RS a level ETHICS - emotivism

AO1 and AO2

who largely promotes emotivism

logical positivists

define emotivism

the non-cognitive theory that ethical statements do not denote facts but rather emotion

is emotivism relativist or absolutist

relativist

who developed logical positivism and when. what was this a response to?

the Vienna circle in 1920

a time where only scientific statements were seen to be factual the VC aimed to investigate philosophy in the same was science is investigated

what does logical positivism propose about ethical statements

a statement is only meaningful if it a tautology or can be empirically verified

since ethical statements don’t have either of these features, they’re meaningless

criticism of the assumption that ethical statements are not tautologies, giving an example

if ethics is real and deontological, ethical statements ARE tautologies e.g. “murder is wrong” is repeating “wrong” twice because within the concept of murder is an inherent wrong

the logic is therefore circular

Summarise Ayer’s argument in 3 points

ethical statements are not logically, inherently true

prescriptive ethics are derived from emotional reactions to challenging situations

a moral statement is solely an opinion

quote from Ayer about the meaning of ethical concepts

“ethical concepts are psuedo-concepts and therefore unanalysable”

quote from Ayer dismissing cognitive approaches to ethics

“there can be no way of determining the validity of any ethical system”

what is the verification principle and who proposed it

synthetic statements need to be proven in some empirical way

Ayer

4 criticisms of emotivism

reductive: no sense of ethical qualia

ignores the role of rationalism

significant negative legal implications

does emotivism not also fall from Hume’s law? prescription cannot be derived from emotions which are arguably NATURAL!!

2 strengths of emotivism

allows for real cultural relativism

can apply Mackie’s first and second order views

2 of Mackie’s ideas that can be applied to anti-realism

first and second order views

error theory - moral claims presuppose objective moral values, which do not exist

quote from Ayer describing ethical terms as symbolic

“the presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content”