From Wikipedia, the emotivism is defined as the set of ethical theories that, in the Ethics and Philosophy of twentieth century, especially at the Anglo-Saxon philosophers, argue that moral judgments have no cognitive value but that emotions and feelings that accompany them determine an incentive conditioning to act morally.
Immanuel Kant brought an indictment of psychologism. For the German philosopher, in fact, this conception was irreducible to the feeling that could never be confused with morality. Feeling is something impulsive, weak, inconsistent, on which morality can not rely on ":a certain sweetness of soul that passes easily into a warm sense of piety, is beautiful and lovable, because it reveals a certain participation in the events of others [...] but this good-natured sentiment is weak and blind. "
The term "emotivism", introduced in the syntax of scientific language, has been created in the last century with the recognition of semantics of use and as distinction between indicative and emotional valence of human discourse implemented in the article: 'The meaning of meaning' written by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards. In order that the term ‘emotivism’ had a less extended sense, it is necessary to wait for the definition of Ayer. For him the word "emotivism" merely indicates an attempt to reduce the ethical discourse to the emotional use.
For Charles Leslie Stevenson moral judgments must be traced to personal emotional causes, but rather than in feelings, morality has its origin in the psychological sphere and the opposing moral attitudes can be explained as those that occur with a sense of satisfaction.
Also for Stevenson moral judgments are of emotional and private nature, but rather than being direct expression of feelings, they refer to "attitudes", to psychological dispositions to approve or disapprove courses of action, and the contrasts between different moral attitudes develop in similar manner to the conflicts that arise in the realm of taste. Against the reduction of moral judgments to emotions, theoretical proposals, such as Hare’s, have tried to re-establish the specific nature of moral language, connecting it to a form of practical rationality.
So, if starting from Principia Ethica of G. E. Moore (1903) research for an ethics free from naturalistic or metaphysical assumptions had begun to ponder on the meaning of moral terms commonly used, with the affirmation of emotivism, this application of the methods of analytical philosophy to ethics is seriously contested. The ethical emotionalism is a significant moment in the way, peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy of the twentieth century, which led to the affirmation of the studies on meta-ethics (at the expense, at least until the sixties, of normative ethics) and of analyses on the moral language .
The emotivism, in the radical formulation drawn by A.J. Ayer, is however a moment of profound criticism of the philosophical path because It supports the lack of meaning of moral statements.
The emotivism in its most complete and radical form consolidates, however, with the publication in 1936 of the work 'Language, Truth and Logic' by A.J. Ayer, a work in which the author, in accordance with the prescriptions of logical positivism, applies to the judgments of ethics and to the expressions of the mysticism the principle of verification.
The criterion used here to test the authenticity of those who present themselves as statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a statement is significant in a factual sense for any given individual, if and only if it knows how to verify the proposition that the statement is intended to express. Specifically, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as true or false.
The ethical emotivism refuses the status of verifiable expressions, and then all those propositions that express command, state of mind, moral convictions; the only propositions with sense are those to which is possible to apply the principle of verification, i.e. those that can be true or false.
The neo-positivist tradition before the Second World War considered the ethical propositions as meaningless, as not attributable to tautologies nor to empirical statements: the emblem of this condemnation is the script 'Language, Truth and Logic' by Ayer. The consequence of such conviction is that ethical propositions are nothing but expressions of feelings or emotions. From these assumptions, Stevenson builds on the ethical emotivism, that he at first distinguishes between empirical propositions and tautologies, on the one hand, and ethical propositions, on the other. While the former has a complete sense and a descriptive meaning, which gives rise to cognitive acts in the listener, the second (ethical one) has also an emotional meaning. In other terms they evoke emotions and feelings in those who listen. So the ethical propositions, despite the absence of descriptiveness, have, in their prescriptiveness, a precise meaning, which is an emotional one. To clarify this distinction, Stevenson uses a rather effective example: if I say "this man is a black", I formulate a proposition having descriptive and, consequently, a cognitive value (in fact, this proposition gives me information about the reality in front of me) . If I say "this is a black man," I formulate an emotional proposition, that rather than describing reality, elicits a negative feeling in the listener.
Then, when I express a proposition like "do so because it is a good deed," I am somehow providing descriptive elements, but end up being reabsorbed in the emotionality: in fact, when I say "do so because it is a good action ", rather than describe reality, I want to persuade you to act in a way which I think is positive. Stevenson insists on the impossibility of descriptive cogency of moral statements: compared to Ayer, he emphasizes the subjectivity of such statements, opening the door to a possible relativistic drift (stemming from the lack of objectivity of moral statements that allow me to define universally what is 'good').
