2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Why treat "desire" as a propositional attitude?
Yeah, I think you're right that it seems to be a widely held presupposition rather than a well-argued conclusion.
Also I don't know if this is actually the case, but treating desire as a propositional attitude might be necessary or just really important for someone who wants to both defend a form of cognitivism in meta-ethics, and also a form of hedonism. I'm just blindly guessing here, but if I wanted to deny Ayer's emotivism and Moore's naturalistic fallacy, and if I also wanted to somehow link morality and pleasure/desire, I probably would have to show that desires express meaningful propositions with a pinch of morality involved.
Comment by drinka40tonight at 10/02/2017 at 10:32 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hmm. That's an interesting thought. I'll have to think about it more.
Though, then again, a lot of people have no problem thinking that pain and pleasure are not propositional attitudes. And I would think I can get cognitivism out of that, without falling afoul of the naturalistic fallacy (at least no more than a propositional account would).