A-Level Ethics

A.J. Ayer's 'emotivism'

In meta-ethics, philosophers classify moral statements as ‘cognitive’ or ‘non-cognitive’.

cognitive — moral statements are facts.
non-cognitive — moral statements are not-facts.

A.J. Ayer’s ‘emotivism’ is non-cognitivist: it classifies moral statements as not-facts.

Here, we examine his claims

Ayer claims that we can divide statements into ‘meaningful’ and ‘meaning-less’ using the ‘criterion of verifiability’.

He explains that a statement is ONLY meaningful to a person if ‘he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express — that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false’ (1936: 16).

He means that a statement is only meaningful if its speaker can say what experiences will follow if it is true, and what experiences would cause them to reject it as false.

Ayer argues that it is NOT possible to do this for moral statements.

He explains, ‘the fundamental ethical concepts are unanalysable, inasmuch as there is no criterion by which one can test the validity of the judgements in which they occur’ (1936: 109–110).

In other words, a person who makes a moral statement CANNOT explain what experience will follow if it is true, and what would cause them to reject it as false.

Ayer suggests that moral statements are actually emotional statements.

To say something is ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ is simply to say that YOU don’t like it.

He gives an example:

If I say to someone, “You acted wrongly in stealing that money,” I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, “You stole that money.”
In adding that the action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. (1936: 110)

He concludes that the study of morality is a problem for psychology and the other social sciences.