Expressivism, Logic, Consistency, and Moral Dilemmas

Patricia Marino

Accepted: 11 August 2006 / Published online: 9 November 2006# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract On an expressivist view, ethical claims are understood as expressions of ourattitudes, desires, and feelings. A famous puzzle for this view concerns the use of logic inethical reasoning, and two standard treatments try to solve the puzzle by explaining logicalinconsistency in terms of conflicting attitudes. I argue, however, that this general strategy fails:because we can reason effectively even in the presence of conflicting moral attitudes – in casesof moral dilemmas – avoiding these conflicts cannot be a ground for correct moral reasoning.The result is a dilemma for expressivists: if they take all kinds of attitudes to be underconsideration, then conflict cannot play the required role, since attitudes can fail to becompatible in cases of moral conflict. If they restrict attention to ‘all-in attitudes’ or to intentionsor plans, then there is an important notion of obligation, used in standard arguments – one forwhich conflicts are allowed – that they fail to capture. I explain why expressivists should beespecially tolerant of conflicting attitudes, and I conclude that they should pursue a differentstrategy for grounding logical normativity.

Key words expressivism . consistency . moral dilemmas . Frege–Geach problem

On an expressivist view, ethical claims are best understood not as ordinary descriptiveclaims, but as expressions of our attitudes, desires, and feelings.1 In addition to allowing usto avoid epistemological puzzles, such as how we might come to know ethical facts, suchviews give a straightforward connection between ethical beliefs and motivation: becausethose beliefs are intimately connected to our emotive reactions, we are moved by them toaction. But in many of our practices, we do treat ethical assertions as assertions, andexpressivist views face the challenge of explaining how and why we do this. For example,we use logical laws such as modus ponens when reasoning in moral contexts. If the relevantstatements are not even assertions, and thus not capable of having truth-values, how canthey figure in arguments?

Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2006) 9: 517–533DOI 10.1007/s10677-006-9034-6

1For general texts on contemporary expressivism, see Blackburn (1984, 1998), and Gibbard (1990, 2003).

P. Marino (*)Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, N2L 3G1e-mail: pmarino@uwaterloo.ca

Proponents of expressivism have offered various attempts to treat this puzzle, withvarying degrees of success. A striking feature these attempts share is that of groundinglogical normativity in non-logical consistency: one who fails to reason properly in a moralcontext involves himself in a certain kind of inconsistency, and that inconsistency can inturn be understood as a moral or practical one—a conflict of attitudes. They have beencriticized for this move, often on the grounds that conflicts of attitudes are not bad in theway logical inconsistencies are.2

The debate on this point has focused on whether there is some appropriate notion ofattitude for which inconsistency really is bad. Here I explore this problem further, withparticular attention to moral dilemmas, deontic logic, the particular kinds of inconsistencyat stake, and whether expressivist replies are satisfactory. My main argument is that becausewe can reason effectively even in the presence of conflicting moral attitudes, avoiding theseconflicts cannot be a ground for correct reasoning. The result is a dilemma for expressivists:if they take all kinds of attitudes to be under consideration, then conflict cannot play therequired role, since attitudes can fail to be compatible in cases of moral conflict. If theyrestrict attention to ‘all-in attitudes’ or to intentions or plans, then there is an importantnotion of obligation, used in standard arguments – one for which conflicts are allowed –that they fail to capture. I explain why expressivists should be especially tolerant ofconflicting attitudes, and I conclude that they should pursue a different strategy forgrounding logical normativity.

In Section 1, I lay out two expressivists’ attempts to explain moral reasoning: those ofSimon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard. In Section 2, I give what I call ‘the argument fromdilemmas,’ which says that we can reason effectively even in the presence of moral conflict.Next, in Section 3, I consider some complications surrounding the argument fromdilemmas, including the possibility that there are no dilemmas, and that considerations ofdeontic logic can help solve the problem. In Section 4, I consider Blackburn and Gibbard’sspecific positive arguments for taking consistency as they have. Finally, in Section 5, Iexplain why expressivists should be tolerant of conflicting attitudes.

1 The Frege–Geach Problem and Two Solutions

Our starting point is the following problem. On an expressivist account, ethical claims aremore properly understood as expressions of our attitudes, beliefs, and desires, than asfactual assertions. On such a view, we immediately run into the so-called ‘Frege–Geachproblem’: if our claims are not factual assertions, how can we use them in logicalreasoning? For example, this inference seems logically valid: P1: “Lying is wrong”; P2: “Iflying is wrong then getting your little brother to lie is wrong also,” so C: “Getting your littlebrother to lie is wrong.” On an expressivist view, however, the first claim isn’t a claim atall, and so cannot be the same as the antecedent in the second. So this is not a case ofmodus ponens, and it is not at all clear how it can even be a logical argument, let alone avalid one.3

I’ll focus on the work of Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard.4 Blackburn asks us tonotice that one way to understand the conditional in terms of attitudes is by thinking of a

2 See van Roojen (1996), Schueler (1988), and Hale (1986, 1993).3 The problem was first raised by Geach (1960), who in turn credited Frege for the basic insight. It was alsopressed by Searle (1969).4 See note 1. I’ll be skipping over a lot of details here, just focusing on what’s relevant to the puzzle.

518 P. Marino

further attitude, that one attitude is involved in another.5 In our little brother example, forinstance, the conditional represents an attitude that being against lying is somehow involvedwith being against getting one’s little brother to lie. Then, logically, we can think of aconditional in terms of a disjunction. Let H!(P) represent having an attitude for P, and B!(P)an attitude against. Then anyone endorsing “If lying is wrong, then getting one’s littlebrother to lie is wrong also” can be representing as endorsing B!(P)→B!(Q), where thearrow represents the attitude that disapproval of P involves disapproval of Q. Logically, thisperson is ‘tied to a tree’—that is, he is committed to (disapproving of Q or tolerating P).The parentheses distinguish this from being tied to (disapproving of Q) or (tolerating P)—that is, we may be tied to the disjunction without being tied to any one disjunct. So in ourexample, someone who believes the second premise is committed to (having an attitudeagainst getting one’s little brother to lie or having an attitude of tolerance toward lying). Ifhe also has an attitude against lying, then he must take up the former alternative and beagainst getting one’s little brother to lie.

What if someone fails in his commitment? What if he fails to draw the requiredconclusion? I am glossing over a complex semantics here, but the relevant point is that thisperson involves himself in a particular kind of inconsistency, namely, the inconsistency ofone whose attitudes conflict—one whose norms and goals admit of no consistentrealization.

