Emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes.
The approbation or blame which then ensues, cannot be the work of the judgement, but of the heart; and is not a speculative proposition or affirmation, but an active feeling or sentiment.[13]G.
[14] The emergence of logical positivism and its verifiability criterion of meaning early in the 20th century led some philosophers to conclude that ethical statements, being incapable of empirical verification, were cognitively meaningless.
A. J. Ayer's version of emotivism is given in chapter six, "Critique of Ethics and Theology", of Language, Truth and Logic.
Ayer argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be verified; in this he agrees with ethical intuitionists.
… If now I generalise my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false.
[24]Stevenson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon Ayer's views and as a representation of one of "two broad types of ethical emotivism.
[28] Where Ayer spoke of values, or fundamental psychological inclinations, Stevenson speaks of attitudes, and where Ayer spoke of disagreement of fact, or rational disputes over the application of certain values to a particular case, Stevenson speaks of differences in belief; the concepts are the same.
Under his first pattern of analysis an ethical statement has two parts: a declaration of the speaker's attitude and an imperative to mirror it, so "'This is good' means I approve of this; do so as well.
[35] Logical methods involve efforts to show inconsistencies between a person's fundamental attitudes and their particular moral beliefs.
Such a revelation would likely change the observer's belief about Edward, and even if it did not, the attempt to reveal such facts would count as a rational psychological form of moral argumentation.
Stevenson called the primary such method "'persuasive,' in a somewhat broadened sense", and wrote: [Persuasion] depends on the sheer, direct emotional impact of words—on emotive meaning, rhetorical cadence, apt metaphor, stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of voice, dramatic gestures, care in establishing rapport with the hearer or audience, and so on.
… A redirection of the hearer's attitudes is sought not by the mediating step of altering his beliefs, but by exhortation, whether obvious or subtle, crude or refined.
"[41] Utilitarian philosopher Richard Brandt offered several criticisms of emotivism in his 1959 book Ethical Theory.
His first is that "ethical utterances are not obviously the kind of thing the emotive theory says they are, and prima facie, at least, should be viewed as statements.
"[42] He thinks that emotivism cannot explain why most people, historically speaking, have considered ethical sentences to be "fact-stating" and not just emotive.
Brandt contends that most ethical statements, including judgments of people who are not within listening range, are not made with the intention to alter the attitudes of others.
Twenty years earlier, Sir William David Ross offered much the same criticism in his book Foundations of Ethics.
Ross suggests that the emotivist theory seems to be coherent only when dealing with simple linguistic acts, such as recommending, commanding, or passing judgement on something happening at the same point of time as the utterance.
Under this criticism, it would appear as if emotivist and prescriptivist theories are only capable of converting a relatively small subset of all ethical claims into imperatives.
[46] Stevenson's Ethics and Language, written after Ross's book but before Brandt's and Urmson's, states that emotive terms are "not always used for purposes of exhortation.
"[47] For example, in the sentence "Slavery was good in Ancient Rome", Stevenson thinks one is speaking of past attitudes in an "almost purely descriptive" sense.
"[48] Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension.
[50]Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.
Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice.
