[5.3.] Stevenson & Emotivism.

 

C. L. Stevenson (1908-1979)

·         An American who studied at Cambridge under Moore and Wittgenstein and was influenced by each of them.

·         Professor of philosophy at Yale University (1939-46) and the University of Michigan (1946-77)

·         Primary works: Ethics and Language (1944) and Facts and Values (a collection of essays, 1963).

 

Recall that Logical Positivists like Rudolf Carnap held that moral judgments (“murder is wrong,” “abortion is morally permissible,” etc.) had no cognitive meaning: they were held to be neither logically meaningful nor empirically meaningful.

 

But not all of the logical positivists stopped there in their account of moral judgments. Some went further to give a more detailed account of the nature of moral judgments.

 

Two of them, Stevenson and A. J. Ayer (1910-1989), defended a view of moral judgments called emotivism. We will examine Stevenson’s version of the theory, as presented in “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms” (published in the journal Mind in 1937), along with some material from his book Ethics and Language (1944).

 

 

[5.3.1.] Three Restrictions on Definitions of “Good.”

 

Like Moore in the chapter of Principia Ethica that we read, Stevenson is engaged in meta-ethics rather than in normative ethics.

 

He wants to know what it means to ask “Is X good?”

 

But he believes that, to do this, we have to substitute this question with one that “is free from ambiguity and confusion.”(333)

 

In particular, he believes that the word “good” is ambiguous (that it is used in more than one way).

 

He identifies one group of meanings of the word “good” as interest theories of goodness; these define “good” in terms of the interests of human beings, e.g.,

·         “good” = desired by me (Thomas Hobbes);

·         “good” = approved by most people (David Hume).

 

But he notes that many philosophers have rejected such definitions as not being relevant to the most “vital” sense of the word “good.”

 

He lists three restrictions that any adequate definition of “good” (in this most vital sense) must meet. On Stevenson’s view, no interest theory meets all three restrictions:

 

 

 

Restriction #1: “[W]e must be able sensibly to disagree about whether something is good.” (334)

 

This rules out definitions of “good” as simply being that which is desired by the speaker (e.g., Hobbes’ definition.) Here’s why:

 

If “good” just means “desired by me,” then there are no longer any such things as disagreements in moral judgment. Suppose Smith says “Same-sex marriage is good” and Jones says “Same-sex marriage is not good.” It seems like there is a disagreement here. But if good means “desired by me,” then Smith is really saying “Same-sex marriage is desired by me” and Jones is really saying “Same-sex marriage is not desired by me.” Smith is saying something about himself (that he approves of same-sex marriage), and Jones would agree about that. Further, Jones is saying something about himself (that he approves of same-sex marriage), and Smith would agree about that. So interest theories, despite appearances, rule out the possibility that there is ever really any disagreement about morality.

 

Stevenson’s point is that there is disagreement about morality, so this sort of definition of “good” cannot be complete. There is some other sense of “good” in which people can disagree about whether something is good.

 

This restriction rules out simple subjectivism as an adequate theory of meta-ethics...

 

simple subjectivism (df.): “When a person says that something is morally good or bad, this means that he or she approves of that thing, or disapproves of it, and nothing more.”[1]

 

 

Restriction #2: “‘[G]oodness  must have ... a magnetism.  A person who recognizes X to be ‘good’ must ipso facto acquire a stronger tendency to act in its favour than he otherwise would have had.” (334) In other words, if you genuinely recognize some action as good, then you must be more motivated to perform the action, or to encourage other people to perform the action.

 

This rules out definitions of “good” according to which goodness is nothing but the approval of people in general (e.g., Hume’s definition). Here’s why:

 

Someone can recognize that people in general approve of X without at the same time being motivated to do X or to promote X herself.

 

For example, an atheist can recognize that most people approve of going to church without herself being motivated to go to church. On Hume’s view, when spoken by an atheist, “People in general approve of going to church” is supposed to mean “Going to church is good”—but the atheist is not motivated to go to church himself, so this account does not meet Stevenson’s second restriction.

 

Restriction #3: “[T]he ‘goodness’ of anything must not be discoverable solely through the scientific method.” (334)

 

In other words, we must not commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and identify good with any natural property, including psychological properties like being desired by someone or being approved by someone. Stevenson approvingly cites Moore’s open question argument:

 

Mr. G. E. Moore’s familiar objection about the open question is chiefly pertinent in this regard. No matter what set of scientifically knowable properties a thing may have (says Moore, in effect), you will find, on careful introspection, that it is an open question to ask whether anything having these properties is good. It is difficult to believe that this recurrent question is a totally confused one, or that it seems open only because of the ambiguity of “good.” Rather, we must be using some sense of “good” which is not definable, relevantly, in terms of anything scientifically knowable. That is, the scientific method is not sufficient for ethics. (335)

 

This restriction rules out all interest theories, whether they define goodness in terms of personal desire or in terms of general approval.

