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Philosophy and the Arts, Lecture 34:. “Emotivism”. Sorry, but we have to begin with the history of Moral Philosophy. Prior to the 20 th century, most philosophers (including Henry Sidgwick here) would have assumed that moral judgments are statements, stating facts (or falsehoods).
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Philosophy and the Arts,Lecture 34: “Emotivism”
Sorry, but we have to begin with the history of Moral Philosophy. Prior to the 20th century, most philosophers (including Henry Sidgwick here) would have assumed that moral judgments are statements, stating facts (or falsehoods). But what kind of facts could they be?? History of Moral Philosophy
There was a group in Vienna that argued that if a sentence is to be cognitively meaningful, it must be verifiable. And how do you verify value judgments—by sense experience?? You don’t, they said. So they claimed such “judgments” are not statements at all, only nonsense. Their leader was Moritz Schlick, and they were known as the “Vienna Circle.” Moritz Schlick and Erkenntnis
Ayer was a young man when he visited the Vienna Circle, was convinced, and wrote Language, Truth, and Logic. He claimed value judgments were really emotive outbursts, e. g. “Wow!” “Oh, Heck!” Enter A. J. Ayer!
Isn’t that subjectivism? • Not really, Ayer claimed. • ‘Subjectivism,’ in his sense, takes such sentences as “X is good” to mean “I like X.” • Such sentences are statements about my mental states, and are thus capable of being true and/or false. “Wow!!” is not.
I think Hume was a subjectivist in Ethics, and Thomas Reid found 2 problems, more than 200 years ago: First, there is no rule of language by which “This is good” can be translated into a statement about me—”I like…” What’s wrong with subjectivism??
Two hundred years?? • Second, if I say “This is good,” and someone wishes to contradict me, it would sound odd for them to do so by saying, “No, you don’t.” • Also, Ayer’s view has the rather peculiar implication that we cannot have real disagreements in value judgments, since they cannot be contradicted.
Enter Charles L. Stevenson… • In his Ethics and Language, and many papers, Stevenson defended Emotivism, but claimed we have more than one kind of disagreement. We have: • (1) Disagreements in belief, in which we disagree about the facts of the case… • (2) Disagreements in attitude, in which we disagree in emotive response (you want to watch football; she wants a movie…)… • How do we settle disagreements in attitude??
Remember Hank Jr’s “Attitude adjustment?” • We might settle them by appealing to facts, but we might also use dire threats or sugary persuasions. • Stevenson says that in such cases, the reasons are psychologically, rather than logically, related to their conclusions. • But are they then reasons at all??
Still, Emotivism seems to work in Aesthetics—isn’t this awesome??
So what’s wrong with Emotivism?? • Emotivism has many faults; I list only two: • First, as Urmson showed in his excellent essay, often evaluation is a matter of applying “grading labels.” Imagine an apple-packer picking out “extra-fancy” apples (much better than “good,”) using a list of government-supplied criteria (Imagine the guy screaming “Wow!! Extra Fancy!!” and then “Ugh…merely good”).
“Go thou, and do likewise…” • Clearly, the apple-packer’s job is usually done without passion. I rather suspect that judging art shows and “talent” shows is, too. • Second, as Peter Kivy has argued, emotivism sounds good (up to a point) in ethics, because the reason we emote loudly against theft, or terrorism, is that we want to discourage those actions. • But there is no similar implicit call to action in aesthetics, so Emotivism loses its point in this area—doesn’tit??