How is this a logical error? Blackburn outlines a semantics for a logic of attitudes, basedon work by Hintikka. This logic makes use of an ideal: a specification of how things mightbe in some possible world that satisfies our norms. Such an ideal is something that “is notrealized, but which we nevertheless must be able to think of consistently.”6 We start with asystem of attitudes, then perform a step-by-step idealization process. For example, if H!(A)occurs at one level, A occurs at the next, reflecting our idea that if we approve of A,including A gets us closer to an ideal world.7 Then, Blackburn explains, “A set of sentencesL is unsatisfiable iff each route to a set of final ideals S results in a set of sentences S one ofwhose members contains both a formula and its negation.”8 B is a logical consequence of A(written AÁB) iff AYB is valid, and this holds just in case (A and not-B) is unsatisfiable(or, equivalently, the set {A, not-B} is). So, an argument with premises P1, P2, ... Pn andconclusion C is valid iff {P1, P2, ...not-C} is unsatisfiable.

In the modus ponens case, since {B!(P), B!(P)→B!(Q), not-B!(Q)} is unsatisfiable inthe technical sense, the argument is valid. Leaving aside the technical semantics, we can saysimply that the problem with someone who fails to draw the required conclusion in thiscase is that he is involved in a ‘clash’ of attitudes—both disapproving and not disapprovingof getting one’s little brother to lie.9 This clash, in turn, involves a particular kind ofinconsistency: that of endorsing states-of-affairs that could not coexist.10 This, in turn,involves one in a logical, or formal, unsatisfiability, much as believing P and not-P involves

5 In this presentation, I am following Blackburn (1988).6 Blackburn (1988 p. 513); he credits Hintikka with the general idea.7 Blackburn (1988, p. 513).8 Blackburn (1988, p. 514).9 The “not” here is somewhat confusing. Is it the “not” of having and not having an attitude, or the “not” ofhaving an attitude against and an attitude not against? The semantics, and everything Blackburn says about it,suggest the latter interpretation. In what follows I will assume that is what is meant.10 I am indebted here to Mark van Roojen, whose (1996) helped me understand Blackburn’s logic. Seeespecially p. 318. As we will see below, “could not coexist” turns out to have a slightly subtle meaning forBlackburn, something like, “could not coexist in any logically possible world.”

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 519

one in a logical, or formal, unsatisfiability—there is, in the latter case, no possible idealworld in which they both could be true. So someone who fails to reason in the required wayhas made a logical mistake, this is the sense in which modus ponens argument are valid,and by extension to other cases, we have a solution to the Frege–Geach problem. Call thislogic of attitudes LA.

The second proposed solution is Allan Gibbard’s.11 Gibbard connects statements aboutrationality to decisions, planning, and “the thing to do.” As he says, “ought questions andreason questions are by their very nature questions of what to do.” Ought statementsprescribe, rather than describing.12 With respect to logic, Gibbard also emphasizes thatfailure to reason properly lands one in a particular kind of inconsistency—though here, theinconsistency is that of one who lacks a workable plan for living.

The logical apparatus involves thinking in terms of a fact-plan world: a specification ofhow things are and what one will do in various circumstances. A hyperplan is a maximalcontingency plan—that is, a way of specifying what one will do in any possiblecircumstance. Logical operators are understood in terms of which worlds they allow andwhich they rule out. For example, in the disjunction case, to say, “Either packing now is thething to do, or it’s too late already to catch the train” is to rule out the fact-plan world inwhich it’s still early enough to catch the train and yet I don’t pack anyway.13 An argumentis valid if accepting the premises and rejecting the conclusion involves one in aninconsistency.

Talking in terms of plans allows Gibbard to develop his own notion of what kind ofinconsistency this should be. Let a ‘hyperplan’ be a way of specifying, for eachcircumstance that may arise, what do to if it does—it is a maximal contingency plan. Tobe a hyperplan, a plan must be consistent in the sense that it does not rule out everyalternative, since a plan that did so would offer no guidance on how to act in the relevantcircumstances. A person with a hyperplan is in a hyperstate. Finally, we can say that a set ofjudgments is inconsistent if “every possible hyperstate is ruled out by one or another of thejudgments in the set.”14

Consider Sherlock Holmes, pursued by Moriarty, and planning his escape by train.Holmes reasons to himself, “Either packing now is the thing to do, or it’s too late to catchthe train; it’s not too late to catch the train; therefore packing now is the thing to do.” Thisargument is valid, Gibbard explains, because “to accept the premises and reject theconclusion would be to rule out every way that Holmes could become opinionated factuallyand fully decided in his hyperplan.”15 That is, for Holmes to conclude that packing is notthe thing to do would involve planning that rules out fact-plan worlds in which Holmespacks (he’s decided that packing is not the thing to do) and fact-plan worlds in whichHolmes doesn’t pack (the disjunction together with the fact that it’s not too late to catch thetrain rules out fact-plan worlds in which he doesn’t pack). In this case, Holmes’ fact-planworld could not involve a hyperplan, because there can be no plan for what to do aboutpacking.

11 In this presentation, I am following Gibbard’s most recent book (2003), though some of his previouswritings are relevant also, as I indicate below.12 Gibbard (2003, p. 10).13 Gibbard (2003, p. 44).14 Gibbard (2003, p. 59).15 Gibbard (2003, p. 59).

520 P. Marino

Such a treatment extends to the moral case via a treatment of normative concepts. Oughtjudgments, Gibbard explains, are judgments about what to do, and good means roughly “tobe sought.”16 Someone who believes that lying is wrong thinks that lying is not, generally,the thing to do: he commits himself to fact-plan worlds that rule out lying. Someone whobelieves that “If lying is wrong then getting one’s little brother to lie is wrong also,”commits himself to fact-plan worlds that rule out ruling out lying for one’s self and not forone’s little brother. To fail to draw the conclusion is, again, to have an inconsistent stancetoward lying, committing also to fact-world plans in which people do get their little brothersto lie. Such fact-plan worlds would allow for no hyperplans: no maximal way to plan forevery circumstance. Call this logic of planning LP.

Blackburn and Gibbard each understand the validity of moral arguments in terms of theinconsistency of accepting the premises and rejecting the conclusion; they each ground this‘inconsistency’ in terms of evaluative conflict, and they each understand conflict in terms ofa maximal way things should be: the ideal for Blackburn and the hyperplan for Gibbard.

2 The Argument from Dilemmas

Blackburn’s and Gibbard’s accounts lead to somewhat different kinds of inconsistency, as Idiscuss in the next section. What matters here, though, is just that for each, endorsinglogically conflicting states of affairs certainly counts as being logically inconsistent. I amlogically inconsistent if, on LA, I endorse A and not-A, and if (but not only if) on LP, I planto do X and I plan to do not-X. I will argue here that, because of considerations about moraldilemmas, basing logic on conflicts of attitudes and plans is a bad strategy for expressivism.

