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Emotivism
Em otiv ism is a meta-ethical v iew that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. [1][2] Hence, it is
colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory . Influenced by the growth of analy tic philosophy and logical positiv ism in the 20th century , the
theory was stated v iv idly by A. J. Ay er in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, [3] but its dev elopment owes more to C. L. Stev enson. [4]

Emotiv ism can be considered a form of non-cognitiv ism or expressiv ism. It stands in opposition to other forms of non-cognitiv ism (such as quasi-
realism and univ ersal prescriptiv ism), as well as to all forms of cognitiv ism (including both moral realism and ethical subjectiv ism).

In the 1950s, emotiv ism appeared in a modified form in the univ ersal prescriptiv ism of R. M. Hare. [5][6]

Contents
History
Proponents
A. J. Ayer
C. L. Stevenson
First pattern analysis
Second pattern analysis
Methods of argumentation

Criticism
Magnetic influence
Philippa Foot's moral realism
Standard using and standard setting
See also
Notes
References
External links

History
Emotiv ism reached prominence in the early 20th century , but it was born centuries earlier. In 17 10, George
Berkeley wrote that language in general often serv es to inspire feelings as well as communicate ideas. [7]
Decades later, Dav id Hume espoused ideas similar to Stev enson's later ones. [8] In his 17 51 book An Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume considered morality to be related to fact but "determined by
sentiment":

In moral deliberations we must be acquainted beforehand with all the objects, and all their
relations to each other; and from a comparison of the whole, fix our choice or approbation. …
While we are ignorant whether a man were aggressor or not, how can we determine whether the
person who killed him be criminal or innocent? But after ev ery circumstance, ev ery relation is
known, the understanding has no further room to operate, nor any object on which it could
employ itself. The approbation or blame which then ensues, cannot be the work of the
judgement, but of the heart; and is not a speculativ e proposition or affirmation, but an activ e David Hume's statements on
feeling or sentiment. [9] ethics foreshadowed those of
20th century emotivists.

G. E. Moore published his Principia Ethica in 1903 and argued that the attempts of ethical naturalists to
translate ethical terms (like good and bad) into non-ethical ones (like pleasing and displeasing) committed the "naturalistic fallacy ". Moore was a
cognitiv ist, but his case against ethical naturalism steered other philosophers toward noncognitiv ism, particularly emotiv ism. [10]

The emergence of logical positiv ism and its v erifiability criterion of meaning early in the 20th century led some philosophers to conclude that
ethical statements, being incapable of empirical v erification, were cognitiv ely meaningless. This criterion was fundamental to A.J. Ay er's defense
of positiv ism in Language, Truth and Logic, which contains his statement of emotiv ism. Howev er, positiv ism is not essential to emotiv ism itself,

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perhaps not ev en in Ay er's form, [11] and some positiv ists in the Vienna Circle, which had great influence on Ay er, held non-emotiv ist v iews. [12]

R. M. Hare unfolded his ethical theory of univ ersal prescriptiv ism in 1952's The Language of Morals, intending to defend the importance of
rational moral argumentation against the "propaganda" he saw encouraged by Stev enson, who thought moral argumentation was sometimes
psy chological and not rational. [13] But Hare's disagreement was not univ ersal, and the similarities between his noncognitiv e theory and the
emotiv e one — especially his claim, and Stev enson's, that moral judgments contain commands and are thus not purely descriptiv e — caused some
to regard him as an emotiv ist, a classification he denied:

I did, and do, follow the emotiv ists in their rejection of descriptiv ism. But I was nev er an emotiv ist, though I hav e often been called
one. But unlike most of their opponents I saw that it was their irrationalism, not their non-descriptiv ism, which was mistaken. So my
main task was to find a rationalist kind of non-descriptiv ism, and this led me to establish that imperativ es, the simplest kinds of
prescriptions, could be subject to logical constraints while not [being] descriptiv e. [14]

Proponents
Influential statements of emotiv ism were made by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards in their 1923 book on language, The Meaning of Meaning, and by
W. H. F. Barnes and A. Duncan-Jones in independent works on ethics in 1934. [15] Howev er, it is the later works of Ay er and especially Stev enson
that are the most dev eloped and discussed defenses of the theory .

