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Topic: Emotivism

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	BBC - h2g2 - What Truth, If Any, Is There In Emotivism?
		Emotivism, however, is the doctrine that preaches that ethical language is always used simply to express feelings, and that there are no cases where it is alluding to something beyond these feelings or some objective truths about morality.
		Emotivism was founded as a direct result of verificationism, which denies that there can be any facts other than those that are a priori and those that are empirically verifiable.
		Attempts to deny emotivism frequently fail to level with the reasoning behind it, and usually fail to show what is meant by an ethical claim, if it is not a reference to some demonstrable fact.
	www.bbc.co.uk /dna/hub/A281954 (1326 words)

	Non-cognitivism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Emotivism, while not necessarily non-cognitive, is generally defended as a non-cognitive theory.
		Statements such as "helping people is good" can be paraphrased as "Hooray for helping people!" A close cousin of emotivism, developed by R.
		A person saying that killing is wrong presumably has some negative emotional reaction when confronted with the concept of killing; the statement of its wrongness can thus be construed as a direct consequence of this reaction.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Emotivism (908 words)

	Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Emotivism
		Emotivism did a bad job of explaining the important role of rational argument in moral practice, however.
		Emotivism entails that someone who asserts (2) expresses hostility towards causing harm.
		If nothing else, emotivism succeeded in making clear how difficult it is to explain the necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation, together with the idea that rational argument plays a central and defining role in moral practice, if the emotions that cause our actions are assumed to be beyond rational criticism.
	www.geocities.com /Athens/Rhodes/3724/Cytrix/cdrom2/Routledge_emotivism.htm (1104 words)

	Ephilosopher :: Philosophical Ethics Forum :: Your thoughts on Emotivism, Non-cognitivism etc. (Site not responding. Last check: )
		I do not see emotivism as requiring one to suspend their moral indignation because it is 'only' emotion.
		If emotivism is true, then a case cannot be made for other ethical theories that escape this trap, as they result from emotion.
		Emotivism does seem hard to falsify, and for some people this is a good enough reason to dismiss it as worthless(the same sort of thing happens with psychological egoism).
	www.ephilosopher.com /phpBB_14-action-viewtopic-topic-2652.html (3406 words)

	Criticism of moral relativism, emotivism and scientism
		NC emotivism should also not be confused with emotivism with the preference of NC (I happen to like acting coherently today, I might change my mind tomorrow, and I certainly won’t suggest that anyone who likes contradicting themselves is better off avoiding doing so).
		Emotivism is the theory that all “should” statements are simply the assertions of preferences or emotions.
		Emotivism can clearly accept there is this non emotive sense of the word, but it becomes more difficult to say that “everyone who uses ‘should’ without a conditional context is simply expressing emotion”.
	eerik.gnn.tv /blogs/24799/Criticism_of_moral_relativism_emotivism_and_scientism (2016 words)

	Reference.com/Encyclopedia/Emotivism
		Emotivism is the non-cognitivist meta-ethical theory that ethical judgments are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another.
		However, positivism is not essential to emotivism itself, perhaps not even in Ayer's form, and some positivists in the Vienna Circle, which had great influence on Ayer, held non-emotivist views.
		He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—saying that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered in normative ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy.
	www.reference.com /browse/wiki/Emotivism (2363 words)

	Taking Emotivism Seriously
		As its title suggests, it is the purpose of this paper to take emotivism seriously--not to defend it in dogmatic fashion, but to consider seriously the possibility that propositions which express moral judgements may be accurately and exhaustively characterized as statements which evince and evoke human emotions.
		I think there are two basic reasons that emotivism seems intuitively true to many people: 1) the apparent lack of any rational criteria for settling ethical disputes in the absence of a shared affective response to matters of fact, and 2) its consistency with theories of biological and cultural evolution.
		Thus, emotivism would seem to hold some attraction for existentialists as well as for moral skeptics in the analytic tradition.{6} Emotivism would seem also to hold some attraction for many of a scientific bent insofar as it would seem to be consistent with theories of biological and cultural evolution.
	www.kheper.net /topics/philosophy/emotivis.html (4528 words)

	Emotivism and Capitalism Revisited: Discourse on Method « Grundlegung
		In a nutshell, it seems to me that the attack on emotivism in moral or political/materialist (it serves some interests) doesn’t actually tell us whether or not emotivism is true.
		Emotivism only cuts the legs out from under such projects that have as their necessary condition something which is incompatible with emotivism.
		Workers might be motivated to end capitalism out of (chains of reasoning which ultimately rest upon) things like, say, the emotions of affection for their children and their co-workers, or outrage at the bloody history of and present actions of the employing class and their lackey.
	grundlegung.wordpress.com /2007/04/29/emotivism-and-capitalism-revisited-discourse-on-method (2152 words)

