The denial of moral truth: Emotivism Or, the "hurrah/boo!" theory

Where it fits in A non-cognitivist theory: morality is non-propositional, and so can’t be known to be true or false. If moral judgments aren’t true or false, we can’t reason about basic moral principles. “X is good” simply means “Hurrah for X!” so goodness and immorality are limited to our (societal?) preferences. For example, the death penalty makes me feel nasty. So it’s wrong

Origins popular in C18. Hume defends (subjectivist?) emotivism: “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” Later in his life he defends a kind of Impartial Observer theory: what would we feel when faced with a moral choice? Hence, Hume’s “Is/Ought Gap”, or “Fact/Value Distinction” you can't go from a factual statement (an "is") to a moral one (an "ought"), as facts don’t motivate actions (he thinks) C20 view – facts (primary qualities) give rise to reasons (secondary qualities) for us to act Remember the primary/secondary quality distinction we worked on last summer? Is/ought gap means that ‘sentiment’ or emotion is the only ground for our moral judgements as it makes us act Because it is the source of our feeling of right and wrong..

Modern emotivists Emotivism defended C20 by A.J. Ayer on logical positivist grounds: Verification Principle… Classic formulation of view in ch. 6 of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (1936) ‘Stealing money is wrong‘…expresses no proposition which can be either true or false.’ It is as if I had written 'Stealing money!!' - where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show…a special sort of moral disapproval.’

Ayer’s arguments for Emotivism: To be meaningful, a proposition must be empirically verifiable or analytically true. ‘My favourite trousers are Lycra’ (verifiable) “Married people are partnered” (analytic) A C20 restatement of ‘Hume’s Fork’ – if not ‘matter of fact’ or ‘relation of idea’, then meaningless. Moral opinions neither factually verifiable Or reducible to tautologies So are meaningless (as are religious, aesthetic, metaphysical claims) E.g “There is a God”, “Tyler’s haircut is bitchin’”, “Terrorism is wrong”, ‘There are objects that exist without being perceived’.

Ayer’s conclusions Moral arguments are just expressions of feeling. Ethical statements and moral judgements are emotive responses: they seek to arouse feelings or express pain. So moral judgements are persuasive, but they are not factual. They might look like they assert truth-claims (moral statements resemble declarative, testable statements)…but… They assert an emotion, that’s all.

Emotivism isn’t subjectivism Mind! Emotivism isn’t subjectivism: Emotivism: “X is good” means “Hurrah for X!” Subjectivism: “X is good” This means “I like X” A verifiable proposition hence T/F hence meaningful as a psychological not ethical claim (according to Ayer) We could test if you liked X…

Why be an emotivist? Part 1 Does away with worrying feeling that morality needs a more complex justification (i.e. complex Kantian/Utilitarian theories etc. Simple yet explains a good deal (strength of our ethical feelings, their shared nature etc) Offers clear criterion for sense vs. nonsense. Sociological analyses do seem to show that goodness and immorality are limited to our preferences. doesn’t appeal to mysterious entities (God, the transcendental…) that make morality mysterious explains why we can’t define “good”, why we can’t prove moral beliefs…

Why be an emotivist? Part 2 explains how people disagree about morality, and why they agree chimes with view that we can’t reason about basic moral principles and makes space for emotion to play a prominent role (as clearly it does) we can reason about morality if we assume a shared system of values. but we can’t establish the correctness of any system of values Stresses importance of persuasive language and emotion in the expression of moral sentiment.

Issues with emotivism Part 1 The logical positivist argument for emotivism is flawed: in particular, the claim that any meaningful proposition is either verifiable or tautologous is self-contradictory, hence inconsistent (key example: ‘the claim that…’ is not itself verifiable or tautologous…) Emotivism can’t explain unemotional moral judgments, which surely we do have? Indeed, cool and level-headed moral assessment is something that we value. We do reason about moral judgments. The claim that they are merely expressions of emotion seems odd (Ayer: here we are reasoning about the meaning of our moral terminology rather than its application) Are our responses to atrocities like genocide, rape and murder just matters of feeling?

Issues with emotivism Part 2 Our moral feelings aren’t subjective or personal, necessarily. They are natural, and shared…common reactions to horrific crimes (e.g. the holocaust) suggests the possibility of a reasonable basis for moral behaviour. reduces moral discussions to a shouting match if we can’t reason about basic moral principles. Many uses of “good” and “bad” are difficult to translate into exclamations. “Hurrah for good people!” “If lying is bad, then getting your brother to lie is bad.” “This is neutral (neither good nor bad).” Is this a truth claim or an exclamation: “A view is better if it’s simpler and explains more”? We do use ethical claims evaluatively with a clear sense of their meaning!