As a kind of junior but powerful version of romanticism and existentialism combined, the emotivist movement insisted that all moral discourse could be reduced in any case to statements of likes and dislikes. "Murder is wrong" simply means "I don't like murder." "Giving to charity is good" means "I like people giving to charity." From this point of view, following moral rules and following your own inclinations both boil down to pretty much the same thing. Often today people who are discussing moral choices will say that this person "prefers" Option A or that person "applauds" Option B, as though moral choices were a matter of personal perference or taste. Sometimes they speak of "moral attitudes" as though what a particular person believed about the rights and wrongs of certain actions were simply an "attitude, an innate prejudice which they hadn't bothered to think through.N.T. Wright, After you Believe, pg 50
Sunday, March 4, 2012
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Another problem with emotivism can be illustrated by the following example:
An emotivist (so-called) sees a rabbit being tortured. The experience is very traumatic, and the emotivist feels strongly that this act of torture is evil. But, weeks go by, and the emotivist doesn't think of the rabbit. Then months. Then years. If the emotivist recalls the rabbit at all, it is with some vague sense of empathy. He's asked by a friend who knows of his philosophical stance if he still considers the act of torture to be barbarous.
"Of course I do," replies the emotivist.
"But do you remember it as vividly?" asks the friend.
"Well, no, not like when I was there."
"Then you don't feel the evil of it all like you did in the moment?"
"Well, no, not quite like that." "So it's a little less wrong then, isn't it? Because you don't feel so strongly about it any more?"
"No, it's still as wrong as it was when it happened."
"But it doesn't feel as wrong."
"Yes it does--I feel very strongly at this very moment that it IS wrong."
"But aren't you feeling strongly about remembering the moment, and not the moment itself? And what if you forget about it again?"
"Listen, I know what is right and wrong and I won't forget it."
"Maybe you're right, but you must have some other criterion than your feelings."
Something I find interesting, especially among political theorists, is when they talk about a certain thinker, and say, "such and such tells a story about blank" or, "Tell me a story of how blank would be feasible." I had a graduate class where my professor consistently used that language throughout the entire semester. At first I thought it was just a little styling that he liked to use, but I came more and more to the opinion that underneath "Tell me a story" is the criterion of what is compelling, and not what is true/false, right/wrong. Because stories aren't those things, we don't judge them along those lines. But arguments are, and it makes me wonder why people want to leave those behind (although, I see enough scrutiny of the assumptions of true/false, right/wrong at my school that I can take a guess why people dislike them). Anyway, this is all just my ramblings, but the emotivism part spurred them on.
The rabbit analogy convicts me of the way I react to suffering when I see it on TV and (less frequently) in real life. I wish that the strong emotions of empathy would lead me to action, but, like you said, I usually forget about them.
Still trying to figure out how to get past that!
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