Emotivism is the moral theory based on people’s emotive response to other people, events, situations, principles and viewpoints. An emotive response simply means a person’s feelings about something, therefore, emotivism is mainly about how people feel about something.
According to emotivism, if I said that something was wrong all I’d really be saying is how I feel about the particular issue in question. I could give reasons to support my view, but all I would be doing are providing reasons which appeal to my emotions so that I can back up my original claim.
The core of this theory is that our moral standpoints are derived from basic approval and disapproval. This is why it is something known as the ‘Boo-Hurrah!’ theory:
‘x is wrong’ or ‘I disagree with x’ = ‘Boo!’
‘x is right’ or ‘I agree with x’ = ‘Hurrah!’
It can be said that emotivism is merely based on personal opinion rather than a complex moral theory. If all of our behaviour is based on how we feel and out psychological response to things, how often can we be sure of anything? there must be a stronger case for making out ethical decisions that simply approving and disapproving of certain actions.
The questions that Emotivism left open spurred on scholars to dig deeper and to study the philosophy of meta-ethics more analytically. The original group of philosophers involved in this were known as the ‘Vienna Circle’ - founded by M.Schlick, R.Carnap and O.Newrath in the 1920’s. In 1929, the Vienna Circle published a paper saying that the main objective was to establish the necessary criteria for talking meaningfully about the world. These meta-ethicists are known as Logical Positivists.
Logical Positivism is about establishing the ways in which the truth or falsehood of certain statements can be shown. therefore, if a statement cannot be proved either true or false, it is meaningless. All ethical propositions can be put into three groups: analytical, synthetic or meaningless.
A statement is analytical when both parts of the statement are clearly true because they both contain the means of verifying one truth (e.g. ‘his parents were his mother and father’). Examples of analytical propositions can often be found in Logic and mathematics. Synthetic statements can only be deemed true or false when they can be verified later by empirical evidence. All statements in science are of a synthetic kind because the proposition has to be tested against experience.
According to Logical Positivists, any statements that are neither analytical nor synthetic are therefore meaningless. this doesn’t mean that the propositions are nonsense - it simply means that there is no way that we can verify the truth or falsehood of a statement and so, they fall outside the ambit of a philosophically meaningful statement.
Logical Positivism has a major flaw, and that is that it doesn’t actually determine whether an action is ethical or unethical - it simply groups ethical statements according to the type of language that it contains. It isn’t helpful In reaching a conclusion about whether something is good or bad. Certain ethical statements are deemed to be meaningless, when in everyday terms, they are clearly meaningful. “Killing innocent children is wrong” is meaningless from the point of view of a logical positivist, whereas most people would agree that is was a strong and valid moral statement.
The idea of Prescriptivism was mainly brought about by the works of R.Hare in the 1950’s. He was not so concerned with the motive or instinct behind the speaker’s words but he concentrated more on what the speaker was suggesting. Not only does the prescriptivist pass a moral judgement on something they also prescribe a certain course of action.
Because an action is recommended, it doesn’t work when speaking about an event or situation that has taken place. For example: “it is wrong that Jack the Ripper raped and murdered innocent women” - I can pass a judgement on his actions, but I can’t prescribe a course of action against it happening because it has already happened.
this theory also fails to suggest where our ethics come from. It only states that we pass a judgement and then make a suggestion on what should be done about it. Once again, through prescriptive statements, we’ve merely expressed a personal opinion rather than a black and white absolute.
b) How far do you consider these views can be justified?
All of the meta-ethical theories that I have looked at have shown that moral truth is relative. Most, if not all ethical viewpoints are simply personal opinions rather than absolute moral law. Logical Positivism can to a certain extent say whether something is good or bad - depending on whether it has empirical evidence or blatant truth to support it. Even so, a large portion of important ethical statements are discarded as ‘meaningless’ just because they are not analytical or synthetic. This goes to show that you can never find a way to absolute truth by studying meta-ethics. In a pluralistic society there are bound to be conflicts and overlap when it comes to moral and ethical standards, so I can understand why scholars say that ethical statements are no more than expression of opinion.
