 Again, Russell’s brand of emotivism is immune to this objection. According to Russell, “X is good” and “X is bad” are really in the optative mood despite their indicative appearances. As such, they express desires or wishes, and desires and wishes can, in a sense, be inconsistent with one other, namely when they are not (in Russell’s phrase) “compossible”, that is, when they cannot both be realized. “Would that I had all the ice-cream!” said by me and “Would that I had all the ice-cream!” said by you express contradictory desires since we cannot both have all the ice-cream. As such, the two optatives contradict each other, not because they describe incompatible facts but because they prescribe incompatible states of affairs. Similarly “X is good” said by me and “X is bad” said by you express contradictory desires and hence contradict each other. For “X is good” means “Would that everybody desired X!” and “X is bad” means “Would that everybody desired that not-X!”, and the desires expressed by these two optatives are not compossible, or at least, are only compossible on the condition that we all have inconsistent desires (both for X and for not-X).