A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ay er's v ersion of emotiv ism is giv en in chapter six, "Critique of Ethics and Theology ", of Language, Truth and Logic. In that chapter, Ay er
div ides "the ordinary sy stem of ethics" into four classes:

1. "Propositions that express definitions of ethical terms, or judgements about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions"
2. "Propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience, and their causes"
3. "Exhortations to moral virtue"
4. "Actual ethical judgments"[16]
He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—say ing that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere
commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered in normativ e ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy .
While class three statements were irrelev ant to Ay er's brand of emotiv ism, they would later play a significant role in Stev enson's.

Ay er argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be v erified; in this he agrees with ethical
intuitionists. But he differs from intuitionists by discarding appeals to intuition as "worthless" for determining moral truths, [17] since the intuition of
one person often contradicts that of another. Instead, Ay er concludes that ethical concepts are "mere pseudo-concepts":

The presence of an ethical sy mbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, "Y ou acted wrongly in
stealing that money ," I am not stating any thing more than if I had simply said, "Y ou stole that money ." In adding that this action is
wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply ev incing my moral disapprov al of it. It is as if I had said, "Y ou
stole that money ," in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks. … If now I
generalise my prev ious statement and say , "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is,
expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. … I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments. [18]

Ay er agrees with subjectiv ists in say ing that ethical statements are necessarily related to indiv idual attitudes, but he say s they lack truth v alue
because they cannot be properly understood as propositions about those attitudes; Ay er thinks ethical sentences are expressions, not assertions,
of approv al. While an assertion of approv al may alway s be accompanied by an expression of approv al, expressions can be made without making
assertions; Ay er's example is boredom, which can be expressed through the stated assertion "I am bored" or through non-assertions including tone
of v oice, body language, and v arious other v erbal statements. He sees ethical statements as expressions of the latter sort, so the phrase "Theft is
wrong" is a non-propositional sentence that is an expression of disapprov al but is not equiv alent to the proposition "I disapprov e of theft".

Hav ing argued that his theory of ethics is noncognitiv e and not subjectiv e, he accepts that his position and subjectiv ism are equally confronted by
G. E. Moore's argument that ethical disputes are clearly genuine disputes and not just expressions of contrary feelings. Ay er's defense is that all
ethical disputes are about facts regarding the proper application of a v alue sy stem to a specific case, not about the v alue sy stems themselv es,
because any dispute about v alues can only be resolv ed by judging that one v alue sy stem is superior to another, and this judgment itself
presupposes a shared v alue sy stem. If Moore is wrong in say ing that there are actual disagreements of value, we are left with the claim that there
are actual disagreements of fact, and Ay er accepts this without hesitation:

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If our opponent concurs with us in expressing moral disapprov al of a giv en ty pe t, then we may get him to condemn a particular
action A, by bringing forward arguments to show that A is of ty pe t. For the question whether A does or does not belong to that ty pe
is a plain question of fact. [19]

C. L. Stevenson
Stev enson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon Ay er's v iews and as a representation of one of "two broad ty pes of ethical
emotiv ism."[20][21] An analy tic philosopher, Stev enson suggested in his 1937 essay "The Emotiv e Meaning of Ethical Terms" that any ethical theory
should explain three things: that intelligent disagreement can occur ov er moral questions, that moral terms like good are "magnetic" in
encouraging action, and that the scientific method is insufficient for v erify ing moral claims. [22] Stev enson's own theory was fully dev eloped in his
1944 book Ethics and Language. In it, he agrees with Ay er that ethical sentences express the speaker's feelings, but he adds that they also hav e an
imperative component intended to change the listener's feelings and that this component is of greater importance. [23] Where Ay er spoke of values,
or fundamental psy chological inclinations, Stev enson speaks of attitudes, and where Ay er spoke of disagreement of fact, or rational disputes ov er
the application of certain v alues to a particular case, Stev enson speaks of differences in belief; the concepts are the same. [24] Terminology aside,
Stev enson interprets ethical statements according to two patterns of analy sis.

