Special Lecture on Ethics
Week 11
Historical Background 1
The 1st half of the 20th C witnessed a revival of philosophical interest in the workings of language. Philosophers began to reflect upon the various ways in which language can be used.
(i) Surely, language is NOT merely an instrument for the making of statements.
(ii) Language CAN BE used to issue commands, make requests, give expression to emotions, and perform rituals. ...
One of the most important metaethical positions to develop in this period is called EMOTIVISM.
Historical Background 2
1. The emotivists wanted to emphasize that moral language is often accompanied by strong emotions.
Ex) When a rabid organic gardener denounces the use of persistent insecticides, he is likely to have strong negative feelings toward the use of such chemicals.
2. Moral language is often intimately associated with action.
Ex) ...when the organic gardener denounces the use of insecticides, he is trying to persuade other gardeners to stop using such chemicals.
Historical Background 3
In general, emotivists felt that moral judgments are used
Insofar as an utterance merely "gives vent" to an emotion, or commands, IT HAS NO TRUTH VALUE.
Radical Emotivism (hereafter: RE)
Why to be a radical emotivist?
Reason 1: There is simply no viable alternative to radical emotivism. On the one hand, many philosophers were convinced that every form of naturalism is false; perhaps they were persuaded by Moore's open q argument. On the other hand, they were also convinced that nonnaturalism is untenable; if it were true, then goodness would be such a mysterious property.
Reason 2: According to the verifiability criterion of meaningful-ness, a sentence is meaningful only if it expresses something that can be SHOWN TO BE TRUE (verified) or SHOWN TO BE FALSE (falsified) on the basis of empirical observations.
RE: Verification Criterion
Consider this sentence:
(1) Pain is evil.
What sort of observations would verify or falsify (1)? We certainly cannot verify (1) by undergoing some pain and finding out that we do not like it. Such a procedure might tend to verify the proposition that we do not like pain, but it would not show that pain is evil.
In general, it may seem that moral sentences cannot be verified or falsified empirically. (=P1 on the next slide)
RE: Lack of Cognitive Meaning
P1. Moral sentences cannot be verified or falsified empirically.
P2. A sentence is cognitively meaningful only if it can be verified or falsified (empirically).
C. A moral sentence is not cognitively meaningful.
Is P2 true? Consider this sentence:
(Q) P but I do not know that P.
S1. Assume: I know Q.
S2. I know P, but I also know that I do not know P. (Distrib.)
S3. I know P but I do not know P. (Factivity)
S4. Absurd.
S5. So I cannot know Q; thus, it cannot be shown that Q is true.
So the verificationist criterion appears to be false.
RE: Semantic Categorization
RE: Expressive and Imperatival
According to radical emotivists, sentences such as
(2) Pain is intrinsically bad
are cognitively meaningless. Indeed, they are alleged to have both EXPRESSIVE and IMPERATIVAL emotive meaning. Thus, we might try to rewrite (2) as
(2') Pain! Ugh! Please hate pain.
Compare:
(2") I hate pain.
(2') EXPRESSES pain. (2") DESCRIBES pain.
RE: Expressive and Imperatival
(2")
is cognitively meaningful,
can be verified or falsified, and
is either true or false.
(2')
is only emotively meaning,
cannot be verified or falsified, and
is neither true nor false.
So according to the radical emotivist, sentences of the form "x is bad" are not used to make assertions. Rather they are used primarily to give vent to, or express, negative emotions, and to command others to have similar emotions.
RE: Quasi-def. of "x is good (bad)"
Since sentences of the form "x is good" allegedly have no cognitive meaning, we cannot hope to provide a precise account of their cognitive meaning!
Instead of defining "x is good," radical emotivists must be content to formulate an account of its emotive meaning:
RE: Sentences of the form "x is good (bad)" have no cognitive meaning. They are used (i) to express positive (negative) emotions, and (ii) to command others to feel similar emotions.
RE: No-Conflict Argument 1
P1. If radical emotivism is true, then there are no moral conflicts.
P2. There are moral conflicts.
C. Therefore, radical emotivism is not true.
A moral conflict is possible only when one person affirms some proposition P, but another person denies P.
However, if radical emotivism is true, then P has only emotive meaning, and so one cannot affirm or deny P, which makes a moral conflict impossible with respect to P. Therefore, P1.
