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    The sentence 'bull-fighting is bad' is not in the optativ... — Carmelics
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    The sentence 'bull-fighting is bad' is not in the optative mood

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Russell was inclined to feel that 'bull-fighting is bad' is true
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    • 2.This inclination is not an incoherent thing to feel or think
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    • 3.Sentences genuinely in the optative mood, such as 'Oh to be in England, now that April's here!', cannot coherently be felt or thought to be true or false
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Sentences in non-indicative moods can be embedded in truth-apt contexts without acquiring genuine truth conditions (Frege-Geach problem).
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    • 2.The apparent truth-aptness of 'bull-fighting is bad' may reflect its grammatical surface form rather than its genuine logical or illocutionary role.
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    • 3.Expressivists like Blackburn and Gibbard argue that expressions of attitude systematically mimic indicative mood without thereby becoming truth-apt in any robust sense.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The coherence of treating a sentence as truth-apt is insufficient to establish its indicative mood, since quasi-realist frameworks show how non-cognitive states can generate truth-apt-seeming discourse.
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    • 2.Russell's own emotivist commitments, as noted by Ayer and Stevenson, entail that moral sentences primarily express attitudes, making the indicative/optative distinction a matter of convention rather than semantic depth.
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    Topics

    Philosophy of Language

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    Related

    Expressivists like Blackburn and Gibbard argue that expressions of attitude syst...If 'bull-fighting is bad' were in the optative mood, it would be incoherent to t...Russell was inclined to feel that 'bull-fighting is bad' is trueRussell's own emotivist commitments, as noted by Ayer and Stevenson, entail that...
    +5 moreShow less
    Sentences genuinely in the optative mood, such as 'Oh to be in England, now that...Sentences in non-indicative moods can be embedded in truth-apt contexts without ...The apparent truth-aptness of 'bull-fighting is bad' may reflect its grammatical...The coherence of treating a sentence as truth-apt is insufficient to establish i...This inclination is not an incoherent thing to feel or think

    Similar

    If 'bull-fighting is bad' were in the optative mood, it would be incoh...87%Russell was inclined to feel that 'bull-fighting is bad' is true85%Russell's feeling that 'bull-fighting is bad' is true was not an incoh...82%Russell felt that his view that bull-fighting is bad was correct and t...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: russell-moral
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    What exactly is it that Russell feels? That those who think bull-fighting is good (and therefore desire it) are making some kind of mistake and conversely that those think that bull-fighting is bad (and are therefore opposed to it) are in some sense getting it right. Thus the “something more” that Russell could not help feeling was that his views about the badness of bullfighting were true and the views of the imaginary bull-fighting aficionados false. But how can that be if “bull-fighting is ba
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit