Emotivism

Background

Logical Positivists divided all statements into 3 types = what are they?

For each statement, give which category it fits into.

You’re a bad person The book is under the bed. All cats are feline. All bachelors are unmarried

men. Hitler was German

chancellor. The square root of 16 is 4. It’s wrong to murder.

The boiling point of water is 100ºc.

All murder victims have a murderer.

It was sunny last Wednesday.

Horses exist. He has been murdered. Ian is a tall boy. God exists. The Mona Lisa is a good

piece of art.

Emotivism..

What is it? Is it cognitivist or noncognitivist? Why is it known as the hurrah-boo

theory?

AJ Ayer

Look at quote and complete tasks.

CL Stevenson

1908-1979 American Interested in observing how

people use moral terms in everyday life.

Does not deny that language has meaning – has emotive not descriptive meaning.

Can have a moral debate – can debate the reasons that we have for our attitudes.

When he analysed the word ‘good’ he noted 3 criteria for its use:

1. Must be a disagreement about what is good.

2. Goodness is magnetic – cause you to act in its favour.

3. You can’t discover it from scientific investigation.

Why do we disagree?

Disagreements about hat is good is a disagreement in attitude.

E.g. I say stealing is bad and another says it is good it is due to our different attitudes to stealing.

Are also disagreements in belief.

E.g. doctors disagree about use of surgery – both agree that it is good to treat the patient but disagree about how best to do it.

Emotive language

Stevenson said that all moral statements include word and phrases that have cognitive and emotive meaning.

E.g. “the technically illegal transfer of funds” and word “fraud”.

Same meaning but “fraud” has an additional emotive meaning.

When we debate moral things we deliberately use words with emotive meaning.

Criticisms

Look at the cards you have been given which outline key critique about emotivism.

For each one explain what it means and give examples to back it up where you can.

Try also to come up with a counter-argument for each one.

Extra critique R.M. Hare says that we are too

complex to reduce morality to this. He was against this REDUCTIONISM. It was too simplistic an analysis of language. Morality involves the use of reason. He cannot accept that such terrible acts as the Holocaust can be reduced to I believe that killing.

James Rachels – argues that it was wrong to remove reason from moral judgements. Statements like ‘I like coffee’ need no reason, but moral judgements do else they become arbitrary.

Peter Vardy says it is a moral ‘non-theory’ because it is not an ethical theory in the classical sense.

MacIntyre said that it was a misconceived theory of ethics. This doctrine has obscured modern life which is characterised by social emotivism in which all judgements are expression of opinion. It stops us from seeing the importance of human qualities and causes us to treat, ”Others are always means, never ends.”

Spot the difference

Divide up the statements into those about Ayer and those about Stevenson.

Past Question

“Anything people approve of must be good”. Discuss (17 marks)