First pattern analysis

Under his first pattern of analy sis, an ethical statement has two parts: a declaration of the speaker's attitude and an imperativ e to mirror it, so "'This
is good' means I approve of this; do so as well."[25] The first half of the sentence is a proposition, but the imperativ e half is not, so Stev enson's
translation of an ethical sentence remains a noncognitiv e one.

Imperativ es cannot be proved, but they can still be supported so that the listener understands that they are not wholly arbitrary :

If told to close the door, one may ask "Why ?" and receiv e some such reason as "It is too drafty ," or "The noise is distracting." … These
reasons cannot be called "proofs" in any but a dangerously extended sense, nor are they demonstrativ ely or inductiv ely related to an
imperativ e; but they manifestly do support an imperativ e. They "back it up," or "establish it," or "base it on concrete references to
fact."[26]

The purpose of these supports is to make the listener understand the consequences of the action they are being commanded to do. Once they
understand the command's consequences, they can determine whether or not obedience to the command will hav e desirable results.

The imperativ e is used to alter the hearer's attitudes or actions. … The supporting reason then describes the situation the imperativ e
seeks to alter, or the new situation the imperativ e seeks to bring about; and if these facts disclose that the new situation will satisfy a
preponderance of the hearer's desires, he will hesitate to obey no longer. More generally , reasons support imperativ es by altering
such beliefs as may in turn alter an unwillingness to obey . [27]

Second pattern analysis

Stev enson's second pattern of analy sis is used for statements about types of actions, not specific actions. Under this pattern,

'This is good' has the meaning of 'This has qualities or relations X, Y , Z … ,' except that 'good' has as well a laudatory meaning, which
permits it to express the speaker's approv al, and tends to ev oke the approv al of the hearer. [28]

In second-pattern analy sis, rather than judge an action directly , the speaker is ev aluating it according to a general principle. For instance,
someone who say s "Murder is wrong" might mean "Murder decreases happiness ov erall"; this is a second-pattern statement that leads to a first-
pattern one: "I disapprov e of any thing that decreases happiness ov erall. Do so as well."[29]

Methods of argumentation
For Stev enson, moral disagreements may arise from different fundamental attitudes, different moral beliefs about specific cases, or both. The
methods of moral argumentation he proposed hav e been div ided into three groups, known as logical, rational psychological and nonrational
psychological forms of argumentation. [30]

Logical methods inv olv e efforts to show inconsistencies between a person's fundamental attitudes and their particular moral beliefs. For example,
someone who say s "Edward is a good person" who has prev iously said "Edward is a thief" and "No thiev es are good people" is guilty of inconsistency
until he retracts one of his statements. Similarly , a person who say s "Ly ing is alway s wrong" might consider lies in some situations to be morally
permissible, and if examples of these situations can be giv en, his v iew can be shown to be logically inconsistent. [31]

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Rational psy chological methods examine facts that relate fundamental attitudes to particular moral beliefs;[32] the goal is not to show that someone
has been inconsistent, as with logical methods, but only that they are wrong about the facts that connect their attitudes to their beliefs. To modify
the former example, consider the person who holds that all thiev es are bad people. If she sees Edward pocket a wallet found in a public place, she
may conclude that he is a thief, and there would be no inconsistency between her attitude (that thiev es are bad people) and her belief (that Edward
is a bad person because he is a thief). Howev er, it may be that Edward recognized the wallet as belonging to a friend, to whom he promptly
returned it. Such a rev elation would likely change the observ er's belief about Edward, and ev en if it did not, the attempt to rev eal such facts would
count as a rational psy chological form of moral argumentation. [33]

Non-rational psy chological methods rev olv e around language with psy chological influence but no necessarily logical connection to the listener's
attitudes. Stev enson called the primary such method "'persuasiv e,' in a somewhat broadened sense", and wrote:

[Persuasion] depends on the sheer, direct emotional impact of words—on emotiv e meaning, rhetorical cadence, apt metaphor,
stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of v oice, dramatic gestures, care in establishing rapport with the hearer or audience, and so
on. … A redirection of the hearer's attitudes is sought not by the mediating step of altering his beliefs, but by exhortation, whether
obv ious or subtle, crude or refined. [34]