Although very constructive, the road of emotivism is a path not entirely satisfactory. Considering emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that neglects the existence of moral disagreements and does not admit the normative value of evaluations, it incurs in the same charges of reductionism it introduces in relation to other theories. In this way, the emotionalism takes the dead end of reductionism.
[Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo]
The core truth of emotivism was appreciated long ago by David Hume, and before him by Aristotle who said "Intellect alone moves nothing." All the so-called "cognitivists" somehow thought that if Jones accepts some moral proposition ("You ought to do x"), then Jones would actually DO x as a result. But why would he, if the 'ought' had no sort of involvement with Jones's "emotions", feelings, desires, dispositions to act?
That said, the contrast of noncognitivism and cognitivism is pretty much one of those professional dichotomies on which philosophers thrive. But it's a bad contrast, for practical propositions are always, and necessarily, both (as Hume, again, pointed out right at the start of his Inquiry Into the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals). No proposition can be practical if it has NO "descriptive" content. ("Eat this" contains the word 'this', whose referent must be established before the addressee can know what he is supposed to do.) In all the interesting cases, the cognitive network is enormously wide, and in the case of Morals - as Hume points out - it reaches to all men. That is, in morals, we look for principles that reach to everybody. And in order to do so, they must somehow appeal to everyone's interests.
So if emotivism is understood as some enthusiasts originally described it, it's a cmplete nonstarter. But so is cognitivism, as defined by philosophers (that is, the thesis that ethical sentences are entirely descriptive in their meaning. Mind you, you can make the emotional appeal fall out of an ostensibly descriptive construction: is "I like peaches" descriptive? OK, but what it describes is an attitude, and if it is true, it entails that I have that attitude. If that's enough to get us off the ground into our needed "emotionality" then descriptivism is fine, so long as the range of descriptions inludes the very attitudes that emotivists (correctly) perceive to be essential to the business of ethics.
Finally, let us remember that whether our starting premises be of descriptive or of prescriptive form, there is still logic - of getting from one sentence to another. {Cf. hare: "take all the boxes to the station!; "this is one of the boxes" therefore, "take this to the station" is a perfectly valid and obvious essential sort of reasoning in practical matters. When we get to basic morals, the role of fairly abstract, extremely general reasoning, becomes properly prominent.
So the answer to the question "Why reduce the ethical discourse solely or primarily to an emotional issue?" is that we don't do any such thing; but on the other hand, we have to recognize that ethics is practical, and therefore must have a core that "engages the emotions" (construed broadly.)
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All Answers (5)
2nd Feb, 2016
Constantine Jeannacopoulos
Moral Cognitivism (“C” henceforth) and Non-cognitivism (“NC” henceforth”) are opposing positions taken in the debate on moral judgments and what they are about. Both C and NC are concerned with the mental side of what we might wish to call the “mind and world framework” in ethics. They belong to metaethics as opposed to normative ethics and metaethics, in turn, can be characterised briefly by the type of questions it is asking. In metaethics we do not ask what we should do and why but we ask questions about these questions.
In the light of later developments in metaethics NC it is initially unclear whether Stevenson means to be asserting a hybrid view according to which ethical statements have both descriptive and emotive meaning where the latter is more important or a pure NC view according to which ethical statements do not assert anything but deploy a relativistic content to purely emotive effect. Stevenson argues that his emotivism does better than interest theories at his three broad desiderata on an account of the meaning of ‘good’.
First, it can make sense of the intelligibility of disagreement in judgments about what is good. Stevenson conceives of this not as a dispute about who is interested in what, or as a dispute about any factual matter, but rather as a dispute in interests themselves. Second, it can make sense of the “magnetism” of statements about what’s good. Finally, Stevenson’s emotivism does not treat statements about what is good as verifiable by the empirical method alone. This is because they are not seen as primarily expressing beliefs, which could be verified by the empirical method alone, but rather some admixture of affective states such as feelings, emotions, interests, etc.
Stevenson distinguishes descriptive uses of language from what he calls “dynamic” uses of language. The descriptive use of language is to record, clarify, and communicate beliefs. The dynamic use of language is to accentuate feelings, create moods, and incite people to action; he doesn’t define “meaning” in such a way that the meaning of a sentence varies with dynamic use, since that would imply that, in each new situation where different dynamic purposes prevail, the sentence changes its meaning. As he recognizes, the notion of “linguistic meaning” is only useful if it is relatively stable across different situations of the use of a sentence. Because of this, Stevenson defines the notion of “emotive meaning” as something like the stable core of the dynamic meaning of a word.
