Is emotivism a plausible account of
the nature of our moral judgements?
by Phoebe Walker
In this essay I intend to examine and explore the theory of emotivism put forward
by A.J.Ayer and its development by C.L.Stevenson. I will then consider a number of
objections to the theory such as G.E.Moore’s criticism that it does not seem to allow room for moral disagreement and the Frege-Geach Problem. I will then assess
responses to these objections by Ayer and Simon Blackburn who attempts to salvage
emotivism by offering his development of the theory called Quasi-Realism. I intend
to conclude that although, in theory, Blackburn’s account of quasi-realism doesn’t
seem to adequately respond to the Frege-Geach problem, emotivism can still seem to
account for how we approach and understand morality.
‘What is goodness?’ is a commonly asked question within ethics. There are a number of meta-ethical theories that attempt to answer queries such as this, one of the
most prevalent being emotivism. Emotivism is a meta-ethical theory that states that
moral statements are merely expressions of emotional attitudes and thus do not
express propositions1. A.J.Ayer proposed his own theory of emotivism in the early
20th Century. Ayer claims that one cannot subject an ethical statement to empirical
testing as ethical statements are mere expressions of our personal preference; ‘For
in saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, I am not making any factual
statement...I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments’.2 Therefore, statements
concerning morality cannot be deemed either true or false as they lack any cognitive significance. C.L.Stevenson expanded Ayer’s theory of emotivism. He agreed that
ethical statements express the speaker’s feelings but that there exists an element of
prescriptivism when uttering moral sentences; ‘Your ethical judgement has a quasiimperative force which, operating through suggestion, and intensified by your tone
of voice, readily permits you to begin to influence, to modify his interests.’3 On
1
2
Ayer, A.J. “Critique of ethics and theology” in Ayer writings in philosophy, v.1 language, truth and logic. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan (2003), p.110.
Ibid.
these two versions, emotivism serves to express personal preferences on ethical
issues and to direct one another’s interests. At first glance, emotivism seems like a
commonsensical theory, however, like any theory, it faces a number of objections.
One of the most compelling objections to emotivism is that it does not allow room
for moral disagreement. In Ayer’s book ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ Ayer writes that
G.E.Moore objected to his theory: ‘...if ethical statements were simply statements
about the speaker’s feelings, it would be impossible to argue about questions of value’.4 If I were to say ‘Murder is wrong’ and you to say ‘Murder is right’, all I am really
saying is ‘Boo! to murder’ and you; ‘Hurray! for murder’- we are simply expressing our
approval or disapproval of a certain issue. From this there can follow no discussion or
moral reasoning as it is all a matter of personal attitude, and personal attitudes cannot be deemed true or false. Nevertheless, Moore claimed that it is obvious we engage
in moral disputes every day and emotivism cannot account for this, hence, it must be
flawed.5
This objection, however, need not render emotivism implausible. Ayer responded to
Moore’s objection: ‘...we deny that it does refute even the ordinary subjectivist theory. For we hold that one really never does dispute about questions of value’.6 Ayer
argued that when engaging in an ethical debate we are in fact disputing over facts;
‘But, in all such cases, we find, if we consider the matter closely, that the dispute is
not really about a question of value, but about a question of fact.’7 This shows that
emotivism does allow for ethical disagreement over matters of fact such as, whether
prostitution is one of the main causes of HIV in Asian countries or whether 20 week
old foetuses’ can feel pain or not. As long as a moral discussion involves an objective
and factual belief about the world or a certain issue then there is certainly room for
moral disagreement.
3
Charles Stevenson, “The emotive meaning of ethical terms”, from Darwall, S. Moral discourse and practice : some philosophical approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1997), p.74
4
A.J.Ayer, “Critique of ethics and theology”, in Ayer writings in philosophy, v.1 language, truth and logic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2003), pp.113-114.
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Stevenson, to some extent, agrees with Ayer’s response to Moore. However, he also
claims that moral disagreement can occur due to a ‘disagreement in attitude’.8 For
example, A argues that euthanasia is morally wrong and B argues that euthanasia is
morally right, they disagree with each other as they ‘involve an opposition of attitudes’.9 In this case of euthanasia, Stevenson would state that within their moral
disagreement A and B would then both attempt to modify and redirect one another’s
attitudes to comply with their own.10 This leads Stevenson on to distinguish between
‘beliefs’ and ‘attitudes’.11 A disagreement in belief is one in which A believes that P
and B believes that not-P. Stevenson continues to explore whether these two types of
disagreement (belief and attitude) are related.12 A and B may both share the same attitude to euthanasia whilst their beliefs on euthanasia may conflict, or, they may also
be related in that A’s belief in abortion, the belief that abortion is wrong, is responsible for A’s attitude to abortion, the attitude that allowing abortion is evil.13
In this sense, moral disagreement can occur and does so when A and B are attempting to redirect one another’s interest. When disputing euthanasia A may argue that
there is psychological evidence that patients are likely to change their minds at the
last minute whilst B may claim that there is evidence to prove that it could save the
NHS millions of pounds. In doing so, A and B refer to their beliefs about the world in
an attempt to modify the other’s attitudes on an ethical stance. This may seem to run
parallel with Ayer’s argument that we refer to empirical knowledge when explaining
our moral views and this is the cause of ethical disagreement. To conclude, on Stevenson’s account moral disagreement occurs mainly due to a disagreement in attitudes.
