Moral Emotivism
Updated 2026-08-08
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A metaethical position associated with A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson in the twentieth century. Emotivism holds that moral statements do not describe facts but express the speaker's emotional attitude, so saying that murder is wrong is closer to expressing disapproval than to asserting a proposition. The view belongs to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral statements have truth values, and it challenges the idea that moral language is primarily descriptive.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Decode the claim: translate a moral assertion into the attitude it expresses and the action it recommends - Separate registers: distinguish statements of fact from statements of attitude in an ethical debate - Find the disagreement: check whether two sides actually differ on facts or only on attitudes
Anchor fast decisions
Moral language functions in practice to influence behavior and express approval or disapproval rather than to describe a property. Because the sentence carries no factual content, its role is to align others with the speaker's attitude. This explains why moral disputes often persist despite agreement on the underlying facts, since the disagreement lies in attitudes rather than in description.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivismverified
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