3.1.14: Objections to Emotivism

Despite early popularity, Emotivism is not a popular position today and it is widely considered to be an unduly and unhelpfully simplistic form of Non-Cognitivism. We consider three objections here.

Firstly, on a psychological level, Emotivism is unlikely to feel correct. When I suggest that a certain action is right or wrong, I take myself to be making a claim that is true and making a claim that reflects how I take the world to be (reflecting a moral belief in my head). I do not consider myself to be booing an action in a rather academic and indirect way. We might question whether abstract philosophising about the meaning of words should ever trump our own psychological reflections when it comes to what we mean when we utter moral sentences. Can it be the case that Ayer or Stevenson knew better than I what I meant when I said that “terrorism is morally wrong”? Can they know better than you, if you take yourself to be making truth-apt and descriptive moral judgments?

Secondly, some of our moral utterances do not seem to be in the least part emotional. For example, Charlotte may feel that “it is wrong to avoid paying tax” but be quite depressed about this judgment. If we were cognitivists, this emotional divorce could be easily explained; Charlotte believes there to be a moral fact that is independent of her mind and her desires and this fact depresses her. However, it is not immediately obvious how Emotivism might explain Charlotte’s “boo to avoiding tax” when she harbours a desire to avoid tax herself. Perhaps we can have second-order emotions about our emotions (Charlotte is sad that she feels negatively towards tax avoiding), or perhaps Charlotte feels that others should not avoid tax — boo them — while she is happy act in this way — hurrah for her own tax avoidance. However, both of these responses require careful statement and defence if you seek to pursue them.

Finally, we can return to moral disagreement. Consider a sincere moral disagreement between William and Wendy over the issue of euthanasia. Wendy says that euthanasia is morally right in at least some cases, whilst William says that euthanasia is morally wrong in all circumstances. William and Wendy may seem to be disagreeing via utilising logic and reason just as scientists, or economists, or computer technicians, disagree over a substantively correct answer that is independent of their own minds.

However, once the facts of matter are agreed upon the emotivist must reduce this disagreement to a series of emotional boo’s and hurrah’s regarding euthanasia, where truth is never the aim of the moral utterances. Suggesting that moral debates are always emotive rather than factual, and so are swayed only by emotional rather than rational means, is a controversial claim given that moral reasons seem to be deployed very carefully in just such debates. Indeed, the emotivist explanation of moral debate seems to suggest moral arguments have more in common with arguments over which ice-cream flavour is best (boo for chocolate, hurrah for vanilla) than with truth-based disagreements in other academic disciplines. If this is not how we believe moral debates should be described, then Emotivism has a problem. As Richard Brandt suggests “Ethical statements do not look like the kind of thing the emotive theory says they are”. Brandt, as per the above discussion, feels that moral utterances are things we take to be truth-apt, contra the emotivist interpretation of those moral utterances.

The previous objection to Emotivism may seem to highlight possible links between Emotivism and moral relativism. But do not be deceived. Recall from Chapter 1.1 that relativists, as opposed to absolutists, hold that no moral claim is ever absolutely true in all circumstances. As a specific type of relativist, the cultural relativist may suggest that the claim “murder is wrong” can be true in some cultural settings and false in others depending on the different cultural standards for behaviour. Thus, there may be some suggestion that Cultural Relativism and Emotivism have the same set of grounding beliefs — no absolute moral truths exist and moral expressions reflect the culturally backed emotions of particular speakers, rather than anything more absolutely and mind-independently true.

However, this is a mistake. Contra Emotivism, cultural relativists do tend to believe in a form of realist moral truth, even if such relativists do not hold that absolute moral truths exist. Whilst the cultural relativist may admit that ethical judgments often reflect personal and culturally supported emotions, they define goodness as a genuine property that is determined or fixed in nature by the cultural standards of a given society.

Thus, if “murder is wrong” is a true relative to my culture, then it is still true. I am, therefore, mistaken if I claim that “murder is acceptable”, at least within the boundaries of my society even if not in the societies of others. This truth is non-absolute and relative to culture, but the cultural relativist accepts that it exists and that our moral statements attempt to describe such truths. On the other hand, the emotivist, obviously, does not accept that our moral statements are such attempted descriptions of realist, albeit relativistic, moral truths.