Internalism and the frege: Geach problem

Abstract

According to the established understanding of the Frege-Geach problem, it is a challenge exclusively for metaethical expressivism. In this paper, I argue that it is much wider in scope: The problem applies generally to views according to which moral sentences express moral judgments entailing that one is for or against something, irrespective of what mental states the judgments consist in. In particular, it applies to motivational internalism about moral judgments. Most noteworthy, it applies to cognitivist internalism according to which moral judgments consist in motivating beliefs. Hence, in order for a metaethical view to evade the Frege-Geach problem, it should avoid stating that moral judgments are motivating.

Keywords

• moral judgment
• motivation
• frege-geach problem
• embedding
• internalism
• externalism
• cognitivism
• expressivism
• hybrid view
• ecumenical view
• besire