 

 

[5.3.2.] Moral Judgments are not Just Descriptive.

 

Stevenson maintains that there is a single sense of “good” that meets all three of these constraints.

 

But he also thinks that Moore was wrong to say that “good” refers to a simple, unanalyzable property.

 

And he thinks that the correct theory of goodness is actually a kind of interest theory.

 

The key is to give up a presupposition made by previous ethical theories, that

 

ethical statements are descriptive of the existing state of interests—that they simply give information about interests. ... It is this emphasis on description, on information, which leads to their incomplete relevance. Doubtless there is always some element of description in ethical judgments, but this is by no means all. Their major use is not to indicate facts, but to create an influence. Instead of merely describing people’s interests, they change or intensify them. They recommend an interest in an object, rather than state that the interest already exists.

For instance: When you tell a man that he oughtn’t to steal, your object isn’t merely to let him know that people disapprove of stealing. You are attempting, rather, to get him to disapprove of it. (335-36)

 

In other words, moral judgments (Stevenson calls them “ethical statements”) such as “x is right” and “x is wrong” do not simply describe the world. They do something else that is more important: they influence the moral opinions or feelings of listeners.

 

When a weapons maker insists that was is a good thing, he is not merely saying that he approves of war, or that most people approve of war, or that most people would approve of war if only they were fully informed: “He is not describing the state of people’s approval; he is trying to change it by his influence. If he found that few people approved of war, he might insist all the more strongly that it was good, for there would be more changing to be done.” (336)

 

Stevenson reflects the influence of the later Wittgenstein when he describes ethical terms as “instruments used in the complicated interplay and readjustment of human interests.” (336)

 

But how is it that ethical statements do this work? How is it that they perform this function?

 

 

[5.3.3.] Descriptive vs. Dynamic Use.

 

Language has two broad types of use:

 

1. descriptive uses

(a)               to communicate facts and cause a listener to believe what you yourself believe: when I say to you “The Braves are playing the Nationals this Saturday,” I am attempting to tell you something that I believe to be true about the world, viz. that the Braves are playing the Nationals this Saturday, and to cause you to believe it.

 

 

2. dynamic uses

(a)                issue commands or give orders: when I say, “Take me to the Braves / Nationals game!” or “Buy me a ticket to the game!” I am trying to get you to perform a certain action.

(b)               to change attitudes: when I say “You shouldn’t spend so much money on baseball tickets,” I am trying to change your attitude toward the purchase of tickets. This is different than trying to get you to change your factual beliefs, e.g., your belief about what games are being played this Saturday.

(c)                express feelings: when I cheer for the Braves (“Yay, Braves! Alright!”) or when I “Booo!” the Nationals, or say “Damn!” when the Nationals score, I am not doing either of the previous three things. Rather, I am expressing how I feel about the Braves and the Nationals. I am not stating that I am enthusiastic about the Braves, nor am I stating that I dislike the Nationals. Rather, I am expressing my enthusiasm and my dislike. Other examples: “Oh!” “Yipes!” and lots of different swear words used to express anger or frustration.

 

These uses are not mutually exclusive. One and the same statement (e.g., “I want you to take me to the Braves / Nationals game”) can serve both to communicate facts and to motivate a listener to do something.

 

Further, “the same sentence may have a dynamic use on one occasion, and may not have a dynamic use on another; and ... it may have different dynamic uses on different occasions.” (337)

·         Stevenson’s example: someone says to his neighbor, “I am loaded down with work.” This could be meant merely to communicate a fact (in which case it is not a descriptive use and not a dynamic one); or the speaker could be intending to hint that he needs help (in which case it is a dynamic use), or he could be trying to arouse sympathy (which would be a different dynamic use).

 

Previous theories of ethics (including Moore’s) have assumed that moral judgments are exclusively descriptive. For example,

·         Thomas Hobbes: “x is good” = “I desire x”

·         David Hume: “x is good” = “Most people approve of x”

·         G. E. Moore: “x is good” = [can’t be defined, but still works descriptively, to predicate the property of goodness of x]

 

According to Stevenson, moral judgments are not primarily descriptive; their main function is not to state facts.

 

Instead, they function like a combination of (2-b) an attempt to change the listener’s attitude and (2-c) an expression of feeling.

 

 

[5.3.4.] Use and Meaning.

 

Now Stevenson asks: what is the relationship between dynamic use and meaning?