	[No title]
		Emotivism is a philosophical theory in the realm of ethics.
		With Emotivism, ethical statements are also perceived as emotional attempts to get others to agree with one’s views.
		Emotivism, though, came to prominence in the 1930s with the teachings of A. Ayer.
	www.theologicalstudies.org /emotivism.html (202 words)

	Emotivism
		Stephenson stepped over the boundary between Emotivism and Subjectivism by conflating ‘statement’ with ‘expression.’ ‘I approve of X’ is a statement of psychological fact and not an expression of approval, and it is the expression that is vital to the emotivist theory.
		The presence of emotion is no guarantee that the word has primarily emotive rather than descriptive qualities and so the Emotivist has a problem in establishing his position positively rather than in negative terms as the only escape from intuitionism and naturalism.
		Although emotivism has many positive aspects which I have not had time to go into, the central thesis which this essay addresses seems to be a least very suspect.
	www.shellier.co.uk /emotivism.htm (1198 words)

	Emotivism: An overview and critique (Part 2) - That Religious Studies Website
		Emotivism is a particular view of moral language, grounded in the philosophy of Logical Positivism.
		Furthermore, they continue to overlook this aspect when they write, 'The principle difficulty with Emotivism is that if we accept it as offering the justifiable analysis of moral discourse, then all moral debate becomes, at the end of the day, just so much hot air, and nothing else' (Vardy and Grosch (1999) p.83).
		What Emotivism cannot do is to give any reason why they have this authority, or why one person's moral propositions should be used to stimulate people to act, as opposed to another's.
	www.thatreligiousstudieswebsite.com /Articles/Ethics/Emotivism/emotivism2.html (1964 words)

	Notes on Subjectivism
		According to Emotivism, the original statements are not statements in function; they are not claiming anything.
		Emotivism ignores the role of reason in adjudicating disagreements in desire.
		Thus, emotivism seems based on a false dilemma: it assumes that if a moral judgment expresses my feeling, it can’t also be supported by reason.
	instruct.westvalley.edu /lafave/SUBJ.html (1303 words)

	Emotivism: An overview and critique (Part 1) - That Religious Studies Website
		Information: This is Part 1 of an article exploring the fundamental features of Emotivism (as set out in chapter 6 of A. Ayer's book Language, Truth and Logic (1936)), as well considering some of the developments Charles Stephenson made to this ethical philosophy.
		Emotivism is not so much a moral theory, but a method for understanding the nature of moral propositions (or moral language).
		The Emotive theory of ethics stems from the school of Logical Positivism, whose proponents wanted to ground knowledge in what could be known through experience - or what was logically the case.
	www.thatreligiousstudieswebsite.com /Articles/Ethics/Emotivism/emotivism.html (1811 words)

	Ephilosopher :: Philosophical Ethics Forum :: Utilitarianism and Emotivism? (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Emotivism is baised on personal emotions, which are at hand and can be measured or for our case felt.
		You are confusing what you think gives the most pleasure (emotivism) with what objectively gives the most utility (utilitarianism).
		Instead of having emotivism based on individuals, the "collective emotion" is taken into account.
	www.ephilosopher.com /phpBB_14-action-viewtopic-topic-3750.html (789 words)

	relativismoh
		Emotivism - no badness in rabbit's pain until someone came along and expressed an emotion - there is an actual state of affairs.
		Emotivism would make our original judgement empty of meaning if we restated it when our original feelings had cooled and were no longer present.
		Emotivism would preclude the assessment of attributes as fitting or unfitting with respect to certain acts or effects; if all acts are morally neutral then why should a feeling be fitting or not; worthy of approval or not.
	www.class.uidaho.edu /jcanders/Ethics/relativi.htm (596 words)

	Touchstone Archives: Just Sentiments
		Emotivism “is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference,.
		Yet emotivism was a quite widely held academic philosophy in the first half of this century, and if MacIntyre is correct, it is the implicit philosophy of many ordinary citizens today.
		According to MacIntyre, the chief historical reason for the rise of emotivism is to be found in the failure of modernism to provide a rational justification for the objectivity of value statements.
	www.touchstonemag.com /archives/print.php?id=13-05-026-f (3304 words)

	Ethics 05 - Emotivism
		However, it isn't clear that emotivism explains morality adequately; by denying moral knowledge and moral truth, it seems to water down what morality is. Another problem is that moral judgments, instead of being essentially emotional, go from "very emotional" to "not very emotional." And moral judgments don't always translate plausibly into exclamations.
		Emotivism also would seem to destroy the objectivity of scientific method -- since it would translate "A scientific view is better if it's simpler and explains more" into the exclamation "Hurrah for scientific views that are simpler and explain more!"
		Emotivism claims that, in disputes about basic moral principles, we can't appeal to reason but only to emotion.
	www.jcu.edu /philosophy/gensler/et/et-05-00.htm (438 words)