These considerations lead us to realism and antirealism. Realism and antirealism are concerned with the world side of the mind and world framework. For the realist there are opinion independent moral properties and facts, which can make moral judgments true and false. The antirealist denies this. Realist positions often go along with cognitivist positions, they often subscribe to strong cognitivism and to the claim that some moral judgments are true. Realism can of course be combined with skepticism. And there are strong cognitivists for whom moral judgments are always false. They subscribe to the so-called ”error theory” which shall be discussed below. Finally, weak cognitivists usually are antirealists.These result basically into two main variants of realism, namely non-naturalism and naturalism.
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2nd Feb, 2016
Harry Friedmann
Bar Ilan University
Is there a study of of why emotivism differs from one culture to another, a meta-emotivism? This could provide a cognitive ground for emotivism usually considered as non-cognitive. I think that survival is a cognitive factor for judging the moral standards of a culture. Corrupt societies or criminally aggressive societies do not survive.
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2nd Feb, 2016
Jan Narveson
University of Waterloo
[Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo]
The core truth of emotivism was appreciated long ago by David Hume, and before him by Aristotle who said "Intellect alone moves nothing." All the so-called "cognitivists" somehow thought that if Jones accepts some moral proposition ("You ought to do x"), then Jones would actually DO x as a result. But why would he, if the 'ought' had no sort of involvement with Jones's "emotions", feelings, desires, dispositions to act?
That said, the contrast of noncognitivism and cognitivism is pretty much one of those professional dichotomies on which philosophers thrive. But it's a bad contrast, for practical propositions are always, and necessarily, both (as Hume, again, pointed out right at the start of his Inquiry Into the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals). No proposition can be practical if it has NO "descriptive" content. ("Eat this" contains the word 'this', whose referent must be established before the addressee can know what he is supposed to do.) In all the interesting cases, the cognitive network is enormously wide, and in the case of Morals - as Hume points out - it reaches to all men. That is, in morals, we look for principles that reach to everybody. And in order to do so, they must somehow appeal to everyone's interests.
So if emotivism is understood as some enthusiasts originally described it, it's a cmplete nonstarter. But so is cognitivism, as defined by philosophers (that is, the thesis that ethical sentences are entirely descriptive in their meaning. Mind you, you can make the emotional appeal fall out of an ostensibly descriptive construction: is "I like peaches" descriptive? OK, but what it describes is an attitude, and if it is true, it entails that I have that attitude. If that's enough to get us off the ground into our needed "emotionality" then descriptivism is fine, so long as the range of descriptions inludes the very attitudes that emotivists (correctly) perceive to be essential to the business of ethics.
Finally, let us remember that whether our starting premises be of descriptive or of prescriptive form, there is still logic - of getting from one sentence to another. {Cf. hare: "take all the boxes to the station!; "this is one of the boxes" therefore, "take this to the station" is a perfectly valid and obvious essential sort of reasoning in practical matters. When we get to basic morals, the role of fairly abstract, extremely general reasoning, becomes properly prominent.
So the answer to the question "Why reduce the ethical discourse solely or primarily to an emotional issue?" is that we don't do any such thing; but on the other hand, we have to recognize that ethics is practical, and therefore must have a core that "engages the emotions" (construed broadly.)
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2nd Feb, 2016
Constantine Jeannacopoulos
"INTELLECT ALONE MOVES NOTHING"
Augustine says, “The intellect flies ahead, the desire (affectus) is late or non-existent; we know the good,but we do not desire to act.” But this would not be the case if the will were moved by the intellect; for amoveable thing’s movement follows upon the mover’s motion. Therefore, the intellect does not move the will.
The intellect is related to the will as that which exhibits what is desirable
(demonstrans appetibile), in the way that the imagination exhibits what is desirable to the sentient appetite. But in exhibiting what is desirable, the imagination does not move the sentient appetite; in fact, sometimes we are related to what we imagine in the way that we are related to things that are shown to us in a picture and which, as De Anima says, we are not moved by. Therefore, neither does the intellect move the will.
It is not the case that the same thing is both mover and moved with respect to the same thing. But the will moves the intellect; for we engage in intellective understanding when we will to.
"The prime mover is the Will"
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6th Jun, 2016
Marcia Ricci Pinheiro
IICSE
Prof. Tucci, I think that ethics nowadays is compatible with what a fellow called 'ethics of thieves' without actually being compatible, like it is just an approximation: We make use of conventions that little or nothing have to do with morality. For instance, in T & I, we talk about common sense. Even though what is moral is usually reasonable, logical, and well founded, and can still probably be scientifically proven to be the best choice, not all that is ethical is moral. For instance, in Brazil, the T & Is must protect the interest of their clients during an interpretive session. In Australia, they must tell the absolute truth to the other party. One of these choices has to be immoral at least sometimes. Yet, both of them are logical, rational, and well founded.
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