It can be complicated to agree on an issue such as euthanasia because there are many
differing attitudes involved; sympathy towards the family, sympathy towards the
patient, feelings about life and death and so on. It is hard to know which attitudes
should prevail over others and this is one of the main causes of disagreement.
Charles Stevenson, “Kinds of agreement and Disagreement’, in Ethics and Language, 8
London: Oxford University Press (1948), p.3.
Ibid.
9
10
Charles Stevenson, “The emotive meaning of ethical terms”, from Darwall, S. Moral discourse and practice : some philosophical approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1997), p.74
Ibid. 8, pp.2-3
Ibid. 8, p.5
13
Ibid. 8, p.6
11
12
Another convincing objection to emotivism is the Frege-Geach problem put forward by Peter Geach who developed it from the works of Gottlob Frege14. Geach
stated that emotivism fails to account for moral claims that are embedded within
valid arguments. Geach stated that moral claims are typically expressed in the argument form modus ponens:
P1) Bullying is wrong
P2) If bullying is wrong then getting your little brother to bully is wrong
C) Therefore, Getting your little brother to bully is wrong
This modus ponens rule may be written in sequent notation: P, if P then Q, there-
fore Q. Geach argued that emotivists need to explain how they can derive Q from P
if moral sentences are not truth-apt.15 For a modus ponens argument to be valid the
first and second premises must be true in order for the argument to be valid. The
claim ‘bullying is wrong’ stated in P1 and P2 should effectively have the same semantic role, in that the premises must both be truth-apt or a matter of personal attitude;
‘Here, the two occurrences of ‘p,’ by itself and in the ‘if’ clause, must have the same
sense if the modus ponens it not to be vitiated by equivocation...’16 However, in P1
the emotivist would state that the speaker is expressing their disapproval of bullying, whilst in P2 they are stating that disapproval of bullying entails disapproval of
getting your brother to bully.17 Therefore, ‘bullying is wrong’ stated in P1 and P2
have different semantic roles, thus, leading to invalidity. It seems that the emotivist
could either deny modus ponens or admit it is victim to the fallacy of equivocation
under formal logic.18 However, Simon Blackburn argued that this objection, again,
need not be fatal to emotivism.
M. Schroeder, What is the Frege-Geach Problem? In Philosophy Compass, 3: 703–720. doi: 14
10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00155.x (2008) < http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/
philosophy/article_view?article_id=phco_articles_bpl155> [accessed 13th March 2011].
15
Peter Geach, The Philosophical Review , Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 1965) <http://www.jstor.org/
stable/2183123 pp. 449-465 [accessed 13th March 2011]p.463
Ibid.
16
17
Edward Grefenstette, Is Blackburn’s quasi-realism a suitable response to the Frege-Geach problem? (2007) < http://oxford.academia.edu/EdwardGrefenstette/Talks/45/Is_Blackburns_
quasi-realism_a_suitable_response_to_the_Frege-Geach_problem> [accessed 13th March 2011] p.2.
18
Peter Geach, The Philosophical Review Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 1965) <http://www.jstor.org/
stable/2183123 pp. 449-465 [accessed 13th March 2011]p.463
Simon Blackburn offered a response to the Frege-Geach objection in the form of
quasi-realism. Advocates of quasi-realism agree with Emotivism that moral sentences
do not express propositions. Instead, we project our moral attitudes onto the world
as if they were true and correspond to real properties; ‘But we talk as if there were a
truth in that talk, that´s why the quasi. We talk as if there were a reality, a normative
reality, the kind of reality Plato believed in’.19
But how does Blackburn’s theory of Quasi-realism respond to the Frege-Geach problem? If we look back to the problem it was stated that the role of ‘bullying is wrong’
in P1 and P2 have different semantic roles thus leading to the fallacy of equivocation. In an attempt to overcome this Blackburn endeavours to make the two premises
equivalent in order to preserve the validity of the argument.20 Blackburn does this
by claiming that we have attitudes about a particular arrangement of attitudes; ‘...my
suggestion of what we were up to involved taking up an attitude to an involvement
of attitude with attitude...’21 If we recall our previous example: the conditional, ‘If
bullying is wrong then getting your little brother to bully is wrong’, Blackburn says
that here, we are expressing our support for disapproving of bullying whilst simultaneously disapproving of getting your little brother to bully. We are expressing a
positive attitude towards a negative set of attitudes, therefore, the premises play
the same semantic role. So, from expressing our disapproval at P1 we can infer our
disapproval at P2 and thus commits us to C. This in turn, preserves our modusponens reasoning as a particular arrangement of attitudes conveys a constraint of
consistency upon our attitudes.22 But is this response to the Frege-Geach problem
an adequate one?
