to the family of attitudes which satisfy the conditional? That is, "if P is good then Q is good", for the expressivist, means roughly: 1. approving of P and of Q is okay 2. not approving of P and approving of Q is okay 3. approving of neither P nor Q is okay, but 4. approving of P and not approving of Q is wrong! That is, the person using the conditional is disapproving of people who approve of P but not Q. The statement itself still fits the expressivist mold, and the {YAWN} in the if-part of the sentence is not the speaker himself {YAWN}ing. The pragmatics of the sentence dictate that the speaker intends to discuss certain types of {YAWN}s in order to discuss more complicated states of affairs at which he intends to {YAWN}. Looking into it a bit further, I think that if you read up (as here: www-bcf.usc.edu/~maschroe/research/Schroeder_Frege-Geach_Problem.pdf) on Frege-Geach, you'll find that some tentative but plausible assumptions in the original debate have sometimes become hasty _pre_-sumptions with time as the 'problem' has been weaponized against other non-cognitivists. In part this may have been that because Geach got the credit, Searle's better nuance in a parallel objection has been occasionally forgotten with time: _"Searle’s objection was essentially the same, although he offered an extra twist. Searle offered the same kind of evidence as Geach that moral terms must have the same meaning when embedded as when unembedded, but he offered the noncognitivist _*_a more sophisticated position, according to which ‘good’ doesn’t have to always be used to commend, in order to have its usual meaning, so long as it is connected to commendation in the right sort of way._*_"_ (p. 3 in the pdf)

@MrPeaceGuy54

7 ай бұрын

Hello, I hope that you are doing well. I am sorry for the rather late reply, but as somewhat of a novice to philosophy, I do not yet have a strong opinion on this topic. Would you, after all these years, still stand by what you wrote?

Thank you so much!

The (obvious) answer is: "If [A] is right, then [B] is also right" is a kind of shorthand or metaphorical way of saying "Anyone who approves of [A] (emotionally likes [A]) but does not also approve of (emotionally like) [B] is a muddle-headed, inconsistent booby."

So is expressivism just another word for non-cognitivism?

I'm having hard time to understand this problem. Why it is necessary to put these claims in conditional form in the first place? If x then y (which has a moral implication) is meaningless nevertheless

Yes, but you miss the point. If [Giving money to charity is right](claim A), then, working in a charity shop is also right. What is the basis for claim A? Expressionism does not break here, because you've simply derived one piece of nonsense from another, it just creates trees of nonsense based on expressive stems. There is no problem here, just a logical extension; the equivocation fallacy is not necessary. The only way I see humans building a stable (though be it floating) moral structure, is by establishing a set of virtues (humanitarian & negative utilitarian) protected by the state or collective so as to manage and enable the maximum amount of freedom possible without succumbing to mutual destruction given that survival, agency, and wellbeing is for the most part desired by all who wish to live. Therefore, living with as little pain/friction as is either possible or necessary is better for all parties involved, because, for example, if you discover dicks are delicious after having preached agaist homosexuality then you've subjected yourself (and others potentially) to your own immorality on the grounds of negative utilitarianism as opposed to a mere emotional/preferential/innate/religious predisposition. Thereby, it is worse to be subject to an unjustified or arbitrary good, e.g. it's good to remove x faction from society because they took our jobs, with the condition that you're from faction y (this is unfavorable because once, faction x is rejected you've caused pain and splintered the moral system, thereby creating competing factions with essentially the same aim, namely peopling [reproduction, self/in-group protection and centeredness, eudaimonia, virtues all that nonsense creating the illusion of a life worth living]).

@adrenochromedreams5993

5 жыл бұрын

Suffering is less arbitrary than Good, one recognizes it easily as it directly impairs the wholesome living/functionioning of a system. Moreover, suffering is to be recognized on a personal level not a state wide level as that could lead to totalitarianism, e.g. did you smile? Don't do that you'll wear out your facial muscles and besides if you do that in the wrong context it could cause discomfort or emotional distress in light hearted and socially awkward. Thus smiling is prohibited. There should be a fair tollerance alongside healthy limits to what is and is not pain/suffering/inefficacious/damaging, if this is done on a collective level then it becomes a deadly race against minimal discomfort which is unproductive (one totalitarian truth type thing, arbitrary manipulation), therefore if each person adopts this on a personal level, then there is less overall coherence and hence a more free outcome, so lessen others' suffering responsibly, don't help people for whom suffering is in their best interests. It's crazy I know.

@nederlandseveganist3028

5 жыл бұрын

@@adrenochromedreams5993 There really is no basis for A, just like there is no basis for why I like the colour blue. I just do, so person X approves of A, that giving to charity is good, because he personally approves of it. A, is an assertion and, according to non-cognitivists, an expression or utterance of approval of giving to charity, with the moral term 'good' being used to convey approval in the assertion 'giving to charity is good.' The problem, however, is that in the conditional, the moral term 'good,' is not longer used to express approval, but becomes a descriptive term describing giving to charity as 'good,' with good meaning whatever your base fundamental axioms are. For example, an utilitarian might perceive 'good' as that which increases net utility. Since 'good' is meant to express approval in the assertion, but used not used to express approval in the conditional, instead describing the act of giving charity, the equivocation fallacy comes into play, since 'good' as a moral term to express approval is used interchangeably with 'good' as a descriptive moral term used to describe the act of charity, despite the meaning that the term 'good' conveys being different in the assertion and conditional, according to the non-cognitivists.

@MrPeaceGuy54

7 ай бұрын

Al life worth living is as real as one that is not.