The woes of Anti-Realism: Against Emotivism
A first and obvious objection is that Emotivism relies on the verification
principle and we have little reason to endorse that principle. In our earlier
discussion of Ayer and Emotivism you were probably wondering when we
would mention the elephant in the room. Now is that moment. Emotivism is
part of the Logical Positivist attack on metaphysics. The elephant is Logical
Positivism itself. Why should we endorse a meta-ethical approach grounded
on a Positivist account of meaning when we have independent reasons to
reject Positivism? Recall from our discussions in Epistemology the problems
that beset the verification principle. If Emotivism relies on such a questionable
theory of meaning, then the argument against Intuitionism based on the
impossibility of empirically verifying moral statements is undermined. While
this does not demonstrate the truth of realism or the falsity of Emotivism, it
certainly counts against the plausibility of Emotivism that a key argument
against non-naturalism is itself based on a faulty theory of meaning.
A second objection is that even if we agree with Stevenson that Emotivism
allows a sense in which moral disagreements are real, it does not adequately
capture the role of reasoning in moral discourse. Our moral thinking is not just
a matter of having attitudes and feelings, but of careful deliberation and
working out what one ought to think or do through the attempt to examine the
(logical) relationships between values and actions. In short, Emotivism does a
bad job of explaining the important role of rational argument in moral practice.
Indeed, since it entails that moral judgements elude assessment in terms of
truth and falsehood, it suggests that rational argument about morals might be
inappropriate, or even impossible. The most I can ever achieve in moral
discussion is to get you to change your attitude, to feel differently to
something.
The whole approach seems to miss out a crucial element in moral thinking –
the offering of reasons why something is good or ought to be done. The critic
of Emotivism insists it is clear that moral argument is not principally concerned
with simply getting others to undergo a change in attitude. The realist has a
neat analysis of moral argument. Its purpose is to converge on the right
answer where that answer is supported by reasons in its favour and
agreement among the parties to the dispute secured by their recognition of the
rational force of those reasons.
Now, the Emotivist might agree that moral argument does involve providing
reasons why others ought to endorse your views. That is the principal way in
which one gets others to come to have a different attitude. The problem here
is that Emotivism seems to allow that any reason at all is acceptable. The
reasons are not offered in support of a claim (e.g. wanton dog-burning is
wrong) that is either true or false. They are presented to induce a change in
attitude (to get you to move from ‘Dog-burning: hooray’ to ‘Dog-burning: boo’.
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For the realist the reasons must support the claim in the sense that they help
to justify it. For example, the fact that burning causes pain and pain typically
brings about unhappiness supports a utilitarian case against dog-burning. The
reasons must be relevant to the claim. The criticism of Emotivism is that there
is no such requirement with Emotivism. Moral argument can become an
exercise in manipulation and mere rhetoric.
We should note that a sophisticated Emotivism may have an answer. It could
be argued that not just any reason will do. If I’m trying to persuade an
audience of anti-Semites to oppose someone’s views on an moral issue, then
Emotivism may still be able to rule out the permissibility of my citing the fact
that this other person is a Jew. Emotivism can be refined so that not just any
attitude is to be counted as a legitimate expression of value or judgement.
Rather, our attitudes must arise from a reasonable and impartial stance.
Again, the basic idea is to be found in Hume:
To pave the way for a sentiment or attitude forming the basis of a moral
judgement - it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should
precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant
comparisons formed, complicated reasons examined, and general facts
fixed and ascertained.1
The question is whether it reasonable for the Emotivist to insist on this kind of
refinement.
Against Expressivism
Theories such as Emotivism and Prescriptivism can be described as
Expressivist theories. Each holds that moral judgements do not report the
facts; they do not represent the world as being one way or the other. Instead
judgements express the speaker’s attitudes or feelings towards something.2
A broader challenge to both expressivist theories is that they fail to analyse
the real logic of moral discourse. The realist points out our moral terms
function just like non-moral terms. They appear to refer in just the same way
as purely descriptive terms. They function in truth-evaluable sentences just
like descriptive terms. They figure in the grammar of conditional statements in
just the same way as descriptive terms – for example: if Bob is a good person,
then he should not suffer.
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Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Perhaps strictly speaking one should talk of the primary meaning or role of a moral judgement as
being expressive. We have seen that both Stevenson and Hare allow that moral judgements contain a
descriptive element.
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Conditionals pose a particular problem for Expressivism.3 Let’s take a
declarative sentence such as:
(1)
Murder is wrong
Now, (1) has the grammatical form of an assertion and as such it can be
evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. In the context of a declarative statement,
the Expressivist analyses this assertion as an expression of feeling.
However, the proposition ‘murder is wrong’ can appear in contexts in which it
does not have the role of an assertion. Consider the conditional statement:
(2) If murder is wrong, then getting your brother to murder is wrong.
In the antecedent (the if-clause) of (2) ‘murder is wrong’ is not being used to
make an assertion. In (2) the speaker is not stating that murder is wrong.
Instead the speaker is presenting a hypothesis about what follows if it is
wrong. In this unasserted context ‘murder is wrong’ it is not used to express
disapproval of murder or a universal prescription against murder.
The Expressivist must allow that we know what is meant by both (1) and (2).
Yet, Expressivism must also hold that the semantic function (meaning) in (2)
of ‘murder is wrong’ must be different from that given for the apparently
straightforward assertion expressed by ‘murder is wrong’ in (1).
Now there is a problem in explaining the apparently valid inference:
(1) Murder is wrong.
(2) If Murder is wrong, then getting your brother to murder people is
wrong.
Therefore:
(3) Getting your brother to murder people is wrong.
If the semantic function of ‘murder is wrong’ differs in (1) and (2), then surely
one is not entitled to arrive at (3). For the argument to be valid the meaning of
‘murder is wrong’ must be the same in each of (1) and (2). To take an
example from Miller we can further illustrate the problem. The above argument
from (1) and (2) to (3) is apparently no more valid than:
(4) My beer has a head on it.
Here I draw on Alexander Miller’s discussion of the Frege-Geach Problem in his entry ‘Realism’,
Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
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(5) If something has a head on it, then it must have eyes and ears.
Therefore:
(6) My beer must have eyes and ears.
This argument is invalid. We are only tempted to think the conclusion follows if
we are insensitive to the reliance on the equivocation between the two senses
of ‘head’, in (4) and (5) respectively.
Ayer tells us that a moral claim is really an expression of feeling or attitude.
Hare explains that underlying the propositional form is a universal prescription.
These analyses leave it puzzling how one can engage in the valid moral
reasoning that we do. The realist does not face this problem. The meaning of
‘murder is wrong’ is stable across both assertoric and non-assertoric contexts.
Moral instances of modus ponens present no special problems. In (1) an
assertion is made about murder. In (2) a claim is made about what follows
from the truth of that assertion. Granted the truth of (1), (3) follows.
It looks like one can possess a full understanding of the meaning of and
engage in moral discourse without having a commitment to Expressivism.
Given the surface form of our moral talk we should be careful not abandon the
obvious analysis. That is, that it is genuinely propositional in nature. That
provides the clearest explanation of the way in which our moral terms function.
However, it is not yet an argument for realism. Indeed, before moving on to
examine how realism might be plausibly articulated we need to return to an
objection to non-naturalism.
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