There definitely is something weird about the compulsion (?) of some philosophers to bring all anti-realist positions under the three traditional categories, even when doing so doesn’t make much sense.
In his reply to Loeb’s incoherentism paper, Sayre-McCord acknowledges Loeb’s claim to undermine “metaethical cognitivism and noncognitivism alike, since no version of either could legitimately claim to capture what we all are doing in using moral language”. And yet he proceeds to describe the varitieties of incoherentism advanced by Loeb as falling into either "incoherentist error theory" (because we're expressing incoherent concepts and there is something erroneous about that as Loeb himself admits) or the “incoherentist non-cognitivism” (because moral terms fail to express concepts at all).
The first part is dubious at best because Loeb makes it clear his incoherentism rejects the semantic thesis of the traditional error theories, as well as the underlying uniformity assumption. Calling it a form of "error theory" may create an impression to the contrary.
No less weird is the attempt to classify some instances of semantic incoherence as falling under non-cognitivism [just because?] when speaking incoherently in this way we fail to express concepts. Sayre-McCord himself admits that “incoherentist non-cognitivism” implies that there isn’t “any interestingly systematic (albeit noncognitive) role played by moral terms”. So why lump it together with non-cognitivism?
Perhaps one could conceive of incoherentism as a combination of the more traditional positions. But it would certainly be a weird and confusing way of putting it. There just aren’t any good practical reasons for doing so.
Loeb, for instance, writes: "Alternatively, it could be that there is incoherence at a higher level, that there is so much confusion and diversity with respect to the linguistic dispositions surrounding our use of the moral vocabulary that it does not make sense to think of our moral sentences as making any particular assertions or expressing any particular attitudes." Is this type of incoherence a form of error theory? Of non-cognitivism? A “combination” of both? I don't think so.
There definitely is something weird about the compulsion (?) of some philosophers to bring all anti-realist positions under the three traditional categories, even when doing so doesn’t make much sense.
In his reply to Loeb’s incoherentism paper, Sayre-McCord acknowledges Loeb’s claim to undermine “metaethical cognitivism and noncognitivism alike, since no version of either could legitimately claim to capture what we all are doing in using moral language”. And yet he proceeds to describe the varitieties of incoherentism advanced by Loeb as falling into either "incoherentist error theory" (because we're expressing incoherent concepts and there is something erroneous about that as Loeb himself admits) or the “incoherentist non-cognitivism” (because moral terms fail to express concepts at all).
The first part is dubious at best because Loeb makes it clear his incoherentism rejects the semantic thesis of the traditional error theories, as well as the underlying uniformity assumption. Calling it a form of "error theory" may create an impression to the contrary.
No less weird is the attempt to classify some instances of semantic incoherence as falling under non-cognitivism [just because?] when speaking incoherently in this way we fail to express concepts. Sayre-McCord himself admits that “incoherentist non-cognitivism” implies that there isn’t “any interestingly systematic (albeit noncognitive) role played by moral terms”. So why lump it together with non-cognitivism?
Perhaps one could conceive of incoherentism as a combination of the more traditional positions. But it would certainly be a weird and confusing way of putting it. There just aren’t any good practical reasons for doing so.
Loeb, for instance, writes: "Alternatively, it could be that there is incoherence at a higher level, that there is so much confusion and diversity with respect to the linguistic dispositions surrounding our use of the moral vocabulary that it does not make sense to think of our moral sentences as making any particular assertions or expressing any particular attitudes." Is this type of incoherence a form of error theory? Of non-cognitivism? A “combination” of both? I don't think so.
Great comment and you are entirely correct. It may be as simple as philosophers being stubborn and not wanting to admit they were wrong.