Meta Ethics - Emotivism Flashcards
(28 cards)
What did Hume say about terms like good, bad, right, wrong etc?
They are meaningless and they convey no knowledge. They cannot be verified by empirical evidence.
What was the point of Hume’s dead body example?
If we consider the objective facts of a willful murder we will never locate the wrongness of that action by consideration of these facts alone. if moral judgements stated facts then what sorts of observations could we make to prove that “stealing is wrong”?
What was Hume’s murder example?
What facts would we see, hear or taste that would identify the wrongness? We may observe a knife thrust into a torso; a brightly lit room; a table with a pool of blood nearby, but where do we observe the wrongness of the act.
What is Hume’s murder example saying about ethical terms?
You cannot take ethical terms and claim they are meaningful and verifiable with evidence.
What is Hume’s law?
“You can’t get and ‘ought’ from an ‘is’”. What Hume is claiming is that although reason can aid us in deriving factual conclusions from factual premises we cannot ever derive moral conclusions from factual premises.
For Hume, what tells us if something is wrong?
The wrongness lies in us. When we see certain actions a feeling or sentiment arise within us and we adopt either a disapproving or approving attitude towards it. Moral approval and disapproval, therefore, it is not a fact about the world but is a matter of our emotional response to a given situation.
What type of approach is emotivism?
Not cognitive, meaningless - based purely on emotion
What did Ayer believe about ethical statements?
They were meaningless and cannot be verified or falsified because they were simply expressions of feelings. He was a non cognitivist. He believed that ethical statements were nothing more than feelings of approval and disapproval.
What did logical positivists say about ethical statements?
Ethical and religious statements cannot be verified or falsified
What was Ayer’s Hurrah/Boo theory?
If I say Abortion is wrong then I am simply expressing my feelings about abortion and saying Boot to abortion. If I think that warfare is moral then I am expressing my feeling about warfare and saying hurray to warfare
What other purpose did Ayer believe ethical statements have? Support this with a quote.
Believed that these statements were calculated to arouse feelings and stimulate action - “In fact we may define the meaning of the various ethical words in terms both of the different feelings they are ordinarily taken to express, and also the different responses which they are calculated to provoke”.
How is Stevenson similar to Ayer?
Thought that ethical statements were meaningless and could not be verified with empirical evidence.
What did Stevenson say about ethical opinions?
An ethical opinion is supported by a belief system based upon our own experiences e.g. we may disapprove of euthanasia because we have seen mal practice in the medical profession and therefore hold the belief that euthanasia is wrong.
What did Stevenson say about moral terms?
They have a persuasive/emotive force to them i.e. we choose words which try to persuade others to see the error of their ways e.g. rape, fraud.
How was Stevenson different to Ayer?
He considered moral statements to express deep rooted beliefs. And, although he thought they were meaningless, he still though they were meaningful to the believer.
What is the strength of Emotivism’s approach to language?
It approaches language scientifically, breaking down language into analytic synthetic and meaningless statements which had never been done before.
What does Emotivism recognise?
That it is impossible to observe rightness/wrongness in the acts themselves - they cannot empirically defined as good or bad.
How does Protagoras support Emotivism?
Claimed that man is the measure of all things because we all have different individual emotive responses to ethics
How do Mackie and William Graeme Sumner support emotivism?
Cultural relativism
How does Vardy criticise emotivism?
Says it reduces ethics to nothing more than hot air. If I say Murder is wrong and you say murder is right then there is no debate. We are simply speaking a lot of hot air.
What does Emotivism do to morality?
Reduces it down to a matter of feelings and this is over simplified e.g. we don’t just believed that 6 million Jews dying in the Holocaust was wrong because we have a bad feeling about it.
How does Rachels criticise emotivism?
Said that moral judgements require reasoning or else they are too arbitrary. Rachels is a naturalist.
What changed Ayer’s approach to emotivism?
After the WW2, he changed his mind after he saw the devastating consequences of Hitler’s ethical views which were simply his expression of approval of killing.
How did Ayer change his views?
He realised that there has to be something more substantial than emotivism in ethics, something by which to judge ethical actions/views by.