	Charles Stevenson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		He gave the most sophisticated defense of Emotivism in the post-war period.
		In his The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms (1937), Persuasive Definitions (1938), and Ethics and Language (1944), he developed a theory of Emotive meaning which he then used to provide a foundation for his theory of a Persuasive definition.
		He furthermore advanced emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that sharply delineated between cognitive, scientific uses of language (used to state facts and to give reasons, and subject to the laws of science) and non-cognitive (used to state feelings and exercise influence).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/C._L._Stevenson (195 words)

	Alasdair Macintyre
		Emotivism is a term which you should have come across in AS.
		Or put another way, the first statement is not a fact any more than the second statement is. One of the best known schools of thought which embraced emotivism was Logical Positivism, exemplified in A J Ayers' 'Language Truth and Logic'.
		And talking of that, this is a good example of the way in which emotivism has permeated societal thinking, particularly in the secular nations.
	homepage.ntlworld.com /rsposse/virtueethics2.htm (1562 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: )
		The key to understanding emotivism is to distinguish between (1) propositions, and (2) non-propositional sentences.
		The reason is that emotivism cannot effectively account for the use of reason in ethical decision making.
		A final problem which Rachels notes with emotivism is that it assumes only two alternatives to understanding the meaning of moral terms: first alternative: moral statements are factual propositions (similar propositions about the planets and the stars).
	www.utm.edu /staff/jfieser/vita/teaching/rachstud.txt (4449 words)

	JIMMY AKIN.ORG: Emotivism
		For those who may not be familiar with the term, emotivism is a philosophical interpretation of moral utterances ("Killing is morally wrong," "Compassion is morally praiseworthy") as merely emotive expressions that lack cognitive value.
		Another problem with emotivism is that we often have emotions that are out of synch with our moral convictions.
		May 17, 2005 12:09:01 PM The real problem with emotivism is that people are perfectly capable of such moral statements when they feel the exact opposition -- their mental state is determined by the temptation they are feeling.
	www.jimmyakin.org /2005/05/emotivism.html (1884 words)

	[No title]
		Dynamic purpose lies outside the scope of meaning, and refers to the fact that “there is an important contingent relation between emotive meaning and dynamic purpose: the former assists the latter.
		(6) A possible criticism of the emotive theory of ethics is that its adherents tend to claim that terms like ‘right’ and ‘good’ are given meaning in the emotive theory by their ‘ordinary’ use.
		Emotivism is certainly not to be discarded as a theory of the use of ethical terms, but neither is it to be accepted blindly.
	pegasus.cc.ucf.edu /~stanlick/emotivismpaper.htm (2508 words)

	"After Virtue" by Alasdair MacIntyre
		for what emotivism asserts is in central part that there are and can be no valid rational justification for any claims that objective and impersonal moral standards exist and hence that there are no such standards.
		The appearance of emotivism in this variety of philosophical guises suggests strongly that it is indeed in terms of a confrontation with emotivism that my own thesis must be defined.
		With what I have called characters it is quite otherwise; and the difference arises from the fact that the requirements of a character are imposed from the outside, from the way in which other regard and use characters to understand and to evaluate themselves.
	www.home.duq.edu /~arnett/virtue.htm (4726 words)

	Studies in the History of Ethics: James Edwin Mahon (Site not responding. Last check: )
		That is, “the emotive theory of ethics has its origin in epistemological despair”, since “there is no account of the meaning of ethical utterances hitherto proposed which is epistemologically acceptable, since naturalism is unfortunately false and non-naturalism abhorrent.” (Urmson, 1968, p.
		Both the claim that Ayer would have endorsed the internalist argument for emotivism, if he had been made aware of it, and the claim that the internalist argument was important to Stevenson in arguing for emotivism, I want to argue, are false.
		The internalist argument for emotivism that he used in his 1937 article was borrowed from another philosopher, and Stevenson abandoned this argument in his later writings.
	www.historyofethics.org /082005/082005Mahon.html (7636 words)

	MF Emotivism essay
		Stephenson stepped over the boundary between Emotivism and Subjectivism by conflating 'statement' with 'expression.' 'I approve of X' is a statement ofpsychological fact and not an expression of approval, and it is the expression that is vital to the emotivist theory.
		If the meaning is located in the second part then it is not persuasive because while it is true that many statements are intended to produce the result we want there is no clear reason why all ethical judgements fall into this category.
		Although emotivism has many positive aspects which I have not had time to go into, the central thesis which this post addresses seems to be, at the very least, suspect.
	www.mail-archive.com /moq_focus@moq.org/msg00164.html (1178 words)

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