Persuasion may inv olv e the use of particular emotion-laden words, like "democracy " or "dictator", [35] or hy pothetical questions like "What if
ev ery one thought the way y ou do?" or "How would y ou feel if y ou were in their shoes?"[36]

Criticism
Utilitarian philosopher Richard Brandt offered sev eral criticisms of emotiv ism in his 1959 book Ethical Theory. His first is that "ethical utterances
are not obv iously the kind of thing the emotiv e theory say s they are, and prima facie, at least, should be v iewed as statements."[37] He thinks that
emotiv ism cannot explain why most people, historically speaking, hav e considered ethical sentences to be "fact-stating" and not just emotiv e.
Furthermore, he argues that people who change their moral v iews see their prior v iews as mistaken, not just different, and that this does not make
sense if their attitudes were all that changed:

Suppose, for instance, as a child a person disliked eating peas. When he recalls this as an adult he is amused and notes how
preferences change with age. He does not say , howev er, that his former attitude was mistaken. If, on the other hand, he remembers
regarding irreligion or div orce as wicked, and now does not, he regards his former v iew as erroneous and unfounded. … Ethical
statements do not look like the kind of thing the emotiv e theory say s they are. [38]

James Urmson's 1968 book The Emotive Theory of Ethics also disagreed with many of Stev enson's points in Ethics and Language, "a work of great
v alue" with "a few serious mistakes [that] led Stev enson consistently to distort his otherwise v aluable insights". [39]

Magnetic influence
Brandt criticized what he termed "the 'magnetic influence' thesis", [38] the idea of Stev enson that ethical statements are meant to influence the
listener's attitudes. Brandt contends that most ethical statements, including judgments of people who are not within listening range, are not made
with the intention to alter the attitudes of others. Twenty y ears earlier, Sir William Dav id Ross offered much the same criticism in his book
Foundations of Ethics. Ross suggests that the emotiv ist theory seems to be coherent only when dealing with simple linguistic acts, such as
recommending, commanding, or passing judgement on something happening at the same point of time as the utterance.

… There is no doubt that such words as 'y ou ought to do so-and-so' may be used as one's means of so inducing a person to behav e a
certain way . But if we are to do justice to the meaning of 'right' or 'ought', we must take account also of such modes of speech as 'he
ought to do so-and-so', 'y ou ought to hav e done so-and-so', 'if this and that were the case, y ou ought to hav e done so-and-so', 'if this
and that were the case, y ou ought to do so-and-so', 'I ought to do so-and-so.' Where the judgement of obligation has referenced either
a third person, not the person addressed, or to the past, or to an unfulfilled past condition, or to a future treated as merely possible,
or to the speaker himself, there is no plausibility in describing the judgement as command. [40]

According to this v iew, it would make little sense to translate a statement such as "Galileo should not hav e been forced to recant on
heliocentricism" into a command, imperativ e, or recommendation - to do so might require a radical change in the meaning of these ethical
statements. Under this criticism, it would appear as if emotiv ist and prescriptiv ist theories are only capable of conv erting a relativ ely small subset
of all ethical claims into imperativ es.

Like Ross and Brandt, Urmson disagrees with Stev enson's "causal theory " of emotiv e meaning—the theory that moral statements only hav e emotive
meaning when they are made to change in a listener's attitude—say ing that is incorrect in explaining "ev aluativ e force in purely causal terms". This
is Urmson's fundamental criticism, and he suggests that Stev enson would hav e made a stronger case by explaining emotiv e meaning in terms of

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"commending and recommending attitudes", not in terms of "the power to ev oke attitudes". [41]

Stev enson's Ethics and Language, written after Ross's book but before Brandt's and Urmson's, states that emotiv e terms are "not alway s used for
purposes of exhortation."[42] For example, in the sentence "Slav ery was good in Ancient Rome", Stev enson thinks one is speaking of past attitudes in
an "almost purely descriptiv e" sense. [42] And in some discussions of current attitudes, "agreement in attitude can be taken for granted," so a
judgment like "He was wrong to kill them" might describe one's attitudes y et be "emotiv ely inactiv e", with no real emotiv e (or imperativ e)
meaning. [43] Stev enson is doubtful that sentences in such contexts qualify as normative ethical sentences, maintaining that "for the contexts that
are most ty pical of normativ e ethics, the ethical terms hav e a function that is both emotiv e and descriptiv e."[43]

Philippa Foot's moral realism

Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when ev aluation is superposed on fact there has been a “committal in a new
dimension.” [44] She introduces, by analogy , the practical implications of using the word “injury .” Not just any thing counts as an injury . There must
be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prev ents him from obtaining, hav en’t we fallen into the old naturalist
fallacy ?

