Abstract
Having now synthesised an integrated summary account of the ET, distinguished its semantic from its justificatory theses, and subsumed its semantic thesis under its justificatory thesis, I now turn to the criticism which has been directed at the theory. Before doing so, however, it will be necessary to distinguish between the analytic and pragmatic forms of this criticism.
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It has been suggested that the distinction I have just drawn between analytic and pragmatic forms of criticism could be better drawn in terms of ‘philosophical’ and ‘pragmatic’ criticisms. This, however, would suggest that philosophy should confine itself to the analysis of ideas and theories in terms of their truth value, internal consistency, empirical adequacy and explanatory power, and refrain from speculative musings about the good or ideal form of life and from the analysis of ideas and theories in terms of their anticipated or actual social impacts. Although I happen to conceive of philosophy in much the same analytical sense as the people who have made this suggestion, to substitute ‘philosophical’ for ‘analytic’ would be to imply that the way in which I (and others like me) happen to conceive of philosophy is the only way in which it can be conceived of.
Z. Elders, 1974, p.281.
As J.J.C. Smart put it: Non-cognitivism may indeed strike us as regrettable, [but] ‘Wouldn’t it be horrible if this is true?’ is no argument [against it] (Smart, 1994, p.11).
R. Corkey, 1961, pp.22-23. After Hudson (MMP 132)
Wittgenstein had also been concerned to assure his critics that he intended no disrespect for ethics in his philosophical views. For having said that ‘what [ethics] says does not add to our knowledge in any sense, [and that] insofar as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, [ethics] can be no science’, he then went on to add ‘But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.’ (After Rush Rhees, 1965, pp.3-12).
It should simply be noted at this point, that this response to the charge of relativism misses the point, for a person can quite consistently disapprove of certain behaviours at the substantive ethical level while subscribing to relativism at the meta-ethical level.
And, as he went on to say, if a connection of this sort could be empirically demonstrated, then, no doubt, some ill-liberal people might want to keep logical positivism a secret (AMJ 248-9). Comments such as this lend support to the suspicions of later critics who claimed that emotivism was infected by a liberal bias (cf. Chapter 7).
This fact serves, in part, to counter the objection that emotivism fails to distinguish between the activities of the moralist and the propagandist, for while both may resort to the use of emotive language and tactics, the propagandist need not believe what he is seeking to have others believe, whereas the (genuine) moralist does. We shall return to this objection in section 2.5.
The actual dialogue, which concerns a priest’s futile attempts to get a dying man to repent of his sins, concludes with the priest and the man partaking in an orgy with six woman whom the man has solicited for his ‘last rites’. Having failed in his attempts to explain to the dying man what a corrupted nature is, the priest himself became a man corrupted by nature (after Arblaster, 1984).
1959, p.226.
I emphasise ‘apparent’ because, while it may well be true that Brandt would not be seeking to ‘influence his wife’ (a la Stevenson) if he were to say something like this, the question remains ‘What then would he be doing?’ Would he be using his wife as a sounding-board? Would he be ‘fishing’ for moral support? Would he (sub-consciously perhaps) be testing the ongoing ideological compatibility of his relationship? This is a complex psychological matter which I am not as yet in a position to properly address.
As noted earlier, Ayer had a much more balanced view of this relationship than did Stevenson.
Indeed, the kind of person who would make such a remark (provided he is not a wine maker or dealer himself) may well be more intent on preserving a measure of low-brow taste as a foil against which to highlight his own high-brow tastes.
He then adds, however, that the attribution of ‘truth’ to a person’s views is itself a persuasive strategy.
1989, p.17. Nerlich actually frames his claim in terms of desires rather than emotions, but for all present intents and purposes the terms are effectively interchangeable.
Op. cit., p.42.
A satirical exposé of British politics.
This, of course, is not to suggest that non-religious people have no intellectual interest in religious phenomena, but a non-religious person can acquire an intellectual interest in religious phenomena without ever having had a religious belief or experience of his own.
And as I argue in Chapters 6 and 7, its also being true of their substantive moral attitudes is a consequence of its being true of their substantive religious attitudes (broadly-considered), because moral attitudes are, for the most part, derivative of religious ones..
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Wilks, C. (2002). Criticism of the Original Emotive Theory. In: Emotion, Truth and Meaning. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9866-8_2
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