Emotivism:, An introduction

Emotivism: An introduction.

Emotivism is a non-congnitivst, anti-realist theory primarily associated with the british philosopher A.J.Ayer and Charles Leslie Stevenson. They and similar Emotivists would argue that moral judgements are nothing more than expressions of emoution. Moral judgements they would argue serve as non-descriptive functions (meaning they do not pick out anything anything which is true or false. This is becuase they do not pick out anything which actually exists e.g. "good", "bad", "virtue", etc) which are used to show approval or disapproval about something.

Emotivists would argue that moral judgements cannot be shown to be truely right or wrong because there is no such thing as moral knowledge. For example, the statment "theft is wrong" we could argue, is nothing more than claiming we dislike theft. Emotivists would argue that moral judgements are expressions of emoutional attitudes. This is diffrent than saying emoutinal judgements are descriptive of emoutinal attitudes. It is important to note here that theorists like Ajer DO NOT argue this because they holds firm empiricist views, that if we cannot precive feelings with our senses, they cannot be described.

Rather, he and simmilar Emotivists would hold the view know as the Verification princible, which argues the only statments we can have knowledge on are those which can be empiracally verified. In other words, the truth of falsity of a thing is established via the senses. He argues iff moral propities cannot be precieved, and iff there does not seem to be a way to be empirically verified. He concludes that moral knowledge cannot be possible. This also applies to religious or aesthetic statments as well.

P:Moral propities cannot be precieved.
P:There is no known way for moral propities to be empirically verified.
C:Therfore, moral knowledge isn't possible.

It appears that emotivists agree with the is/ought gap, holding the view we cannot derive a moral judgemant from any facts as being expressions of emoution, they are not propersitional as there is no truth or falsity to them. Consequentily, moral judgements are not propositinal and therfore can't be know.

As well as being expressions of emoution, Ayer states that moral judgements can take the form of being a command particularly when used in ethical argumants. For example, if we wre to say "adultury is wrong", it is like commanding others to have the same feelings as ourselves. In other words, moral judgemants have prescriptive content that can prescribe people to act in certain ways.

Ayer himself concludes that it is impossible to have a meaningful about moral judgements. After all, no moral judgements are tru or false and if we claimed something as being "bad" or "good" we are doing nothing more than showing our approval or disapproval over it.

Thoughts on the theory (I am not for or against it here, I'm just curious to know your take on this idea)?

Edited by ex nihilo - 10/2/2012, 20:40

I think that you are also including Stevenson's elaboration: so you are not just founding on Ayers but rather a wider notion of emotivism.

I think it is poppycock. More seriously I think this way of approaching the question is a form of scientism. What Ayers is saying is that moral utterances are meaningless. They quite clearly are not meaningless. Indeed it is very difficult to imagine how you can suggest that they are simultaneiously meaningless and prescriptive. I cannot exhort someone to do what I want if I talk gibberish at him.

I'll add that in then.

It would be better from my point of view if you did not alter the OP, ex nihilo.It really does make it difficult to have a coherent conversation.

What I would find more interesting would be if you would engage by taking a position so that we could explore it. You do appear to be keen to explore the possibility of moral knowledge, or truth, or however you want to describe it. What I find intriguing is why you find it important.

If you genuinely believe it is entirely subjective then another's different belief does not matter, does it? It is a matter of taste. I may note the fact that X prefers dark chocolate: and I may prefer milk chocolate. But such a difference will not detain us. We will not find it productive to explore why we differ: nor will we try to persuade each other, or command each other to change that preference. From my point of view this demonstrates that moral utterances are nothing like that kind of disagreement: it seems self evident to me.

Which leads to a rather curious consequence. In continuing to explore the basis for moral utterance it seems to me that those who say it is subjective or emotive are trying to persuade me to agree with them. Which, given their actual position, is irrational to say the least. Indeed in Stevenson's terms it is a moral utterance in itself. And so is meaningless. Why do it?

Edited by FionaK - 10/2/2012, 15:53

Before I discuss my own beliefs, I would like to continue to demonstrate others out there. Currently I am going for those which are anti-realist and non-cognitivist. Then Some cognitivist and realist, and then give a more complex anaylisis then. Unless, of corse, you want me to discuss my views on the certain subject already.

I'll only edit the OP if I get my information wrong. I do not wish to give other people false information due to my own incompetance. Would this be ok, if I could change only factual errors where I get the declaration wrong? It may be annoying, but I'd rather get it right and get people annoyed than get it wrong and have people in ignorance.

You must post as you see fit, ex nihilo: but I would prefer that even factual errors are corrected in the course of the thread. Not that I think you have made an error in this OP: just that I think it draws on a wider base than Ayers.

The reason I do not wish to see the OP changed is two-fold. It tends to make a nonsense of subsequent posts made before the change, and I think that is more confusing for anyone coming late to the thread: and it is likely that anyone engaged with you already will not see it and will therefore assume that your position is unchanged: which is likely to waste a lot of time.

I do not see any reason not to just say whatever you want to say in sequence as it arises. Does that make sense to you?

Understood. I will try to do that from now on.

I think you need to tell us what you think "truth" is. It occurs to me that perhaps some people don't know what is meant by "cognitivist" or "realist" in this context. Maybe you should explain these terms?

With truth, there is only one correct anwser that can be given which must be the case.
Realist refers to propities such as 'good', 'bad', 'virtious' existing independantly from our minds. i.e they are not subjective.
Cognitivist refers to the belief that we can have moral knowledge, therfore moral judgements can be known.

Do you think I should make a seperate thread for this?

The explanation is not all that helpful as it stands, in my view.

The non-cognitivist suggests that moral statements are not what they call "truth apt". By that I take them to mean that such utterances cannot be either true or false: they are not that kind of beastie. For the non-cognitivist statements are "truth apt" if they are verifiable: they say that moral statements do not meet that condition, ever. So for them such statements have no real content in the way that other beliefs might: they are rather tantamount to saying "boo", "hurrah", or "ouch", and they say no more than that.

Within the general position there are subgroups: So emotivists are different from prescriptivists, though both may be said to be non-cognitivist positions. Emotivists deny any content at all to moral statements except for the emotional expression: and so it follows that they cannot be "truth apt". As an illustration, if someone says "ouch"when they stub their toe it is not really sensible to respond "how do you know?" much less "how can I know?" For the emotivist that is how moral statements are.

Prescriptivists say that the moral utterance is a command. Once again it has no truth value because commands do not address the question of truth. For some what makes a command into a moral prescription is its unversal character. So, for example, they would argue that the statement "dancing is wrong" is the same as saying "don't dance". But "don't dance" could be bounded by time and place and agent and so it is not a moral prescription, as such. To become a moral prescription it needs to be closer to "nobody dance, anywhere, ever". It is the unversal and general character which makes it a moral utterance and it follows that similar actions must attract the same prescription. So there has to be consistency as well.

Does that help?

Sorry if my explenation was a bit basic, it was just a rough sketch of the concepts. Fiona is right on that one.