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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Judgments about what is right (about means) are also in the optative mood and incapable of truth or falsity.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.For Russell, 'X is right' means X can be expected to lead to the best results — i.e., the greatest balance of good over evil.
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    • 2.For Russell, 'Y is good' is in the optative mood, amounting to the exclamation 'Would that everyone desired Y!'
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    • 3.If 'X is right' reduces to 'X leads to more of what [would that everyone desired!]', then the optative clause infects the entire sentence with its optative character.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Frege's embedding problem shows that non-cognitivist expressions in complex sentences preserve their non-truth-apt force rather than acquiring descriptive content.
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    • 2.When 'good' functions as an optative operator, its compositional contribution to 'X is right' transmits expressive force throughout the sentence, not propositional content.
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    • 3.Geach's own analysis of this problem concedes that unasserted optative clauses within larger constructions do not thereby become truth-apt, they merely become embedded non-assertions.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Blackburn's quasi-realism demonstrates that deontic operators like 'right' applied to non-cognitivist base states produce higher-order non-cognitivist states, not propositions.
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    • 2.Russell's consequentialist reduction of rightness to goodness-maximization inherits the semantic category of 'good', just as modal operators inherit the alethic category of their operands.
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