Ecumenical expressivism and the frege: Geach problem

Abstract

A background assumption of much of 20 th century and recent metaethics and moral psychology is that moral judgements either express beliefs rather than desire-like attitudes or express desire-like attitudes rather than beliefs. In a recent series of papers and а monograph, Michael Ridge seeks to reject this assumption, and thereby to steer the focus of metaethical debate away from the Frege-Geach problem. In particular, Ridge claims that we can formulate "ecumenical" views on which moral judgements express both beliefs and desire-like attitudes, and that his own favoured metaethical position-Ecumenical Expressivism-can use the resources of cognitivism to provide a relatively straightforward solution to the Frege-Geach problem. In this paper we argue that Ridge's Ecumenical Expressivist response to the Frege-Geach problem is inadequate and explore the consequences of this inadequacy for our outlook on moral psychology.

Keywords

• expressivism
• cognitivism
• frege-geach problem
• ecumenicism