Imagine that the little brother case is an example of a dilemma. Suppose I am already forgetting my little brother to lie in some particular circumstance—perhaps in this case someharm will befall the family if he does not. I have an attitude for saving the family, and Iknow the necessary means to saving the family is getting my little brother to lie, so Idevelop an attitude for getting him to lie. Then, imagine someone makes the modus ponensargument to me, and I concede his premises, and I am convinced. It’s not just a matter oflogic: I feel the force of his argument, and from it, I develop an attitude against getting mylittle brother to lie, and indeed, an attitude for not getting him to lie. Now I am of twominds: I approve and disapprove of getting my little brother to lie.

Clearly I am inconsistent in the ways LA relies on—for I endorse logically incompatiblegoods. But there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with my attitudes or my thinking.17

More importantly, I can be convinced by the modus ponens argument even in the face of suchconflict; conflict of attitudes just doesn’t matter in the relevant way. In general, it seems that Ican reason myself into a conclusion for X while still having an attitude for not-X. And if so, itcan’t be the inconsistency of having attitudes for X and for not-X that grounds the validity of theargument. For Blackburn, the inconsistency of endorsing logically incompatible goods is alogical error, and avoiding it is what makes an argument valid. But I can endorse logically

16 Gibbard (2003, pp. 142–143).17 Van Roojen (1996) and Schueler (1988), have each criticized Blackburn on the grounds that there is nological error in having conflicting attitudes, and I endorse their criticisms. My point here is that furthermore,we can reason effectively in the face of these, and so there are examples of what seem to be valid reasoningthat are not captured by Blackburn’s logic. Blackburn’s particular “logic of attitudes” is developed inresponse to Schueler, and I argue in the rest of the paper that it fails for various reasons. I explore below apossible reply to van Roojen and argue that it, too, fails. I say more about the appropriateness of consistencyrequirements in Sections 4 and 5 below.

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 521

incompatible goods and still use arguments, find them persuasive, and be convinced by them—in short, they seem valid to me. The whole starting point for this puzzle, the Frege–Geachproblem, arose because the argument in question seems valid, and this must be explained. If myarguments in the face of inconsistency seem valid, that must be explained as well. Thepreliminary moral is that a logic of morals should not ground itself in conflicts of attitudes.

Perhaps the problem could be solved by restricting our consideration to ‘all-in’ attitudes—that is, attitudes about what to do, or intentions for action. And indeed, in his most recentwork on the subject, Blackburn has suggested such a move. In that case, we might say that wecan’t really have conflicting attitudes, and that once the reasoner above comes to a conclusionabout whether to get his little brother to lie, he must give up the alternative on pain ofinconsistency. On this view, all-in attitudes are like intentions, and thus like the plans thatGibbard relies on.

But such an approach doesn’t solve the problem either, since I might encounter the argumentbefore I have decided what to do. In the logic of planning itself, the reasoning should beexpressed slightly differently. Saving the family from harm is certainly the thing to do, and ifgetting my little brother to lie is the only means to that end, getting him to lie seems also thething to do. Now someone gives me the modus ponens argument: lying is not the thing to do,and if lying is not the thing to do, getting one’s little brother to lie isn’t either. I accept thesepremises, and draw the obvious conclusion, that getting my little brother to lie is not the thing todo. Now I am in a quandary: getting my little brother to lie and not getting him to lie both seemthe thing to do. Again, this needn’t be a matter of mere logic: I may feel the force of theargument, and develop conflicting ideas about what ought to be done and thus am unsure ofwhat intention to pursue.

But a logic of planning or all-in attitudes cannot capture this stage of moral reasoning,since this stage essentially involves a moral attitude for which conflicts are appropriate.This moral attitude can be thought of as ‘prima facie wrong,’ or ‘wrong, unless otherconsiderations come into play;’ it is just the predicate form of what are usually thought ofas ‘prima facie’ obligations, or obligations that have some moral reason behind them, butwhich are also defeatable.18 To say that getting one’s little brother to lie is wrong in thissense would be to say that doing so is an act with some wrong-making characteristics, andthat one has a prima facie obligation not to do it. For this moral attitude, it is proper to saythat while doing X is prima facie wrong, not doing it is prima facie wrong as well. We canmake the argument in question regardless of whether lying or getting one’s little brother tolie are wrong all-things-considered, and this is not captured by a logic of all-in attitudes,intentions, or plans.

In fact, though the modus ponens argument seems similarly valid whether it concernspreliminary attitudes or final intentions, grounding moral reasoning on inconsistency in thisway would require us to give different accounts, depending on which is under consideration.And in any case, we would have no explanation for the seeming validity of the argument whenused in deciding on what do to overall. Again, the point of the Frege–Geach problem is thatsuch reasoning seems valid, and this must be explained. And again, the preliminary moral isthat a logic of morals via planning should not ground itself in inconsistency of plans.

Let me call the argument presented here, ‘The argument from dilemmas.’ It says thatbecause we have conflicting attitudes in moral dilemmas, and can still reason perfectly well,expressivists should not use inconsistency of attitudes or plans to ground their notion ofvalidity. In Sections 3 and 4 I consider various replies to the argument, and discuss moredetails.

18 See Brink (1994, p. 216).

522 P. Marino

3 The Status of Dilemmas and Deontic Logic

There are several ways to respond to the argument from dilemmas. One general strategy isto argue that there is some other way to restrict our notion of ‘attitude’ so that attitudescannot conflict in the relevant way, and I’ll discuss this in detail in the next section. Here Iwant to consider a couple of more detailed considerations: the status of moral dilemmas andthe relationship between these logics and deontic logic.