RE: No-Conflict Argument 2
A. J. Ayer claims that P2 is false. According to him, there can be no conflicts in moral cases, since there are no moral beliefs.
Ayer attempts to explain why it so often appears that moral conflict is occurring.
According to him, when there appears to be a moral dispute, what is really happening is that the disputants are arguing about some factual matter.
Ex) I say "Thrift is good" and you say "Thrift is bad." In this case, we are not arguing about whether thrift is good or bad, but perhaps about whether thrift brings about happiness or unhappiness, a factual matter.
RE: 1st Rabbit Argument
Suppose that a person observes a rabbit in a trap. Feeling very great horror at the thought of the rabbit's pain, the person says:
(3) It was a bad ting that the little animal should suffer so.
Suppose that in time the person calms down, and in fact no longer has any strong feelings about the rabbit trap. Now we ask him what he thinks of the pain the rabbit endured, and he says:
(4) It was a bad thing that the little animal should suffer so.
Since the person feels no strong feeling when he utters (4), it could not have been used to give vent to any emotions.
RE: 1st Rabbit Argument
P1. If radical emotivism is true, then (4) has neither cognitive nor emotive meaning.
P2. If (4) has neither cognitive nor emotive meaning, then (4) has no meaning at all.
P3. But (4) obviously has some meaning.
C. Therefore, radical emotivism is not true.
RE: 2nd Rabbit Argument
P1. If radical emotivism is true, (4) doesn't mean the same as (3).
P2. (4) does mean the same as (3).
C. Therefore, radical emotivism is not true.
To see why P1 is plausible, note that
when (3) was being uttered,
the person was feeling intense emotion, but
when (4) was being uttered,
the person was feeling no or less intense emotion.
Hence, the emotions that were being given vent were different at those times. Hence, P1.
RE: No-Argument Argument
Argument A.
P1. Every action of charity is good.
P2. This is an action of charity.
C. Therefore, the action is good.
Argument B.
P1. Tootie frootie.
P2. This is an action of charity.
C. Therefore, a rootie.
RE: No-Argument Argument
P1. If radical emotivism is true, Argument A is no more valid than Argument B.
P2. But Argument A is valid while Argument B is not. (Argument B is a non-sense.)
C. Therefore radical emotivism is not true.
P1 is true because P1 and C of Argument A lack truth-values and so cannot make a valid argument, where validity is defined in terms of the relation between truth-values of the premises and conclusion.
Moderate Emotivism (hereafter: ME)
SN: "This is good" means "I approve of this and I want you to do so as well."
This view fails to account for a possible moral conflict between two people.
WM: "This is good" means "I approve of this; do so as well."
According to this view, any sentence in the form of "x is good" includes an imperative component.
As such, we can expect that a sentence, "x is good," will arouse a stultifying effect in the listener's attitude, but it doe not. So we need a better analysis of "x is good."
ME: the 1st Pattern of Analysis
FPA: For any person S, if S says "x is good," then S means what S would mean if S were to say, in such a way as to evoke a favorable response in his hearer, "I feel moral approval for x."
ME: No-Conflict Argument
Suppose Smith says
(A) Idleness is bad
and Jones says
(B) Idleness is good.
According to ME, Smith's statement means the same as:
(A') I, Smith, feel moral disapproval for idleness (said in such a way as to evoke an unfavorable response)
and Jone's means the same as:
(B') I, Jones, feel moral approval for idleness (said in �such a way as to evoke a favorable response).
Clearly, (A') and (B') may both be true. According to ME, there is no conflict between Smith and Jones, which sounds counter-intuitive. Against this charge, Stevenson claims that there might be a DISAGREEMENT IN ATTITUDE between Smith and Jones.
ME: the 2nd Pattern of Analysis
SPA: "This is good" has the meaning of "This has qualities or relations x, y, z..." except that "good" has as well a laudatory emotive meaning that permits it to express the speaker's approval, and tends to evoke the approval of the hearer.
The 1st difference between FPA and SPA:
The 2nd difference between FPA and SPA:
ME: the 2nd Pattern of Analysis
The problem: According to Stevenson, a person is allowed to use "x is good," sometimes, in the sense of FPA, and other times, in the sense of SPA.
Furthermore, SPA confers far too many meanings to "x is good."
Feldman, however, points out that this makes it impossible, or at least difficult, to learn the meaning of a moral sentence.
SUMMARY