 

He indicates that they are not the same: the meaning of an expression is not one and the same thing as its dynamic use (otherwise the meaning of an expression would vary when it is being put to different dynamic uses).

 

Stevenson suggests that we identify the meaning of an expression with “the psychological causes and effects ... that it has a tendency (causal property, dispositional property) to be connected with.” (337) That tendency “must exist for all who speak the language; it must be persistent and must be realizable more or less independently of determinate circumstances attending the word’s utterance.” (338)

 

This definition of “meaning” leaves open the possibility that meaning is not the same thing as dynamic use, since “when words are accompanied by dynamic purposes, it does not follow that they tend to be accompanied by them in the way mentioned above.” (338)

 

Nevertheless, there is one kind of meaning that is very closely connected to dynamic use: emotive meaning:

 

The emotive meaning of a word is a tendency of a word, arising through the history of its usage, to produce (result from) affective [i.e., emotional] responses in people. It is the immediate aura of feeling which hovers about a word. (338)

 

For example, the word “alas” has a negative emotive meaning, the words “yay” and “hurray” positive emotive meaning.

 

So what is the relationship between dynamic use and emotive meaning?

 

Says Stevenson: emotive meaning assists dynamic use: using words that have emotive meaning (that tend to be caused by, and to cause, certain emotional responses) helps us to use language in dynamic ways: to issue effective commands and orders; to change the attitudes of listeners; and to express our own attitudes.

 

This is especially true with ethical expressions like “good” and “bad.” As we will soon see, Stevenson takes this sort of expression to have emotive meaning which assists us in putting it to dynamic use. On his view, previous philosophers have made a huge mistake in ignoring the emotive meaning of ethical statements.

 

 

[5.3.5.] Emotivism.

 

Stevenson now applies the points he’s made about emotive meaning and dynamic use to the word “good.” He indicates that he will focus on the non-moral meaning of the word, but that his points apply just as much to the moral meaning. In explaining his views I will depend on examples using the moral sense of “good.”

 

Stevenson suggests the following preliminary definition of “good”: “‘X is good” means ‘We like X.’”

 

In this definition, “We like X” has more than descriptive meaning; it has dynamic use.

 

Further, it has dynamic use of a very specific kind:

·         insofar as “we” refers to the hearer, “We like X” works as a sort of suggestion... it helps bring about what it describes, namely, the hearer liking X.

·         insofar as “we” refers to the speaker, “We like X” works to express the attitude of the speaker.

·         that second dynamic use helps out the first: it is harder for the hearer not to be persuaded to approve of X if the speaker is expressing her enthusiasm about X.

 

For example, a mother says to her children “We all like to be neat.” This does everything that Stevenson’s suggested definition of “X is good” is supposed to do.

 

But this definition is not completely adequate, in part because it has excluded everything but the dynamic use. In particular, it ignores the positive emotive meaning of “X is good.” The sentence “We like X” has no such emotive meaning, so to define “good” just in terms of that sentence is incomplete.

 

On Stevenson’s view, it is impossible to define “good” in the sense in which it expresses this emotive meaning.

 

However, it is possible to describe the emotive meaning of that word: “‘this is good’ is about the favorable interest of the speaker and the hearer or hearers, and ... it has a laudatory emotive meaning which fits the words for use in suggestion.” (339)

 

So according to Stevenson’s meta-ethical theory, emotivism, when I say “X is good,” I am doing two things at once:

 

1.      I am trying to affect your attitude toward X.

 

2.      I am expressing my emotions about X; it is as if I were saying, “X... yay!”

 

 

[5.3.5.1.] Moral Language.

 

Emotivism applies to “good” in the moral sense as well as to other moral words.

 

For example, when George W. Bush says that same-sex marriage is wrong, he is doing two things:

 

1)      attempting to influence listeners’ opinions about same-sex marriage, so that they to will feel negatively towards it;

2)      expressing his own personal feelings about same-sex marriage. He says that it is wrong, but he is not stating a fact when he does this; he is merely expressing the way he feels. In particular, he is not stating a matter of fact about his own attitudes (as Hobbes says he is) or about the attitudes of the majority of people (as Hume would have it).

 

These two functions are not independent of each other: in attempting to influence the attitudes of others, it helps to express your own sincere feelings.

 

Although this account holds for the moral senses of “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” etc., there is a difference in the emotive meanings of the moral and non-moral senses of these words:

 

Instead of being about what the hearer and speaker like, [moral language] is about a stronger sort of approval. When a person likes something, he is pleased when it prospers and disappointed when it does not. When a person morally approves of something he experiences a rich feeling of security when it prospers and is indignant or “shocked” when it does not. These are rough and inaccurate examples of the many factors which one would have to mention in distinguishing the two kinds of interest. In the moral usage, as well as in the nonmoral, “good” has an emotive meaning which adapts it to suggestion. (340)

 

 

[5.3.6.] Emotivism Meets the Three Restrictions Again.