It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connexion between 'injury ' and the things that are to be av oided, is to say that it is
only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to av oid. But we should look carefully at the
crucial mov e in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want any thing for which he would need
the use of hands or ey es. Hands and ey es, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to
need them if he had no wants at all. [45]

Foot argues that the v irtues, like hands and ey es in the analogy , play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a
committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.

Philosophers who hav e supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere ev aluation hav e got into
difficulties ov er weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to
aim at v irtue and av oid v ice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as v irtue and v ice? Consider,
for instance, the cardinal v irtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obv iously any man needs prudence, but does he not
also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm inv olv ed? And how could it be argued that he would nev er need to
face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obv ious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage
were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and
temperance are. [46]

Standard using and standard setting

As an offshoot of his fundamental criticism of Stev enson's magnetic influence thesis, Urmson wrote that ethical statements had two functions —
"standard using", the application of accepted v alues to a particular case, and "standard setting", the act of proposing certain v alues as those that
should be accepted — and that Stev enson confused them. According to Urmson, Stev enson's "I approv e of this; do so as well" is a standard-setting
statement, y et most moral statements are actually standard-using ones, so Stev enson's explanation of ethical sentences is unsatisfactory . [47] Colin
Wilks has responded that Stev enson's distinction between first-order and second-order statements resolv es this problem: a person who say s
"Sharing is good" may be making a second-order statement like "Sharing is approv ed of by the community ", the sort of standard-using statement
Urmson say s is most ty pical of moral discourse. At the same time, their statement can be reduced to a first-order, standard-setting sentence: "I
approv e of whatev er is approv ed of by the community ; do so as well."[48]

See also
Analytic philosophy
Logical positivism
Moral realism
Prescriptivism (philosophy)
Verification principle

Notes
1. Garner and Rosen, Moral Philosophy, chapter 13 ("Noncognitivist Theories") and Brandt, Ethical Theory, chapter 9 ("Noncognitivism") regard the ethical
theories of Ayer, Stevenson and Hare as noncognitivist ones.