One obvious reply to my argument is to deny that there are moral dilemmas.19 Oneway to deny the existence of moral dilemmas in the deontological realm is to insist thatwhenever two obligations conflict, one outweighs the other; the stronger one then prevails,and the weaker one falls away. In a recent paper in this journal, Jurriaan de Haan argues inthis direction, explaining that our understanding of ‘ought’ is such that it is impossible thatwe ought to do A and ought to do B when we cannot do both, since if A ought to be donethen A is permissible so B is impermissible and thus not required.20 This suggests thefollowing approach: an ‘attitude’ or ‘plan’ is what emerges only after all considerationshave been weighed and taken into account, and one is left with a single clear stance. Thenthe argument above would either fail to be sound, or would concern only a prima facie‘ought.’21

There are three problems with this strategy for expressivism. First, the problem comesback at the level of the prima facie ought. Even if the argument is not sound, it is valid,and this validity still needs to be explained, even if the ‘ought’ in question is not an all-things-considered ‘ought.’ We do seem able to reason in the required way before we havedecided which alternative trumps; in fact, the argument may form part of our reasoningtoward a conclusion that one or the other requirements is the stronger one. If dilemmaswere prima facie instead of real, we would still want to explain why the argument seems toteach us something important—namely, that there are considerations in favor of not gettingmy little brother to lie. The inconsistency of approving getting my little brother to lie anddisapproving of getting him to lie cannot ground this inference, since it is understood thatthere is nothing wrong when prima facie oughts conflict in the relevant way. So, even if deHaan and others are ultimately right – though I don’t think they are – about ‘ought’ as anall-things-considered ought, as long as there is any kind of weak ‘ought’ in play in primafacie dilemmas, it is one for which conflicts are allowed, and thus it is one the logics inquestion will have trouble capturing.22

A second consideration has to do with the phenomenology of dilemmas. Theexpressivist, in tying our moral beliefs to our emotional and normative states of mindmust be especially faithful to the way those states of mind function in the real world. Evenwhen one feels one has done the right thing, in deciding to fulfill a more pressing obligationover a less pressing one, one may still feel, subjectively, that some obligation has goneunfulfilled; as proponents of dilemmas point out, we often feel a residue, something like

19 For some arguments that moral dilemmas are real, see Marcus (1980), Sinnott-Armstrong (1988), vanFraassen (1973), and Marino (2001). For some arguments that they are not, see Donagan (1984) and Brink(1994).20 de Haan (2001).21 For more on this type of strategy, see, e.g., Brink (1994).22 I don’t agree with de Haan about ought because as proponents of moral dilemmas stress, it seems possiblethat I fail in my obligations whatever I do, so that the permissibility of A would not follow from itsobligatoriness. See especially van Fraassen (1973), Marcus (1980), and Marino (2001). For other criticism ofde Haan related to some deontic principles, and a way of seeing dilemmas in the context of possible worlds,see Morscher (2002).

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 523

guilt or remorse, when we’ve encountered a dilemma, even when we have done our best.23

This is a moral feeling the expressivist should be able to capture, and restricting ourconsideration to moral conclusions about trumping considerations would prevent this.

Finally, as is often pointed out in the deontic case, the strategy has problems in cases ofequality. What if the considerations in favor of A and B are so equally balanced that there isno clear winner? Twins are drowning, and you can’t save both. In this case, our intuitiontells us that the obligation is to save one of them: just choose and act, and you will havesatisfied your responsibilities. Consistency would require us to suspend, in such cases, the‘agglomeration principle’—that if I ought to do A, and I ought to do B, I ought to do (Aand B). Mapping this onto attitudes, we would require failures of (H!(A) and H!(B))ÁH!(A&B). But (H!(A) and H!(B))YH!(A&B ) is valid in LA; what motivated reason couldbe given in LA for its suspension?24 Mapping this onto planning, we would require thatplanning A and planning B does not lead to planning A and B. But again, it does in LP, andwhat motivated reason could be given in LP for its suspension?25

The only option, I think, is for proponents of LA and LP to deny that such conflictscould ever be truly equal in the required way, perhaps by restricting our attention to cases inwhich the decision has been made for one or the other. But as before, this leaves us unableto understand logical arguments for or against such conclusions. Perhaps there is some in-between notion of attitude that could serve the necessary role; I discuss this, and say moreabout the ‘restricting our attention’ approach in Section 4.

The second issue has to do with deontic logic.26 My “argument from dilemmas”concluded with an endorsement of A and not-A, and it invoked a kind of closure principle:that if doing A entails doing B, and I endorse A, I will endorse B. There are thus twodeontic principles relevant here. The first is the Principle of Deontic Consistency (PDC),which says that O(A)Ánot-O(not-A), i.e., if one ought to do A, it is not the case that oneought to do not-A. The second is the Closure Principle of Deontic Logic (or CPDL), whichsays that (AYB)Á (O(A)YO(B)). That is, that if doing A entails doing B, and one ought todo A, then one ought to do B. It is well known that in the presence of both of these principles,dilemmas lead to logical contradictions. It is easy to see how this goes: I ought to do A; Iought to do B; doing A entails not doing B, so by CPDL I ought to do not-B, but by PDC, itis not the case that I ought to do not-B.

So if we assume both CPDL and PDC, then dilemmas lead to logical contradictions. Soeither one of them is false, or there are no moral dilemmas,27 and those who believe thatdilemmas are real must deny one of these. Let’s now consider what happens if we ‘map’ theseprinciples into Blackburn’s semantics, taking H! along the lines of ought. Here, what we mightcall the Principle of Consistency in Attitudes (PCA) comes out valid, as it must—inconsistencyin attitudes is ‘logical’ inconsistency for Blackburn. H!(A)Y not-H!(not-A) is valid because ofthe unsatisfiability of {H!(A), H!(not-A)}, and therefore H!(A)Á not-H!(not-A). The analogue

23 See note 19.24 At one point Blackburn suggests that someone who wants A and B but not both doesn’t know what hewants. Perhaps LA could be altered accordingly; I’m not sure.25 Marcus (1980) has argued that we should give up the agglomeration principle for obligations: analogouslyto “it is possible that,” it may be that obligations to do A and B do not result in obligations to do B. Theremay be something to that, but it seems ill-motivated in this setting: attitudes and plans both seem to obeyagglomeration.26 For a nice discussion of deontic principles relevant to moral dilemmas, see McConnell (2002).27 Or something more radical: they are correct principles, there are moral dilemmas, and thus morality istruth-inconsistent.

524 P. Marino

to CPDL, what wemight call the Closure Principle of Attitudes (CPA), in Blackburn’s system is(PYQ)Á (H!(P)YH!(Q)), and this fails to hold; (PYQ)Y (H!(P)YH!(Q)) is invalid,because the set {PY Q, H!(P), not-H!(Q)} is satisfiable. Since the analogue of CPDL does nothold, the analogue of a dilemma need not imply a logical contradiction: wemay have H!(A) andH!(B) while A and B cannot coexist: {H!(A) and H!(B) and not-(A and B)} is satisfiable.

This may seem a surprising conclusion: it means that ‘contingent dilemmas’ – cases inwhich we cannot do both A and B because of contingent factors – are allowable in LA.Intuitively, this is so because we only need one route to an ideal to have consistency, andbecause unendorsed facts in the world do not make it into the first approximation to theideal. That is, if p appears, but no attitudes about p appear, in our initial set, then p itself fallsaway. The set {H!(A),H!(B), not-(A andB)} is equivalent to {H!(A),H!(B), (not-Aor not-B)};on both sides of the disjunction the next approximation to the ideal is {A, B, H!(A), H!(B)},which is consistent.AsBlackburn says, “itmaybeapity thatA,”28 and in that case, A does notmake it into the first approximation to the ideal.29 So Blackburn’s logic mimics a deonticlogic that endorses the Principle of Deontic Consistency, allows the existence of contingentdilemmas and denies the Closure Principle of Deontic Logic.