 

Stevenson believes that emotivism meets the three restrictions set forth above:

 

1.      It allows there to be disagreement in ethics.

 

However, it is disagreement in interests, such as that between two people when one says “Let’s go to the movies” and the other says “No, I don’t want to do that—let’s go to the symphony.” (340)

 

Disagreement about goodness, including disagreement about morality, is not disagreement in belief. When Bush says “same-sex marriage is wrong” and someone else says “no it’s not,” there is a genuine disagreement between them. But it is not that Bush believes one thing and his interlocutor believes another. It is that their interests, or attitudes, disagree. Bush has an unfavorable attitude while the other speaker has a favorable one.

 

If you take ethical statements to have only descriptive meaning, such as simple subjectivism does, then the only thing that each of the speakers is doing is saying that he has a certain attitude, and in that case there is no disagreement. You have to recognize the emotive meaning in ethical statements to understand what moral disagreement really is.

 

2.      It includes a “magnetic” aspect.

 

Stevenson takes this point to be simple and straightforward: his definition includes the speaker’s interest in the object or action which he says is good... so the “magnetism” of that object/action for the speaker is taken account of.

 

3.      It avoids the mistake of implying that the goodness of something can be discovered by the scientific method alone.

 

Moral disagreements, which are disagreements in interest, can sometimes be settled by “empirical considerations.” This is true when the disagreement in interest stems from disagreement in belief.

·         Suppose that I think that smoking is bad and you disagree. This is a disagreement in interest. Suppose further that it stems from the two of us having different factual beliefs about smoking, e.g., I believe that it causes lung cancer and you do not. Our disagreement might be resolved by my showing you evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. If this changes your belief, your attitude toward smoking might change, too.

·         An analogous case might involve women’s rights. You and I might disagree about whether women should have the right to vote. That disagreement might stem from a disagreement in our beliefs about women (say, I believe that women are in general as intelligent as men, and you do not). Showing you evidence that your false factual belief is mistaken might resolve our disagreement.

 

But not all moral disagreement is like this. Some moral disagreement cannot be resolved by appeal to empirical considerations. Factual considerations will not help resolve disagreements that do not stem from differences of belief.

·         Suppose that Smith says that a government funded welfare program is a good thing, and Jones says that it is a bad thing. This is a disagreement in interest or attitude. But it seems possible that Smith and Jones can have all the same factual beliefs (about how much it would cost, how many people would benefit, what the consequences would be, etc.) and yet still disagree... perhaps because Smith is compassionate and Jones is not, or because Smith is poor and out of work and Jones is very wealthy.

 

So empirical considerations are not all there is to the justification of a moral judgment, as they would be were goodness identical to some natural property.

 

And once again, Stevenson refers to Moore’s open question argument:

 

... my analysis answers Moore’s objection about the open question. Whatever scientifically knowable properties a thing may have, it is always open to question whether a thing having these (enumerated) qualities is good. For to ask whether it is good is to ask for influence. And whatever I may know about an object, I can still ask, quite pertinently, to be influenced with regard to my interest in it. (342)

 

 

[5.3.7.] A Troubling Consequence?

 

Notice that emotivism seems to imply that moral judgments, like “Same-sex marriage is immoral,” don’t actually attribute a moral property to their subjects.

 

On this view, this statement has no descriptive meaning by which it attributes a property (immorality) of its subject (same-sex marriage). So when I say this, I am not saying anything about same-sex marriage itself. In particular, I am not saying that there is a property, namely immorality, that the practice of same-sex marriage has.

 

So, construed as a statement about same-sex marriage itself, “Same-sex marriage is immoral” doesn’t actually say anything, and is therefore neither true nor false.

 

Emotivism seems to imply this same thing about any moral judgment.

 

Thus, emotivism seems to imply

 

moral nihilism (df.): the view that nothing is morally wrong, i.e., that nothing is immoral.

·         Versions of this view have been defended by contemporary philosophers such as J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce.[2]

·         “Nihilism” derives from the Latin “nihil,” meaning nothing.

·          “Nihilism” is sometimes used to refer to a broader view, according to which there are no objective truths or values, whether moral or otherwise.

 

Can we be satisfied with a moral theory that implies statements like:

·         It is not the case that torturing children for fun is immoral.

·         It is not the case that raping political prisoners is wrong.

·         It is not the case that killing as many innocent people as possible is bad.

 

 

Stopping point for Monday April 27. Next time we will review for your final exam, which is Friday May 1 (11am -1pm). Come prepared to ask questions.