C.L. Stevenson – Emotivism Starter – With your partner, discuss and explain the moral statement ‘Murder is wrong’ using emotivist reasoning To explore and understand Stevenson’s emotivism To discuss how this might differ with AJ Ayer’s To begin to evaluate emotivist weaknesses

C.L. Stevenson – Emotivism Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908–1979) was an American analytic philosopher, best known for his work in ethics and aesthetics. He was a professor at Yale University from 1939 to 1946 and at the University of Michigan from 1946 to 1977. He studied in England with Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. He presented a sophisticated defense of emotivism in his papers "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937) and "Persuasive Definitions" (1938).

C.L. Stevenson – Emotivism In his book Ethics and Language (1944), he developed a theory of emotive meaning; which he used to provide a foundation for his theory of a persuasive definition. He advanced emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that outlined the differences between cognitive, scientific uses of language (used to state facts and to give reasons, and subject to the laws of science) and non-cognitive uses (used to state feelings and exercise influence).

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning ‘The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms’ – Stevenson (1937) (See Dialogue article Meta – Ethics and Emotivism by John Rafferty). Stevenson argues that language has two main uses: Descriptive use Dynamic use “I am loaded down with work.” ( informs person (s) listening to this statement how busy I am).

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning “I am loaded down with work.” ( aims to convey to the person (s) listening to this statement my misery at being overworked, or to get them to lighten my workload). Stevenson suggests that while moral statements may have no factual significance they still have an emotive meaning – the “aura of feeling which hovers about a word.” This makes it particularly suited to a ‘dynamic’ use. The main dynamic use of moral terms is to express either approving or disapproving feelings of the speaker.

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning “Your son has admitted to misleading Mrs. X about the reason several homeworks are missing from his exercise book.” “Your son lied about not doing his homework.” What according to Stevenson is the difference, according to his theory, about the two statements above? 2 more successfully expresses an attitude of disapproval than 1. Although Ayer and Stevenson’s Emotivist theories have much in common, Stevenson elaborates the theory by holding that during an ethical argument people are trying to persuade others to approve or disapprove of e.g. of stealing, cheating, abortion, euthanasia etc.

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning Evaluation Empirical evidence suggests that using emotive language seems to be successful in changing the attitude of others. N.B. Advertisers and lawyers are very able at choosing their words for maximum impact. But whether this is all that we want to do when we use language in this way seems less certain. In his article in Dialogue, Rafferty points out that “We sometimes talk about morality as though it is something we can reason and think about.”

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning Evaluation He notes that we say sentences like: “I know stealing is wrong”; “He believes that the death penalty is justifiable.” “If morality is not grounded in facts, there will never be any way of establishing that child torture is objectively wrong.” (Rafferty)

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning Evaluation According to emotivism, when two people hold different moral views they are not actually disagreeing about facts, they are disagreeing in the emotions they express about this issue. But if we accept emotivism then there are no such things as moral arguments.

C.L. Stevenson – Emotive Meaning Evaluation Finally, if, according to Stevenson, all moral discourse is trying to persuade others to share the same attitudes as us, then how does he account for debates and discussions that we have with people who already share our views on e.g. punishment or war? As Rafferty says “What about those times when we are thinking over what to do in our own minds when we are alone? Are we just expressing our emotions to ourselves?”

Ayer vs Stevenson Venn Diagram comparison between the two…SB to help. Ext – Possible weaknesses noted around the edge.

Venn Diagram Summary