Quotes About Emotivism

Emotivism does give us something positive, a reminder that moral language is emotionally charged and can be used improperly to manipulate people under the guise of getting them to do the right thing. Unfortunately, because moral language is so emotionally charged, people often dismiss it today as too divisive or incapable of verification.

Emotivism maintains that the only statements capable of having meaning are those that are empirically verifiable, but this underlying principle is itself not empirically verifiable.

Second, emotivism is actually a theory of the use of moral language, not of its meaning.13 The emotivist has jumped from a theory of use to a theory of meaning without any justification for that leap.

Third, emotivism cannot account for the place of reason in ethics. Emotivism sets up a false dichotomy, as the following demonstrates: (a) Either there are moral facts like there are scientific facts, or (b) values are nothing more than expressions of our subjective feelings. But there is another possibility; namely, moral truths are truths of reason, or a moral judgment is true if it is supported by better reasons than the alternatives.