Notice here that this means that when Mark van Roojen writes that Blackburn’s“proposed rules make it ‘inconsistent’ to express attitudes of approval towards states ofaffairs that could not coexist,”30 this must be read as “states of affairs that could notcoexist” in any logically possible world. If we read it as “states of affairs that could notcoexist in our world,” or “states of affairs that could not co-exist in any possible world”where possibility is understood as physical possibility, or conceivability, then it is false.This follows from Blackburn’s formulation in terms of “a formula and its negation.”

Now, from this perspective, the little brother case might look different. My attitude forsaving the family need not translate into an attitude for getting my little brother to lie, sincethere is no closure. I could have a merely contingent dilemma: I am for saving the familyand for not getting my little brother to lie but I cannot do both. It is only if I develop anattitude for getting my little brother to lie that I am involved in a logical contradiction. Andif the Principle of Consistency of Attitudes is right, perhaps it is appropriate to call it alogical contradiction—it would, after all, be a violation of a ‘logical’ law.31

I discuss this fully in the next section, but notice here that from the point of view of theagent, logically conflicting attitudes are similar to contingently conflicting ones. If I want toeat cookies and I do not want to eat cookies, I face the same difficulty over what to do as Ido if I want to have cake and I want to have ice-cream but I am only allowed one desert. Ineach case, I face a puzzle over what to do. Perhaps one may object here: it’s not that youdon’t want to eat cookies, it’s that you want to be healthy, and refraining from cookie eatingis a means to that goal. Since LA does not insist on the closure principle, perhaps myattitude is not against cookie-eating per se, but simply for health. I consider this move indepth in the following section, but notice here that from the point of view of the agent, itcertainly seems as if we can have attitudes for and against cookie eating, and it certainly

28 Blackburn (1988, p. 514).29 Blackburn (1988). For the relevant rules, see pp. 513–514. For an example showing how firstapproximations work, see p. 515.30 van Roojen (1996, p. 318).31 This might give Blackburn a way to answer van Roojen and Schueler (see note 17), since if we see thePrinciple of Consistency of Attitudes as a logical law, along the lines of the Principle of Deontic Consistency,having a conflict of attitudes would involve a logical error. As I explain below, however, I don’t think theexpressivist should pursue this line of thought.

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 525

seems that it would be strange to give up the latter on grounds that it is only contingentlyrelated to staying healthy. If this is right, the distinction in Blackburn’s logic betweenlogical and contingent dilemmas is unmotivated.

Again, perhaps one might appeal to the interpretation of attitudes as all-in attitudes orintentions. I consider this move in Section 4 as well, but notice here that on such aninterpretation, logical and contingent dilemmas are on a par, and so one would have to rulethem out as well. In addition, in that case, we would expect a closure principle to hold—that ifwe intend to doA, and if doing A requires doing B, then we’ll have to develop an intention to doB as well. But as I explained, LA denies the closure principle. As I’ll explain, making thesechanges to LAwould make LA more like LP.

So, indeed, what about the logic of planning? To say that A is good and not-A is good isto say that A is to-be-sought and that not-A is to-be-sought. Roughly, I assume this meansthat bringing about A is to-be-done, and bringing about not-A is to-be-done. I suppose itmay be possible that there are different ways of bringing about A and bringing about not-A,and one might plan to do them both, but this seems contrary to the spirit of Gibbard’sanalysis, since ultimately we’d still be planning for inconsistent outcomes. And if there isonly one way to bring about A, we clearly have an inconsistency: we can’t plan to do B andnot to do B, since this would allow for no hyperplan—no way of planning what to do inevery circumstances.

In any case, Gibbard’s system is most naturally approached in terms of actions andoughts, and since we can’t plan to do A and not-A, it can’t be the case that we ought to doA and ought to do not-A, so as in LA, the Principle of Consistency holds.32 Now, if doingA means doing B, so that AYB, this means that in a given fact-plan world, either I do B orI do not do A. Imagine that I ought to do A. Then I rule out fact-plan worlds in which I donot do A, and by the disjunction (B or not-A), in all of those fact-plan worlds I must do Balso. This makes intuitive sense. If oughts have to do with planning, and if planning to do Ameans planning to do B, then if I plan to do A I must plan to do B, too. And this means thatthe Closure Principle of Deontic Logic holds, unlike in Blackburn’s system. In the presenceof CPDC and PDL, moral dilemmas lead to logical contradictions, so there can be nodilemmas in Gibbard’s system. This makes intuitive sense as well: if I ought to do A, and Iought to do B, and I cannot do both, there is no way to plan, and thus there is no hyperplanconsistent with my oughts.

Now we are in a position to understand the reason for the claim at the beginning ofSection 2, that LA and LP have different accounts of inconsistency. In LA one isinconsistent only for endorsing logically incompatible goods; in LP one is inconsistent forplanning any mutually incompatible actions – even those in which the conflict iscontingent.

Since we do reason logically before deciding what to do, it’s not clear how we can capturemoral reasoning in dilemmatic situations with LP. Consistency in Gibbard’s earlier work isharder to pin down.33 On the one hand, he says that “normative statements rule each other outif their representations have no factual-normative world in common.”34 If I understandcorrectly, this means that “Keep your promises” and “Don’t lie” are consistent if there is apossible world and a possible set of endorsements they share, and that this is so if there is a

32 With LP, I’ll use the regular names of the principles, since LP has a “deontic” feel to it anyway.33 Gibbard (1990).34 Gibbard (1990, p. 98).

526 P. Marino

world in which the two rules never conflict.35 So perhaps they are consistent. On the otherhand, as van Roojen has argued, Gibbard’s proposal in terms of what is forbidden, optional,and required seems to assume some other kind of consistency—that there is always someoption that is permitted, in our world. If there are contingent dilemmas, there may be no suchoption.

In any case, the point here is just that neither the questionable status of moral dilemmasnor considerations about deontic logic cast doubt on my ‘argument from dilemmas.’

4 Blackburn and Gibbard on Consistency

Here I want to discuss some of Blackburn’s and Gibbard’s positive arguments for usingconsistency the way they do, and consider some variations.

