A committed emotivist is confronted with the argument: (1) Lying is wrong. (2) Getting your children to lie is getting them to do something wrong. (3) Therefore, getting your children to lie is wrong. Which response best captures the problem this argument creates for emotivism?
AThe argument is invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises
B'Lying is wrong' in premise 1 expresses an attitude, but in premise 2 it appears inside a conditional where no attitude is being expressed — emotivism cannot explain this consistency of meaning
CEmotivism accepts this argument because expressing disapproval of lying implies disapproval of teaching children to lie
DThe problem is that premise 2 is not a moral statement and should not appear in a moral argument
This is the Frege-Geach problem. For an argument to be logically valid, the same term must mean the same thing in every premise. If 'lying is wrong' in premise 1 expresses an emotion (not a proposition), then it cannot function as a premise — emotions don't have truth values and can't be combined logically. But in premise 2, 'wrong' appears inside a conditional where no emotion is being expressed. Emotivism has no account of what 'wrong' contributes in that embedded position, which seems to require it to have a stable descriptive meaning that emotivism denies it has.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
According to expressivism, what is someone doing when they say 'Torturing animals for fun is wrong'?
AStating a fact about the objective moral property of wrongness that the action instantiates
BReporting their own psychological state of feeling disgusted by animal torture
CExpressing a non-cognitive attitude of disapproval toward animal torture, not stating a fact
DIssuing a legal prohibition that carries normative force within their community
Expressivism holds that moral utterances express non-cognitive attitudes (approval, disapproval, norms) rather than stating facts — either about the world (moral realism's view) or about the speaker's psychology (option B). The difference between B and C is crucial: option B is a form of subjectivism (moral sentences report inner states), which makes them factual claims that can be true or false. Expressivism denies even this — moral sentences do not report anything; they express, like 'hooray!' or 'boo!'. The sentence has no truth conditions in the standard sense.
Question 3 True / False
According to expressivism, moral disagreements are fundamentally disputes about facts — specifically, facts about which attitudes are objectively correct.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Expressivism specifically rejects this. If moral sentences express attitudes rather than state facts, moral disagreements are contests between opposing attitudes, not disputes about who has the correct factual belief. Two people who disagree about whether capital punishment is wrong are, on the expressivist view, expressing conflicting attitudes toward capital punishment — not asserting incompatible propositions about a moral reality. This is one of expressivism's attractive features for those skeptical of moral facts: it explains why moral disagreements feel so persistent and heated (they involve deep attitude differences) without positing disputed moral facts.
Question 4 True / False
The Frege-Geach problem arises because moral terms embedded in conditionals and logical arguments appear to require stable, proposition-like meaning that early emotivism cannot provide.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is precisely the problem. Valid logical arguments require that terms mean the same thing in every position — in assertions and in embedded clauses. If 'wrong' in 'lying is wrong' just means 'boo, lying!', then 'wrong' in 'if lying is wrong, then X' cannot be expressing an attitude (you are not booing lying when you say 'if'). The term needs a constant semantic contribution across both uses, but emotivism's account of moral terms as attitude expressions provides no such stable content. Quasi-realism and norm-expressivism are attempts to solve exactly this problem.
Question 5 Short Answer
Explain the Frege-Geach problem in your own words. What does it challenge expressivists to explain?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: The Frege-Geach problem points out that moral terms appear inside logical structures — conditionals, arguments, inferences — where they cannot be expressing attitudes. If 'lying is wrong' just expresses disapproval of lying, then in the conditional 'if lying is wrong, then teaching children to lie is wrong,' the antecedent is not expressing disapproval; it is serving as a hypothetical premise. But for the argument to be logically valid, 'lying is wrong' must mean the same thing in both positions. Expressivism challenges: what stable meaning do moral terms have that makes them function consistently across assertoric and embedded contexts?
The Frege-Geach problem is often considered the most serious objection to simple emotivism, which is why it motivated the development of more sophisticated positions like Blackburn's quasi-realism and Gibbard's norm-expressivism. Both try to show that expressivist language can mimic the logical behavior of truth-apt language without positing moral facts — but whether they fully succeed remains contested.