MF Emotivism essay

[Horse]

"I approve of x, do so as well" is all that is conveyed in moral judgements.

The view expressed in the title is the central thesis of the ethical theory known as Emotivism. Stephenson put it most succinctly by stating that all moral judgements take the form, 'I approve of X; do so as well.' There are two parts to this formulation. Hare called the first the expressive aspect and the second the causative aspect. In this post I will seek to show that there is little reason to accept either part, or indeed the theory as a whole and so there is little justification for the claim in the title. Firstly I will analyse the expressive aspect.

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. This is an important distinction if one wishes, with the Emotivists, to claim that the meaning of ethical sentences is primarily emotive. One can say that one has an attitude without expressing that attitude and equally one can express an attitude without stating it. For example, I can say that I am unhappy with the last sentence I wrote or I could shout, 'That's stupid.' In the first instance I have stated a feeling, in the second I have expressed that feeling.

Ayer too rejected this formulation pointing out that it leads towards subjectivistic naturalism. He made it clear that expression of emotion was the vital point. In fact Ayer used the word 'evince' as a synonym of express to clarify the way in which the word express was being used. One could claim that whenever we speak we are expressing our meaning and in this sense any speech act becomes an expression, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is not what was intended. Therein lies an initial problem of Emotivism, not just the ambiguity of the phrase 'express disapproval,' ( I will expand this shortly) but, on a more practical note, the problem of ascertaining whether any given bit of language expresses emotion or otherwise.

The emotivist's insistence that meaning is contained only in the duality of 'a priori' statements and 'matters of fact' would seem to require the emotive theory to provide positive evidence that the language of ethics is emotive. If it cannot do this there is little reason to accept it. To claim, for example, that the phrase 'woman who engages in sexual activity for money,' carries little emotive meaning while the word, 'prostitute,' does and 'whore' even more so, begs the question, "how can you tell?" Even if we were to accept that such a test were possible by a system of measuring bodily reactions to different words, it would still remain to be shown that the connection is directly causal. One might, for example, have been called a prostitute as an insult at some time in the past and this may cause the arousal of anger upon hearing the word which others may not feel. 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.

The 'principle of verifiability' which forms the cornerstone of both Logical Positivism and its offspring, Emotivism, creates problems for the Emotivist in another way. Paul Edwards sums up the claim thus, "Clearly the meaning of ethical sentences is primarily emotive . . . .for when two people dispute about some ethical statement they are disagreeing in attitude rather than in belief . . . . (it follows that) the ethical sentence expresses an attitude rather than a belief."

Once again it is difficult to see how the Emotivist would substantiate this position with empirical evidence. The usual answer is that two people can disagree upon the ethical question even when in possession of all the facts. But, what does 'all the facts' involve? If the Emotivist claim that there is no logical reasoning behind ethics is to be maintained then he must allow that any fact could be relevant and so the two people must know every fact in the universe to be in possession of all the facts. That seems absurd.

Appeal to 'a priori' logic will not help here either as an Emotivist could not consistently claim that an ethical question could remain logically undecided when all the logically relevant facts are known, simply because he has denied the logical relevance of ethical thinking in the first place. It is important to note here that Ayer did not see the emotive theory as a dependant upon the verifiability principle claiming that even without it this was still the best theory so far, but the force of this critique remains as it is difficult to be satisfied with a theory simply because one sees no other option.

Having tried to show that Emotivism faces the same problems as logical positivism in failing to subject itself to its own verification principle I want to look again at the phrase 'express approval' in the light of my previous examination of the express part, as this leads directly to the second aspect of the emotive theory which Hare described as the 'causative' or 'verbal shove' theory.

If to say 'x is right' is to express approval we have said little about what right actually means without looking more closely at the word 'approval.' A dictionary definition is that approval is the 'action of declaring good' which seems to make it primarily a speech act rather than an attitude. This being the case we need to ascertain what the purpose of the speech act is and here we come to the view of Stephenson and Ayer reflected in the essay title. Namely that this speech act is intended to induce feelings or attitudes or to influence the conduct of others. In this way if moral words are expressions of approval or disapproval the expressive meaning joins with the causative meaning in that we express for a cause.

Firstly this seems not to be a necessary aspect of the statement 'x is good. ' For example when I read recently that someone had swindled a charity of to the tune of 30000 I exclaimed, "That's totally wrong!" Clearly, as there was no-one else around, I had no intention of influencing anyone. I was venting emotion for its own sake and making a moral judgement but not for any external cause.

More importantly it would seem to be a mistake to say (as Ayer and Stephenson do) that the "essential function of moral statements (what gives them their meaning) is to get people to do something." Hare gives the example of a pacifist drafted into the army who asks whether he ought to obey the call up. If I reply "Yes you ought" I might merely be giving advice and not trying to influence or induce him to do so. While Hare takes this further and shows that the meaning of imperatives cannot be explained by their desired influence upon others it is sufficient to realise in this context that it is quite possible for the phrase 'x is good' to serve purposes other than those allowed by emotivism.

To take this further it is difficult to see how telling someone what they ought to do is the same as getting them to do it. It is not even clear that it is the same as trying to get them to do something. For example I might say to my young nephew, " It would be wrong for you to look behind the curtain," knowing full well that his curiosity will be aroused sufficiently for him to sneak a look and find a present I have strategically placed there. My intention was for him to look but this is not relevant to the meaning of the words. The point here is that the 'getting' is a function of the sentence and so cannot be used to explain its meaning. The essential meaning must be elsewhere, contrary to the claims of the emotivist.

In this post I have tried to show that the statement in the title is flawed firstly because it makes unverifiable claims and secondly because if the meaning is located in the first part of the formula (the expressive part) it is not clear what is meant by 'approval' or 'express' without appealing to the second part of the formulation (the causative part). 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 .


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