How might a proponent of LA motivate the Principle of Consistency of Attitudes? Isthere anything wrong with conflicting attitudes? On the face of it, the answer is no. Wehave conflicting desires, feelings, and attitudes all the time, with no sense of real dismay. G.F. Schueler presses this point against an earlier proposal of Blackburn’s, pointing out that Ican want to eat a cookie, knowing it will taste good, and not want to eat it, knowing it willmake me less healthy. What’s the problem there?36

Blackburn’s starts his response by formulating the worry more precisely. He writes,

The ordinary notion of finding whether recommendations are consistent just is toimagine them carried out and see if that can consistently be done. But Schueler rightlyraises a problem which might affect the extension to attitude. That is that consistencyin attitude is not a particular virtue. I may wish that p and wish that not-p withoutparticular shame. I may desire that p, and desire that q, but not desire that p and q: Iwant to spend the evening at the theater, and I want to read my book, but I do not wantto read my book at the theater. There is a sense in which my goals are inconsistent –they cannot all be realized – but, if this does not matter, then it is not sufficiently likethe vice of inconsistency in belief to form the basis of a logic.37

He makes three comments in reply. First, “unrealizable goals are bad in a way quiteanalogous to that in which inconsistent beliefs are ... the former cannot represent how tobehave in the world properly.” The man who believes it is raining and believes that it is notraining is in trouble, but so is the man who wants to get wet and wants not to get wet.Second, desires can be qualified. If I want to do p and q, but not both, perhaps I want to dop in a certain way, and q in another; in this case it is just as natural to say that I don’t knowwhat I want to do as to say that I want to do both. Finally, we could restrict our attention toattitudes for which we do require consistency—not the full range of desires, perhaps, butrepresented by say, the desires we would take to inform practical advice.

This is close to the proposal mentioned before: consider only all-in, or all-things-considereddesires, something more like intentions. But look: in that case, the argument Blackburn giveshere applies too broadly to be of use. What is bad about conflicting attitudes, Blackburn says, isthat nothing tells us how to act. But, as I mentioned, this applies as much to contingent

35 Compare Marcus’s definition of consistency in her (1980).36 Schueler (1988). Schueler gives the example in terms of being “fatter” but the point is the same.37 Blackburn (1988, p. 509).

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 527

dilemmas as it does to logical ones. Goals that are only contingently unrealizable are just as badat representing how to behave in the world properly as logically unrealizable goals are. Wantingto do A and do B when I cannot do both tells me nothing about what to do. But, as I explainedabove, these ‘contingent’ conflicts are not, in fact, ruled out by LA, so whatever is speciallywrong with endorsing, or wanting to do, A and not-A, it cannot be that. Thinking of attitudes asall-in attitudes or intentions for action leads to a logic that rules out contingent dilemmas as wellas logical ones (as, indeed, the logic of planning does). To justify embracing a ConsistencyPrinciple would require either finding a different complaint or altering LA so that contingentdilemmas are not allowed either.

With respect to the first of these, perhaps one might say that there is something speciallywrong with attitudes that logically conflict. Blackburn allows that it may sometimes beadmirable to get yourself into the kind of ‘tension’ that happens when we flout the demandsof consistency of attitudes, but he points out that this is the case for beliefs as well, and heinsists that in either case, it cannot be generally admirable, “for these states are essentiallycharacterized either by responsibility to the world, in the case of beliefs, or in our responseto the world, in the case of attitudes.”38 And recall that inconsistency in LA is ultimatelydefined with reference to an ideal. So we might put it this way: the problem with logicallyconflicting attitudes is that your responses to the world would be deeply flawed if theyfailed, pervasively, to add up to a coherent way you think things ought to be. If we think ofit this way, simple examples such as cookie-eating no longer pose a real problem forBlackburn. In a perfect world, cookies wouldn’t make me less healthy, and I could eat themand be happy. There is nothing wrong with endorsing contingently conflicting goods, butthere is in endorsing logically conflicting ones, because in the latter case, there is no idealone can think of coherently.

This justification, however, still applies too broadly, ruling out, as it does, pairs of statesof affairs that cannot co-exist in any possible world, where possibility is taken more broadlythan just logical possibility—say, as conceivability.39 That this contains logicallyconflicting states of affairs as a proper subset is shown by the fact that there may bestates of affairs that are logically consistent in the sense of LA but not mutually conceivablefor me, and not possible on other construals of possibility. If I want to go to a concert at 8,and I want to go to a movie at 8, these desires alone do not logically conflict in the sense ofLA since there is no A such that I want to do A and I want to do not-A.40 Indeed, it islogically possible that I could be in two places at once. But it is not conceivable to me, itseems impossible in other ways, and my desires do fail to add up to a coherent way thatthings could be. This pair of desires falls under the given justification, since there is nocoherent ideal including it, but is not ruled out by LA.

Perhaps this problem could be surmounted: either one could find a difficulty that wouldapply exactly to logically conflicting states of affairs, or one could alter LA so that it rulesout states-of-affairs that could not coexist in any possible world, understood more broadly.Notice that in either case, we still can no longer take attitudes or desires in the all-in way, orin the way ‘informing practical advice,’ since this interpretation would rule out contingentdilemmas, and attitudes not obeying the closure principle, which the logic would allow.

On either of these moves, LA rules out the endorsement of logically conflicting states ofaffairs such as A and not-A but not contingently conflicting ones. But on the face of it, we

38 Blackburn (1988, p. 510).39 For an argument that possibility might be understood as conceivability, see Yablo (1993).40 Since closure fails in LA, the fact that going to the movie means not going to the concert is irrelevant here.

528 P. Marino

endorse logically conflicting states of affairs all the time; indeed, Schueler’s originalcomplaint involved the point that I can want to eat cookies and not want to eat them, withno sense of dismay. It seem that I may endorse A and not-A, and do so properly andrationally. Indeed, my dilemma example involves just such a conflict, landing me in a stateof mind in which I am for getting my little brother to lie, and against getting him to lie.Again, while I may be unsure what to do, there seems nothing wrong with my having theseconflicting attitudes. Examples abound: I want to go out to dinner, but then again I alsodon’t; I want to have a TV, but I also want not to have one; I want to plan my vacation, butI want it to be spontaneous and unplanned. There is, on the face of it, nothing wrong evenwith logically conflicting attitudes.

