Meta Ethics - Emotivism

Question 1

What did Hume say about terms like good, bad, right, wrong etc?

Answer 1

They are meaningless and they convey no knowledge. They cannot be verified by empirical evidence.

Question 2

What was the point of Hume’s dead body example?

Answer 2

If we consider the objective facts of a willful murder we will never locate the wrongness of that action by consideration of these facts alone. if moral judgements stated facts then what sorts of observations could we make to prove that “stealing is wrong”?

Question 3

What was Hume’s murder example?

Answer 3

What facts would we see, hear or taste that would identify the wrongness? We may observe a knife thrust into a torso; a brightly lit room; a table with a pool of blood nearby, but where do we observe the wrongness of the act.

Question 4

What is Hume’s murder example saying about ethical terms?

Answer 4

You cannot take ethical terms and claim they are meaningful and verifiable with evidence.

Question 5

What is Hume’s law?

Answer 5

“You can’t get and ‘ought’ from an ‘is’”. What Hume is claiming is that although reason can aid us in deriving factual conclusions from factual premises we cannot ever derive moral conclusions from factual premises.

Question 6

For Hume, what tells us if something is wrong?

Answer 6

The wrongness lies in us. When we see certain actions a feeling or sentiment arise within us and we adopt either a disapproving or approving attitude towards it. Moral approval and disapproval, therefore, it is not a fact about the world but is a matter of our emotional response to a given situation.

Question 7

What type of approach is emotivism?

Answer 7

Not cognitive, meaningless - based purely on emotion

Question 8

What did Ayer believe about ethical statements?

Answer 8

They were meaningless and cannot be verified or falsified because they were simply expressions of feelings. He was a non cognitivist. He believed that ethical statements were nothing more than feelings of approval and disapproval.

Question 9

What did logical positivists say about ethical statements?

Answer 9

Ethical and religious statements cannot be verified or falsified

Question 10

What was Ayer’s Hurrah/Boo theory?

Answer 10

If I say Abortion is wrong then I am simply expressing my feelings about abortion and saying Boot to abortion. If I think that warfare is moral then I am expressing my feeling about warfare and saying hurray to warfare

Question 11

What other purpose did Ayer believe ethical statements have? Support this with a quote.

Answer 11

Believed that these statements were calculated to arouse feelings and stimulate action - “In fact we may define the meaning of the various ethical words in terms both of the different feelings they are ordinarily taken to express, and also the different responses which they are calculated to provoke”.

Question 12

How is Stevenson similar to Ayer?

Answer 12

Thought that ethical statements were meaningless and could not be verified with empirical evidence.

Question 13

What did Stevenson say about ethical opinions?

Answer 13

An ethical opinion is supported by a belief system based upon our own experiences e.g. we may disapprove of euthanasia because we have seen mal practice in the medical profession and therefore hold the belief that euthanasia is wrong.

Question 14

What did Stevenson say about moral terms?

Answer 14

They have a persuasive/emotive force to them i.e. we choose words which try to persuade others to see the error of their ways e.g. rape, fraud.

Question 15

How was Stevenson different to Ayer?

Answer 15

He considered moral statements to express deep rooted beliefs. And, although he thought they were meaningless, he still though they were meaningful to the believer.

Question 16

What is the strength of Emotivism’s approach to language?

Answer 16

It approaches language scientifically, breaking down language into analytic synthetic and meaningless statements which had never been done before.

Question 17

What does Emotivism recognise?

Answer 17

That it is impossible to observe rightness/wrongness in the acts themselves - they cannot empirically defined as good or bad.

Question 18

How does Protagoras support Emotivism?

Answer 18

Claimed that man is the measure of all things because we all have different individual emotive responses to ethics

Question 19

How do Mackie and William Graeme Sumner support emotivism?

Answer 19

Cultural relativism

Question 20

How does Vardy criticise emotivism?

Answer 20

Says it reduces ethics to nothing more than hot air. If I say Murder is wrong and you say murder is right then there is no debate. We are simply speaking a lot of hot air.

Question 21

What does Emotivism do to morality?

Answer 21

Reduces it down to a matter of feelings and this is over simplified e.g. we don’t just believed that 6 million Jews dying in the Holocaust was wrong because we have a bad feeling about it.

Question 22

How does Rachels criticise emotivism?

Answer 22

Said that moral judgements require reasoning or else they are too arbitrary. Rachels is a naturalist.

Question 23

What changed Ayer’s approach to emotivism?

Answer 23

After the WW2, he changed his mind after he saw the devastating consequences of Hitler’s ethical views which were simply his expression of approval of killing.

Question 24

How did Ayer change his views?

Answer 24

He realised that there has to be something more substantial than emotivism in ethics, something by which to judge ethical actions/views by.

Question 25

What is the issue with relativism?

Answer 25

Many philosophers claim that ethics is based on an absolute Good. Once we claim that Goodness does not exist all ethics becomes relative and anything goes. We fall into the post modernist thinking when you can make all sorts of ethical claims and nothing is challenged.

Question 26

How does Macintyre crticise emotivism?

Answer 26

Claimed that the problem with emotivism is it leads to the conclusion that we can use people as a means to an end.

Question 27

Give an example to explain Macintyre criticism.

Answer 27

According to Ayer Hitler thought that killing 6 million Jewish people was his expression of feeling hurrah to killing 6 million Jews - this then meant that he could use the Jews as a means to fulfilling his final Solution, he could use them as a means to an end. This is not virtuous behaviour.

Question 28

What is the impact of emotivism on making moral judgements on other people?

Answer 28

You can make no moral judgements on other people. As moral statements are just matters of opinion and set out to persuade others. This also means that we use people to persuade them that our way of thinking is right. Our moral judgements are not based upon what is right for people. This does not make for a very virtuous person.