Essay
Ethical statements are no more than expressions of emotion
- Module
- G582 - A2 Religious Ethics
- Institution
- OCR
This was written in year 13, acheiving an A* and discussing emotivism
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‘Ethical statements are no more than expressions of emotion. Discuss’Ethical statements differ from ‘normal’ statements in the sense that they cannot empirically be proven,
or deemed ‘true’ or ‘false’. A.J. Ayer is a strong promoter of emotivism, believing that ethics is
emotion based and that there is no factual content in ethical statements, thus corroborating the claim
that ethical statements are not, and cannot be more than expressions of emotion. There are, however,
three other approaches that can be taken that argue against such a claim and successfully portray how
there is more to ethical statements than emotion. Emotivism ultimately challenges the foundations of
morality; it rejects any sense that morality is beyond ourselves, and that in itself, is a flawed argument.
This essay will therefore disagree with the statement, and rather argue that Hare’s prescriptivism is the
more successful ethical theory and demonstrates how moral statements are more than just expressions
of emotion. Moreover this line of argument will include the scholars A.J. Ayer, Peter Vardy, Philippa
Foot, C.L. Stevenson, Moritz Schlick, R.M Hare, G.E. Moore, J.L. Mackie and W.D. Ross.
As aforementioned, A.J. Ayer believed that moral utterances were entirely relative and dependent on
emotions or beliefs. His strand of emotivism, more commonly referred to as the ‘Boo-Hurrah’ theory,
suggests that when I say ‘murder is wrong’, the true meaning behind this statement is ‘I don’t like
murder’. There is some strength to Ayer’s argument, with history revealing many examples of
emotivist methods for expressing moral views. For example, Hitler’s condemnation of the Jews may
not be verifiable, but it is certainly emotivist. Seemingly, however, the biggest weakness of emotivism
from the offset is that Ayer’s theory renders moral discourse meaningless. Thus, when someone
argues ‘murder is wrong’, to which I may reply ‘I disagree’, according to emotivism, and it's
fundamental principles, this is as far as I can rationally go. Instead, there has to be a rational basis to
morality and therefore it is more complex than simply expressing emotions. Peter Vardy corroborates
this argument to some extent, arguing that the principal difficulty with emotivism is that if we accept
it as offering a good analysis of moral language, all debate becomes “so much hot air” and nothing
else; talking about moral issues might help release our feelings or persuade others into our points of
view, but we would be saying things which had no significant meaning. Vardy therefore contends that
this is “just plainly improbable” because “all morality cannot be reduced simply to how we feel about
something”. Vardy creates a plausible argument, there are other factors to morality rather than pure
sentiment and therefore it is wrong to assert that ethical statements are no more than expressions of
emotion. Philippa Foot also argues against emotivism, asserting that moral ideas and terms are based
on facts of human life, and that we have a factual and rational register for the goods that benefit and
the wrongs that harm individuals, and that moral terms express factual elemental positions. Foot’s
argument successfully challenges the fundamental aspects of emotivism, and thus shows how as a
theory itself it is flawed. Peter Vardy’s argument, amalgamated with Foot’s criticism, therefore proves
that there is more to ethical statements than expressions of emotion.
C.L. Stevenson developed Ayer’s emotivism approach; Ayer had classified moral statements as
emotional expressions, but Stevenson linked them to attitudes. People express a moral opinion not as
an emotional response but as an expression of an attitude or belief they have. Stevenson therefore
asserted that moral judgments contain an element that expresses an attitude relative to a fundamental
belief, and an element that seeks to persuade or influence others. Thus, for Stevensen, when I say
‘theft is wrong’, in reality what is being said is ‘I strongly dislike theft and therefore you should too’.
The most essential aspect to Stevenson’s development is the fact that there is a persuading dimension
to moral statements. There is an important distinction between Stevenson from Ayer; the two scholars
differ on the argument Ayer contended that there is no factual content to the word good. Instead,
Stevenson postulates that we can resolve moral disagreements if we first decide what is meant by
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