On the interpretation I am developing here, the defender of LA will insist that, ingeneral, what appear to be logical conflicts of attitude really are not, because those whoendorse A and not-A are really only endorsing aspects of A and not-A which happen tocome together, but which need not. At a finer-grained level of description, he may say, wesee how these attitudes are logically consistent. The person who want to eat cookies and noteat cookies merely wants to eat cookies and to stay healthy; the person who wants to go outto dinner and not to go out to dinner really wants some excitement and some comfort; theperson in our little brother dilemma wants just to save the family and not to get his littlebrother to lie. In this last example, our finer-grained level of description represents the agentnot as wanting A and not-A, but as wanting X and not-A, where A is a means to X.41

Notice that this line of thought only makes sense in a logic of attitudes that does notsupport a closure principle: if my attitude for A led to an attitude for B whenever doing Aentailed doing B, the conflicts would simply come right back. If being healthy entails noteating cookies, then closure would require that my desire to stay healthy translate into adesire to refrain from cookie eating. And, of course, in the case that getting my little brotherto lie is the only way to save the family, my attitudes for saving the family and againstgetting my little brother to lie are only non-conflicting because my attitude for saving thefamily does not necessarily lead to an attitude for get my little brother to lie. Schematically,even if doing X entails doing A, my attitude for X does not involve an attitude for doing A,so my attitudes for X and for not-A can co-exist without conflicting. In the case in whichboth my attitudes for A and for not-A have a finer-grained level of description, we may saythe person who endorses A and not-A is really endorsing X and Y. But if X entails A, and Yentails not-A, it is only because our attitudes do not obey closure that these to not lead toattitudes for A and not-A themselves.

But this shows why LA, on this interpretation, is especially unfit to explain or captureour moral reasoning. In cases like the little brother one, avoiding conflicting attitudes thisway would mean endorsing saving the family, being against getting my little brother to lie,and failing to acquire an attitude for getting my little brother to lie, even if this is the onlymeans to saving the family. The conclusion of my modus ponens argument would be anattitude against getting my little brother to lie, and there would be no conflicting attitude atall. In fact, it would be a foregone conclusion that I should endorse not getting my littlebrother to lie, regardless of the contingent consequences. The finer-grained level ofdescription is consistent because it fails to incorporate the contingent relationship betweensaving the family and getting my little brother to lie.

But this is not how we do reason or how we should reason with attitudes. Practicalreason often requires us to consider the means to various ends, or the contingentrelationships between the states of affairs that we endorse. What we do, and what seems

41 Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me to consider this possibility.

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 529

proper to do, is to maintain an attitude for getting our little brother to lie, while developingone against getting him to lie. We keep these conflicting prima facie attitudes whiledeveloping an all-in attitude. That they conflict logically, rather than contingently, makes nodifference here at all; that there is a level of description at which they do not conflictessentially is irrelevant.

Put simply, the problem seems to be this: when considering prima facie attitudes anddesires, conflicts – even ‘logical’ conflicts – are an appropriate part of the moral reasoningprocess. So, what grounds the conclusion of moral modus ponens cannot be that “to fail todraw the required conclusion would land you in an inconsistency.” To draw the requiredconclusion would land you in an inconsistency as well.

So, what about the idea of altering LA so that it is grounded in all-in attitudes? Takingattitudes as all-in attitudes, intentions, or plans, we would rule out contingent dilemmas andrequire closure; this would make LA more like LP. And Gibbard’s remarks aboutconsistency do echo some of Blackburn’s. Anyone who has inconsistent ideas about whatought to be done, he says, will lack a practical plan for action; they will lack a way ofproceeding in the world. The person who is for doing A and for doing B when A and Bcannot both be done is in the same kind of trouble as someone with conflicting beliefs. Infact, the situations are analogous, because factual inconsistency and inconsistency of normseach rule out full possibilities—ways the factual or factual-normative world can be.42

Since it rules out even contingently conflicting goods, this fits better with the givenjustification than the logic of attitudes does. But now we encounter the other difficultyalready mentioned: that in the process of planning, we reason about what to do before wehave a plan, and in this process we may endorse conflicting actions. The proponent of LPmay insist that the logic of planning reflects not the inchoate stage at which we findourselves reacting, but rather the more advanced stage at which we have decided what todo. But arguments such as the little brother one can be made at any stage, and may be ofspecial use when we have not yet figured out what to do. In fact, in real life, experience of adilemma or conflict is most likely at a time when we are trying to reason out what we oughtto do, and this certainly involves modus ponens type reasoning from various directions.Competing considerations are seen to bear on a particular situation largely through suchreasoning: just as in the little brother example, we use these reasoning patterns to drawconnections between disparate moral considerations, thinking to ourselves, if A is wrong,and if the wrongness of A means the wrongness of B, I’d better worry about B. That this isthe case shows that the logic of planning leaves an important part of the Frege–Geachproblem untouched: we still need to know how to justify or explain logical inferences incases of conflict.

A natural strategy for the proponent of LP would be to supplement his analysis. Whynot, for example, reserve LP as an explanation of the reasoning we do about plans, and adda new explanation for the kinds of reasoning we do in moral decision-making, such as wedo in the moral dilemma case?

Fine, perhaps, but my arguments then apply to this candidate, suggesting that it cannotbe grounded in conflicts of attitude. The dilemma still holds: if only contingent dilemmasare allowed, as on LA, the embargo on logical dilemmas is unmotivated, and if alldilemmas are ruled out, as on LP, we can’t capture the little brother reasoning above andwe’re back at the same difficulty. The expressivist, in any case, will need an approach tovalidity that does not go through conflicts of attitudes, intentions, or plans.

42 See Gibbard (2003, p. 56), and (1992, p. 973). Some remarks in Gibbard (1990) are related; see especiallyp. 289.

530 P. Marino

5 Expressivism and Evaluative Conflict

I have been arguing that moral reasoning requires us to have some conflicting attitudes. Letme conclude by saying a bit about why expressivists should be especially wary ofconflating conflicts of attitude and logical inconsistency, and especially tolerant ofevaluative conflict.

An obvious puzzle for expressivism is that we regularly draw a distinction between ourmoral beliefs and mere preferences. “I love eating veal but I think it’s morally wrong” iscertainly a possible and common kind of thought. The expressivist must understand these asconflicts of attitude: I am for eating veal, in that I like it, and I am against eating veal, inthat I think it causes animals to suffer, and I have a further attitude that others ought to havethe latter attitude as well.43 Naturally, a person with these conflicting attitudes is notlogically inconsistent, and expressivism must make this clear, allowing us to have attitudesfor and against A, as neither LA nor LP does.

The defender of LA may reply here that this is where his restricted notion of consistencycomes into its own: it’s not that I am for eating veal and against it, but rather that I am fortreating animals well, and for eating veal, and since these do not logically conflict, their co-existence is not ruled out by LA. In Section 4, I argued this strategy didn’t help as a modelof moral reasoning, but here let me point out one further problem: we may be in a situationof logical conflict in which we do not even know the sources of our attitudes, and in thatcase, reason seems to demand only that we try to understand them and render themcoherent. A person may have a general attitude against doing A that she was simply raisedwith, and a specific desire to do A that she does not understand the source of, and thus havewhat feel like genuinely logically conflicting attitudes.

