Abstract
The term ‘emotive meaning’ is one that Stevenson, as he himself acknowledges (FV, p. 21), takes over from Ogden and Richards’s account in The Meaning of Meaning. Nevertheless, he considerably alters the notion in order to suit the purpose that he has, but Ogden and Richards did not have, namely, the development of a new kind of ethical theory. Apparently, it is due to the emphasis Stevenson places upon emotive meaning that his theory is called (by others) ethical emotivism. This provides us with a convenient label, but labels should not be confused: an emotive theory of ethics is not the same as a theory of emotive meaning. Some intuitionists and naturalists (notably, Ross and Perry) recognize many of the features of language that Stevenson wishes to call emotive, but they are not ethical emotivists.1
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Reference
See, for example, Ross, Foundations of Ethics, pp. 50, 54, 255, 260; and Perry, GTV, pp. 1 ff., 17, 310 ff., 525.
The crudest type of view that accompanies the failure to recognize the asymmetry of speaker and hearer is that refuted by Cross, who objects that hearing someone use the term ‘nigger’ does not produce in him (Cross) any feeling of disapproval or contempt toward Negroes (Proc. Aris. Soc., vol. xxii (1948), p. 132).
Nevertheless, it is worth remarking that much of the new linguistic theory has developed in conscious opposition to the same kind of linguistic theory to which emotivism is opposed. Cf. Austin’s criticisms of the view that ‘the business of a “statement” can only be to “describe” some state of affairs, or to “state some fact”, which it must do either truly or falsely’ (How to Do Things with Words, p. 1), and Wittgenstein’s insistence that ‘...we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts—which may be about houses, pains, good or evil, or anything else you please’ (Philosophical Investigations, para. 304).
Cf. Anton Marty, Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, pp. 291, 362, 382.
Cf. op. cit., pp. 286–87, 362, and the analogous remarks about emotives on p. 382.
Russell held just such a view: ‘In adult life, all speech...is, in intention, in the imperative mood’; even statements are understood to be prefaced by ‘know that’ (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 26–27).
Marty’s immediate opponent on this front is Husserl, whom he takes (perhaps unfairly) to hold that there is only one kind of meaning, which is expressed in statements and their grammatical transformations (Marty, op. cit., pp. 368 ff.). But since Marty’s linguistic categories are grounded in psychological categories, much of Husserl’s discussion of grammatical categories does not directly engage with the issues Marty raises.
Marty suggests that Windelband and Rickert are committed to a view of this type because they hold that knowledge is a kind of conative-affective attitude-taking toward a value, i.e. truth (op. cit., p. 234). Cf. also the reference to Russell, supra, n. 6.
A distinction that, like Marty’s distinction between judgement and interest, is historically rooted in Brentano’s psychology.
MM, p. 398. Cf. Perry’s view that factual language is used (only) in ‘observing, noting, remarking, measuring’ etc. such things as ‘position, area, date, duration, number’ etc. (GTV, p. 3).
‘Reference’ is used by Ogden and Richards as roughly equivalent to Frege’s ‘sense’ (Sinn); in the case of complete sentences it is close to Frege’s ‘thought’ (Gedanke). Complete references (or thoughts) are compounded out of simple references; the latter are expressed in language as words or phrases. Thus, Marty’s first two categories are joined together in the symbolic use (= referential use). Cf. MM, pp. 12, 14, 149–52, 159. For Frege, see ‘Sense and Reference’, in Geach and Black (eds.), Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege.
MM, pp. 228, 257–58, 371–72.
MM, p. 271. In another work, Richards affirms the priority of poetry over all other types of language: ‘poetry is the supreme use of language, man’s chief coordinating instrument, in the service of the most integral purposes of life’ (Coleridge on Imagination, p. 220).
People of this mentality, say Ogden and Richards, cannot read poetry (MM, p. 260). It might also be observed that such people have a general difficulty in conceiving the possibility of any non-scientific inquiry, including moral and critical inquiry.
MM, p. 376. In light of Ogden and Richards’s tendency to think of expression and evocation as symmetrical, the presence of ‘evocative’ here where one might expect ‘expressive’ is not significant. Cf. ‘As there is no convenient verb to cover both expression and evocation, we shall in what follows often use the term “evoke” to cover both sides of the emotive function, there being no risk of misunderstanding’ (MM, p. 258).
See EL, pp. 284–87, where Stevenson indicates some of the ways in which the practice of science essentially involves emotive meaning and evaluative issues.
MM, pp. 13 (top), 257; but cf. pp. 13 (bottom), 228, 271.
Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, p. 44.
Cf. also Feigl, who concludes from the thesis that ethical disagreements are not resolvable by scientific methods that this is a shortcoming or ‘limitation’ on the part of ethical arguments, rather than evidence of the limited applicability or usefulness of scientific methods (Herbert Feigl, ‘Validation and Vindication: An Analysis of the Nature and Limits of Ethical Arguments’, in W. Sellars and J. Hospers, editors, Readings in Ethical Theory, first edition (New York, 1952).
The ‘quarrel’ could never address itself to the question ‘who is right?’, since Ayer claims (p. 108) that this question has no sense—unless he means to imply that the ‘quarrel’ itself has no sense.
Mackie (and perhaps Ayer) actually did embrace the conclusion that if the real and objective existence of the Good can be refuted, then ethics is in some sense itself refuted (cf. Mackie, ‘A Refutation of Morals’, Aus. J. Phil., vol. xxiv(1946)). My own view is, of course, that Mackie is wrong. His own distinction between first and second order moral questions permits us to say that when ‘the Good’ is rejected, a second order explanation of first order activities is rejected, but the first order activities need not be rejected. Mackie recognizes this (although incompletely) in his later book Ethics. There, he rejects the objective Good but quite straightforwardly introduces his own ‘Elements of a Practical Morality’(ch. viii), so that it seems that morals are not ‘refuted’ after all—whatever that could mean. Mackie discusses such traditional topics as virtue, rights, liberty, the motivation for being moral, and, even, ‘the good for man’. Thus, he incidentally exhibits a form of the distinction between theology and ethics that I discuss above. Mackie does not believe in God (Ethics, pp. 48, 232), nor is he concerned with god or gods; but although he does not believe in Good, he is nevertheless very much concerned with the good, and with goods (i.e. good things).
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Satris, S. (1987). Emotive Meaning: Marty to Ayer. In: Ethical Emotivism. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3507-5_3
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