Emotivism.md

Emotivism

Beliefs usually doesn't motivate us, but moral statements do. Maybe that is because they are a form of emotion expression not beliefs (non-cognitivism).
If moral statements are actually expression of emotions, then it will be trivial (comparing with other theories) to explain its inherent connection with motivations.

Initial problem of emotivism

However while emotions can capture the motivational aspect of morality, it doesn't fit well with other features of the moral language:

Moral language seems to have truth-aptness

But emotions itself cannot be true or false.

Moral seems to be objective

Moral seems to be subjected to rational criticism

Morality seems to have authority on others

Ayer's verfication principle believes that a statement is meaningful iff it can be empirically verify or analytically true

It is the same as logical positivism

1. Empirically verfiable examples: There will be rain tomorrow
2. Analytically true examples: All female fox are vixen

Meaningless statement

1. God is love
2. Time is unreal
3. There is a ghost that can't be detected behind you
4. Platonic Forms exists

OQA and Logic Positivism leads to non-cognitivism

Because OQA shows that morality are irreducible to natrualistic, verifiable things or analytically true things except for "good",

and unverifiable things has no meaning. (Verificationism)

It leads us to non-congitivism.

Ayer's emotivism

Moral judgements are expression of emotions towards a certain act.

Moral claims doesn't describe the world

description of the world: You take money from me without consent
moral claim: It is wrong that you take money from me without consent

There seems to be no information added to the sentence, both describe the world as they are.
The differences is ONLY the moral claim have a stronger emotion or assertion in it.

Emotivism thinks there is no moral truth

Non-description => no truth-aptness => no true statement

Therefore there is no moral truth

Emotivism thinks there is no moral disagreement

Or moral disagreement is just a clash of emotions

Because moral claims are not claiming about anything.

How to explain why people disagree and have moral debates then ?

Ayer thinks that most of the time we are debating facts more than moral values.
e.g:
"I think abortion leads to great pain therefore it is immoral"
"Actually abortion can be done without great pain so it is acceptable"

Other example: Gun-control

This example shows that when we are having moral discourse we are talking about (or it can be reducted to dispute of)factual, no moral claim.

The appeal of emotivism

No need to deal with Moral queerness and Epistemology argument against realism

IT doesn't have to explain what moral properties are because they don't exist. This makes it a simplier theory

Problem it doesn't have to face/ trivial to face:

1. How moral properties exist or where they exist
2. No epistemology problem: how we know about moral properties

Appeal to motivational internalism

It is trivial to explain why moral claims motivates us.
Because it is widely accpeted that emotions generate desires to motivate us

Problem of emotivism

Logical verficationism sucks

1. Verfication principle is meaningless in its own system
2. It is possible to verify anything (Popper)
3. It is also impossible to falsify a certain statement without falsifying a whole set of beliefs (Quine)
4. Paradigm shift in science (Kuhn)

(google them if want more info)

Why are moral claims meaningful then ?

Expressions itselfs still have to contain the thing that is verifiable in order to be meaningful.
That thing would then be moral feelings.

If moral feelings can't be verified then moral terms can't be meaningful.

How do we verify moral feelings ?

1. There seems to be no universal moral feeling

   1. It is wrong to download books in libgen
   2. It is wrong to commit genocide

   It seems that this two statement conveys two very different emotions, it is not consistent that we can recognize them both as the feeling of moral wrongness

2. Empirical moral actions ?

   What is the identifiable outward manifestations of moral feelings (that is universal)?

Confusion on emotivism

Emotivism is not subjectivism

1. Subjectivism is reporting/describing our own emotions Describing our emotions can be true or false. For example: "I am angry that you have taken money from me without me agreeing" It can be true or false because I can actually be not angry about it.
2. Emotivism says we are not describing our emotions, but expressing it. When I am expressing "RARGHHHH!" It is not describing my own emotions but my expression of anger. Moral judgement is just expression of my emotions towards the act I am "judging"

Therefore Subjectivists thinks moral statement have truth-aptness and therefore cognitivist.

1. Implications ? (My own thoughts)

   Ayer doesn't take the subjectivist approach because OQA say we don't think that moral goodness means I approve. Open questions: Is good means you approve ?

Emotivism is not relativism

Relativism is also cognitive, stating the moral claims are true relative to their moral framework.

Emotivism and truth ?

Does cognitivism really talking about non-truth ? It depends on our theories of truth

Correspondence theory of truth

This is the intuitive theory of truth, to say that something is true is to say that it corresponds to a certain reality.
To say that "It is true that snow is white" is saying: "Snow is white" corresponds to a world that there is whiteness in a (maybe possible too) reality that has snow.

So therefore if we are not describing anything while making moral claims, it cannot correspond to anything(true) or fail to correspond to something(false), therefore it can't have truth-aptness.

Minimalist theory of truth

The notion of true is just a convenient linguistic device.

"Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white
"Snow is white" is false iff snow is not white

Which means that when we say "It is true that killing is wrong" we are saying "killing is wrong" with a form of assertion.

If we hold this theory of truth then emotivism seems to say that our moral talk is talking about truth, then it might be subjugated to attacks towards relativism and even subjectivism.