For example, perhaps Maria was raised to think that women should stay home with theirchildren, and then she develops a desire to go out to work, that she endorses in a way,finding it morally valid. These are logically conflicting attitudes, but it is not clear that thereis a finer-grained level of description that would render them compatible. A person in sucha situation may not well understand the source of their own attitudes, and may be undecidedwhich should guide their behavior. Thus, she may fail to have a moral ‘ideal’ in the requiredsense, but I do not think there is anything wrong, or irrational with her attitudes: manymonths of reflection may be required before this agent settles on a single preference, ordecides what her overall desire is. Even in that case, she may not give up the attitude thatconflicts with her decision: one striking fact about attitudes is that developing an all-inattitude for A does not require one to give up an attitude for B, which conflicts with A,whether that conflict is contingent or logical.44

Reflection on examples such as this help bring out an important difference betweenexpressivist views and some realist ones. If we take realism to involve the idea that there isan objective matter of fact about what is good, then it seems to follow from realism thatsince there is a set of things one ought to endorse, one’s attitudes ought to be consistent.When they are not, one is making a sort of evaluative mistake, endorsing something that isnot actually good. The woman who has attitudes for and against her own going out to work,we may say, is on the right track with one of her attitudes, and on the wrong track with theother. This would provide, in effect, an explanation why a person must be wrong to endorse

43 This last clause allows the expressivist to separate out attitudes he has only for himself, and those he thinksshould be universally accepted.44 For an argument that in the emotional case, genuine ambivalence is possible, see Greenspan (1980),section 2.

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 531

A and not-A: A and not-A cannot both be ‘good’ in the realist’s sense, just as in ordinarylogic, P and not-P cannot both be true.

In the absence of realist considerations, however, there is no reason to suppose that thereis a coherent set of things one ought to endorse. Blackburn and Gibbard, in their reliance onideals and hyperplans, seem to want to exploit the idea that perhaps, for each person, thereis such a coherent set. But I have been suggesting that there needn’t be. We may haveconflicting attitudes, we may even endorse A and not-A, we may fail to imagine a coherentbest way things could be. For the agent who has these difficulties, conflicts of attitudecannot be like logical conflicts.

This means that on the face of it, expressivism ought to be more tolerant of conflictingattitudes than some other metaethical views. At least, it means that the pressure towardcoherent attitudes has a different source for expressivists than it does for realists. If this isright, understanding the role evaluative coherence plays in our lives may provide evidencefor or against the expressivist insight. If we are tolerant of evaluative conflict, this may beevidence for views along expressivist lines.45

I have argued that expressivists should not take conflicts of attitude as a ground forlogical normativity in their explanations of logic, because this leaves us unable to accountfor moral reasoning in the case of moral dilemmas. Taking attitudes in the ordinary, primafacie way, conflicts of attitudes are appropriate parts of moral reasoning, and so there isnothing wrong with being conflicted in the relevant way. Taking attitudes as all-in attitudes,as intentions or plans, we cannot account for the moral reasoning that happens in dilemmaticcases before we decide what the right alternative is. I see two alternatives for expressivists. First,they may try a different kind of logic. The old mathematical intuitionists took mathematicalstatements to be about mental constructs, and developed their logic accordingly; in particular,the conditional there is not equivalent to the disjunction, and so must be given its own, positive,gloss. Perhaps some strategy along these lines might work. Second, and I think more plausibly,they can admit that we reason propositionally in moral discourse, and ask how our emotionsinform that reasoning. Some recent psychological and sociological research suggests thatemotions inform moral beliefs, attitudes, and reasoning quite a bit.46 The task for themetaethicist is to take this data and figure out what to do with it, understanding what the roleof our emotions is and what the role of our emotions should be.47

References

Blackburn S (1984) Spreading the word. Clarendon, OxfordBlackburn S (1988) Attitudes and contents. Ethics 98:501–517Blackburn S (1998) Ruling passions. Oxford University Press, New YorkBrink D (1994) Moral conflict and its structure. Philos Rev 2:215–247de Haan J (2001) The definition of moral dilemmas: a logical problem. Ethical Theory Moral Pract 4:267–284Donagan A (1984) Consistency in rationalist moral systems. J Philos 81:291–309Geach P (1960) Ascriptivism. Philos Rev 69:221–225Gibbard A (1990) Wise choices, apt feelings. Clarendon, OxfordGibbard A (1992) Reply to Blackburn, Carson, Hill and Railton. Philos Phenomenol Res 52:969–980Gibbard A (2003) Thinking how to live. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

45 For a related discussion of the relationship between consistency and expressivism, see Marino (2005).46 For some empirical research, see, for example, Haidt (2001); for a philosophical exploration, see Nichols(2004).47 Thanks to Mark van Roojen, Dave DeVidi, and two anonymous referees for Ethical Theory and MoralPractice.

532 P. Marino

Greenspan P (1980) Ambivalence and the logic of emotion. In: Rorty A (ed) Explaining emotions. Universityof California Press, Berkeley, pp.223–250

Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.Psychol Rev 108:814–834

Hale B (1986) The compleat projectivist. Philos Q 36:65–84.Hale B (1993) Can there be a logic of attitudes? In: Haldane J, Wright C (eds) Reality, representation, and

projection. Oxford University Press, New York, pp.337–363Marcus R (1980) Moral dilemmas and consistency. J Philos 77:121–136Marino P (2001) Moral dilemmas, collective responsibility, and moral progress. Philos Stud 104:203–225Marino P (2005) Expressivism, deflationism, and correspondence. J Moral Philos 2:171–191McConnell (2002) Terrance “Moral Dilemmas”. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

(summer 2002 edition), URL =<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2002/entries/moral-dilemmas/>.Morscher E (2002) The definition of moral dilemmas: a logical confusion and a clarification. Ethical Theory

Moral Pract 5:485–491Nichols S (2004) Sentimental rules: on the natural foundations of moral judgment. Oxford University Press,

OxfordSchueler GF (1988) Modus ponens and moral realism. Ethics 98:492–500Searle J (1969) Speech acts. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeSinnott-Armstrong W (1988) Moral dilemmas. Basil Blackwell, Oxfordvan Fraassen B (1973) Value and the heart’s command. J Philos 70:5–19van Roojen M (1996) Expressivism and irrationality. Philos Rev 105:311–335Yablo S (1993) Is conceivability a guide to possibility? Phil Phenomenol Res 53:1–42

Expressivism, logic, consistency, and moral dilemmas 533