Avoid Avoiding the Wishful Thinking Problem

The wishful thinking problem purported to be a new problem for pure non-cognitivist expressivist views in metaethics in addition to the similar, yet distinct, Frege-Geach problem. After a smattering of initial responses, discussion of the problem has faded. One might think this is because the responses were fatal, and the problem is not really a problem. I do not think so. I aim to re-start discussion of the wishful thinking problem. I do so by recasting it in terms of the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Doing so is instructive, for it shows some of the initial, prominent responses to the problem fail. The problem is thus not as dead as one might otherwise think

Agnosticism · Doxastic logic · Expressivism · Wishful thinking · Education and Critical Thinking Development