"Frege-Geach problem" meaning in English

See Frege-Geach problem in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Frege-Geach problems [plural]
Etymology: Named after Peter Geach and Gottlob Frege; Geach developed the concept from Frege's writings. Head templates: {{en-noun}} Frege-Geach problem (plural Frege-Geach problems)
  1. (philosophy) The problem that, by subscribing to expressivism, one accepts that the meaning of (say) "it is wrong to tell lies" is different from the meaning of the "it is wrong to tell lies" part of the conditional "if it is wrong to tell lies, then it is wrong to get your little brother to lie", and that therefore expressivism is an inadequate explanation for moral language.

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "Named after Peter Geach and Gottlob Frege; Geach developed the concept from Frege's writings.",
  "forms": [
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        "The problem that, by subscribing to expressivism, one accepts that the meaning of (say) \"it is wrong to tell lies\" is different from the meaning of the \"it is wrong to tell lies\" part of the conditional \"if it is wrong to tell lies, then it is wrong to get your little brother to lie\", and that therefore expressivism is an inadequate explanation for moral language."
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        "(philosophy) The problem that, by subscribing to expressivism, one accepts that the meaning of (say) \"it is wrong to tell lies\" is different from the meaning of the \"it is wrong to tell lies\" part of the conditional \"if it is wrong to tell lies, then it is wrong to get your little brother to lie\", and that therefore expressivism is an inadequate explanation for moral language."
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  "etymology_text": "Named after Peter Geach and Gottlob Frege; Geach developed the concept from Frege's writings.",
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        "(philosophy) The problem that, by subscribing to expressivism, one accepts that the meaning of (say) \"it is wrong to tell lies\" is different from the meaning of the \"it is wrong to tell lies\" part of the conditional \"if it is wrong to tell lies, then it is wrong to get your little brother to lie\", and that therefore expressivism is an inadequate explanation for moral language."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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