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emotivism
(redirected from emotivists)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.

emotivism

In metaethics (see ethics), the view that moral judgments do not function as statements of fact but rather as expressions of the speaker's or writer's feelings. According to the emotivist, when we say “You acted wrongly in stealing that money,” we are not expressing any fact beyond that stated by “You stole that money.” It is, however, as if we had stated this fact with a special tone of abhorrence, for in saying that something is wrong, we are expressing our feelings of disapproval toward it. Emotivism was expounded by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and developed by Charles Stevenson in Ethics and Language (1945).



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In short, the emotivists treat other persons simply as means and never as ends.
Taking a cue from Ronald Dworkin, who holds (in Nagel's formulation) that "skeptical positions must themselves be understood as moral claims," Nagel shows how moral claims are not expressions of feeling, as the utilitarian emotivists hold, but rational claims with an inherent universal claim.
The specific feature of Etzioni's argument is that this consensus must not be intimidated by socially and intellectually fashionable emotivists into playing down the centrality of "the moral voice.
 
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