Robert Hale claimed that Blackburn needs to specify why; ‘approval of making one
attitude ‘follow upon’ another excludes toleration of holding the second attitude
without subscribing to the first’.23 For example, I may approve of volunteering at a
Ibid.p.102-103.
19
20
21
Ibid. 17, p.3-4
Simon, Blackburn, “How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist” in Essays in Quasi-Realism. New York: Oxford UP (1993) p.188
Ibid. pp.193-195
Bob Hale, “Can there be logic of attitudes?” in Reality, Representation and Projection ed. 22
23
by John Haldane and Crispin Wright, New York: Oxford University Press (`1993), p. 343
youth club without thinking it insufferable not to do so. Here, Hale is referring to the
conditional that you may approve of your attitude ‘bullying is wrong’ without thinking it intolerable to get your little brother to bully. So why should the conclusion follow from the premises? Nevertheless, we have discussed in the previous paragraph
that our certain arrangement of attitudes must be consistent and therefore, it would
seem unreasonable to conclude ‘getting your little brother to bully is right’ from the
premises. However, Hale claims that Blackburn needs to explain his expressivist notion of consistency.24 In doing so, Blackburn cannot appeal to moral statements such
as ‘the negative attitude on bullying belongs to the set of positive attitudes that if
bullying is wrong then you must also have the attitude that getting your little brother to bully is wrong’. This is because these statements are descriptive and hence
truth-apt which undeniably conflict with the emotivist theory. Therefore, Hale argues
that the burden is on the quasi-realist to offer a revised explanation of inconsistent
attitudes which do not require truth-apt attitude.25 The quasi-realist must It appears
that the quasi-realist can provide no adequate response to this objection without appealing to concepts that undermine his theory.
In conclusion, Emotivism, to some extent, does seem like a plausible account of the
nature of our moral judgements. It seems reasonable that our moral statements are
expressions of emotional attitudes. Emotivism seems to sufficiently respond to the
problem of moral disagreement argued by Ayer and Stevenson. However, we cannot
overlook the objections that face Blackburn’s theory of quasi-realism. Although, the
theory of emotivism as a whole may not seem an entirely plausible one, its basic
foundations seem to correspond well with the human thought process when making
moral judgements.
24
Edward Grefenstette, Is Blackburn’s quasi-realism a suitable response to the Frege-Geach problem? (2007) < http://oxford.academia.edu/EdwardGrefenstette/Talks/45/Is_Blackburns_
quasi-realism_a_suitable_response_to_the_Frege-Geach_problem> [accessed 13th March 2011] p.6.
25
Ibid., p7
Bibliography
Books
Ayer, A.J. “Critique of ethics and theology” in Ayer writings in philosophy, v.1 language, truth and logic. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan (2003)
Blackburn, Simon, “How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist” in Essays in Quasi-Realism. New
York: Oxford UP (1993)
Hale, Bob, “Can there be logic of attitudes?” in Reality, Representation and Projection
ed. by John Haldane and Crispin Wright, New York: Oxford University Press (`1993)
Stevenson, Charles, “Kinds of agreement and Disagreement’, in Ethics and Language,
London: Oxford University Press (1948)
Stevenson, Charles, “The emotive meaning of ethical terms”, from Darwall, S. Moral
discourse and practice : some philosophical approaches. Oxford: Oxford University
Press (1997)
Websites
Geach, Peter, The Philosophical Review , Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 1965) <http://www.jstor.
org/stable/2183123 pp. 449-465
Grefenstette, Edward, “Is Blackburn’s quasi-realism a suitable response to the FregeGeach problem?” (2007) < http://oxford.academia.edu/EdwardGrefenstette/Talks/45/
Is_Blackburns_quasi-realism_a_suitable_response_to_the_Frege-Geach_problem>
Schroeder, M, ”What is the Frege-Geach Problem? “ In Philosophy Compass, 3: 703–
720. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00155.x (2008) < http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/article_view?article_id=phco_articles_bpl155>