The Frege-Geach Problem

The challenge of explaining how moral terms keep a constant meaning in unasserted contexts if their meaning is to express attitudes.

Definition

The Frege-Geach (or embedding) problem is the objection that non-cognitivism cannot account for the constancy of meaning of moral terms across asserted and unasserted (embedded) contexts, and hence cannot explain the validity of moral inferences, without abandoning its core claim that moral meaning is attitude-expression.

Scope

This topic covers the central technical objection to non-cognitivism. Because a moral sentence can occur unasserted — in the antecedent of a conditional, in a question, under negation — and yet support valid inference such as modus ponens, the non-cognitivist owes an account of moral meaning that stays constant whether or not an attitude is being expressed. The topic surveys the problem's formulation by Geach (developing a point from Frege) and the major expressivist responses.

Core questions

• If 'lying is wrong' expresses an attitude, what does 'wrong' mean in 'if lying is wrong, then getting your brother to lie is wrong'?
• How can an inference like modus ponens be valid if its moral premises do not have truth-conditions?
• Can a logic of attitudes replicate the logic of truth-apt sentences?
• Do the leading expressivist responses succeed, or do they covertly reintroduce cognitivism?

Key concepts

• asserted vs. unasserted contexts
• embedding
• validity
• logic of attitudes
• inconsistency

Key theories

The embedding objection

Geach, drawing on Frege's point about asserted versus unasserted occurrences, argued that the same moral predicate must mean the same in both, which an attitude-expression semantics cannot easily secure.

Higher-order attitudes response

Blackburn proposed treating logical consistency among moral commitments as fragmentation or coherence of attitudes, so that endorsing premises while rejecting the conclusion is a kind of practical inconsistency.

Logic-of-attitudes response

Gibbard modelled validity in terms of inconsistency among states of norm-acceptance or planning, aiming to mirror classical logic within an expressivist semantics; Schroeder analyses how far such programs can go.

History

Geach (1960, 1965) revived a Fregean distinction between asserted and unasserted content as an objection to non-cognitivism. Blackburn and Gibbard developed the major expressivist replies in the 1980s and 1990s, and Schroeder's Being For (2008) gave a systematic analysis of whether any expressivist semantics can meet the challenge.

Debates

Whether the logic of attitudes works

Critics argue that expressivist accounts of validity either fail to deliver genuine logical consequence or implicitly help themselves to truth-conditional content; defenders refine the logic of inconsistent attitudes in response.

The unity of negation

Schroeder argues expressivists struggle to give a uniform treatment of the several positions negation can occupy in a moral sentence, a sharpened form of the embedding problem.

Key figures

• Peter Geach
• Simon Blackburn
• Allan Gibbard
• Mark Schroeder

Seminal works

• geach1965
• blackburn1984
• gibbard1990
• schroeder2008

Frequently asked questions

Why is it named after both Frege and Geach?

Geach formulated the objection against non-cognitivism, but he drew on Gottlob Frege's earlier distinction between a sentence's content and the act of asserting it, so the problem is credited to both.