Emotivism: 5 W’s & 1 H

Who: Alfred Jules Ayer b. October 29th 1910, London England. Charles Leslie Stevenson b. June 27th 1908, Cincinnati, Ohio. David Hume b. April 26th 1711, Edinburgh United Kingdom.

What: An ethical theory regards ethical and value judgements as expressions o feelings or attitudes and of action, rather than assertions or reports of anything. // The assertion that all individual ethical judgments are purely expressions of one’s own attitude intended to change the actions or attitudes of others.

Where: United Kingdom

When: 1751 D.H 1936 A.J.A

Why: It teaches that moral statements are meaningless. For Ayer, the question of the meaning of emotivism was important because it represented a potentially fatal objection.

How: Emotivism was influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century. It was officially stated by A.J. Ayer in the 1936 book, “Language, Truth and Logic” but was mainly developed by C.L Stevenson.

Sources

Primary source:

http://afterall.net/quotes/491282

http://ricochet.com/archives/emotivism-alasdir-macintyre-the-impossibility-of-moral-disussion-and-why-youre-a-bigot/

“Language, Truth, and Logic” by A.J Ayer

Secondary sources:

http://www.sudeshare.net/mobile/abbenay/emotivism-11481598

http://www.bbc.co.uk/thics/introduction/emotivism_1-shtml

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-moral/russell-emotivism.html

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