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2. Ogden and Richards, Meaning, 125: "'Good' is alleged to stand for a unique, unanalyzable concept … [which] is the subject matter of ethics. This
peculiar ethical use of 'good' is, we suggest, a purely emotive use. … Thus, when we so use it in the sentence, 'This is good,' we merely refer to this,
and the addition of "is good" makes no difference whatever to our reference … it serves only as an emotive sign expressing our attitude to this, and
perhaps evoking similar attitudes in other persons, or inciting them to actions of one kind or another." This quote appears in an extended form just before
the preface of Stevenson's Ethics and Language.
3. Pepper, Ethics, 277: "[Emotivism] was stated in its simplest and most striking form by A. J. Ayer."
4. Brandt, Ethical Theory, 239, calls Stevenson's Ethics and Language "the most important statement of the emotive theory", and Pepper, Ethics, 288,
says it "was the first really systematic development of the value judgment theory and will probably go down in the history of ethics as the most
representative for this school."
5. Brandt, Ethical Theory, 221: "A recent book [The Language of Morals] by R. M. Hare has proposed a view, otherwise very similar to the emotive theory,
with modifications …"
6. Wilks, Emotion, 79: "… while Hare was, no doubt, a critic of the [emotive theory], he was, in the eyes of his own critics, a kind of emotivist himself. His
theory, as a consequence, has sometimes been depicted as a reaction against emotivism and at other times as an extension of it."
7. Berkeley, Treatise, paragraph 20: "The communicating of Ideas marked by Words is not the chief and only end of Language, as is commonly supposed.
There are other Ends, as the raising of some Passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an Action, the putting the Mind in some particular Disposition …"
8. Stevenson, Ethics, 273: "Of all traditional philosophers, Hume has most clearly asked the questions that here concern us, and has most nearly reached
a conclusion that the present writer can accept."
9. Hume, Enquiry, "Appendix I. Concerning moral sentiment"
10. Moore, Ethics, x: "Although this critique [of ethical naturalism] had a powerful impact, the appeal of Moore's nonnaturalistic cognitivism was, by
contrast, relatively weak. In the decades following Principia, many philosophers who were persuaded by the former ended up abandoning cognitivism
altogether in favor of the position that distinctively ethical discourse is not cognitive at all, but rather an expression of attitude or emotion."
11. Wilks, Emotion, 1: "… I do not take Ayer's ethical theory to hinge in any necessarily dependent sense upon his verificationist thesis … I take his ethical
theory to hinge upon his verificationist thesis only to the extent that it assumes logic and empirical verification (and combinations thereof) to be the only
means of firmly establishing the truth or falsity of any claim to knowledge."
12. Satris, Ethical Emotivism, 23: "Utilitarian, rationalist and cognitivist positions are in fact maintained by the members of the Vienna Circle who wrote in
the fields of ethics, social theory and value theory, namely, Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, Viktor Kraft and Karl Menger."
13. Hare, Language, 14–15: "The suggestion, that the function of moral judgments was to persuade, led to a difficulty in distinguishing their functions from
that of propaganda. … It does not matter whether the means used to persuade are fair or foul, so long as they do persuade. And therefore the natural
reaction to the realization that someone is trying to persuade us is 'He's trying to get at me; I must be on my guard …' Such a reaction to moral
judgments should not be encouraged by philosophers." After Pepper, Ethics, 297.
14. Seanor et al., Hare and Critics, 210. After Wilks, Emotion, 79.
15. Urmson, Emotive Theory, 15: "The earliest statement of the emotive theory of value terms in the modern British-American tradition (as opposed to
statements in such continental writers as Haegerstroem, which became known to English-speaking philosophers only comparatively late and had no
early influence) was, so far as I know, that given by I. A. Richards in a general linguistic and epistemological work, The Meaning of Meaning …";
Urmson, Emotive Theory, 16–17; Brandt, Ethical Theory, 206: "The earliest suggestions of the theory in the [20th] century have been made by W. H. F.
Barnes and A. Duncan-Jones."
16. Ayer, Language, 103
17. Ayer, Language, 106
18. Ayer, Language, 107
19. Ayer, Language, 111
20. Wilks, Emotion, 1: "Stevenson's version, which was intended to qualify the earlier views of Ayer (and others) … will then be treated as an elaboration of
Ayer's."
21. Satris, Ethical Emotivism, 25: "It might be suggested that there are two broad types of ethical emotivism. The first, represented by Stevenson, is well
grounded in philosophical and psychological theory relating to ethics … The second, represented by Ayer, is an unorthodox spin-off of logical
positivism."
22. Stevenson, Facts, 15; Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy, 114–15
23. Stevenson, Facts, 21: "Both imperative and ethical sentences are used more for encouraging, altering, or redirecting people's aims and conduct than for
simply describing them."
24. Wilks, Emotion, 20
25. Stevenson, Ethics, 21
26. Stevenson, Ethics, 27
27. Stevenson, Ethics, 27–28
28. Stevenson, Ethics, 207
29. Wilks, Emotion, 15, gives a similar example
30. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy, 130–31; Wilks, Emotion, 25–26
31. Stevenson, Ethics, 115–18
32. Wilks, Emotion, 25: "These are methods in which we scrutinise the factual beliefs that mediate between our fundamental and our derivative moral
attitudes; where we argue about the truth of the morally relevant facts that are called upon in support of our or other people's derivative moral attitudes,
eg. as when we argue about whether or not there is a causal connection between pornography and sexual violence." The moral "beliefs" Stevenson
spoke of are referred to as "derivative moral attitudes" by Wilks in an attempt to avoid confusion between moral beliefs and "factual beliefs".

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33. Stevenson, Ethics, 118–29
34. Stevenson, Ethics, 139–40
35. Stevenson, Ethics, 141
36. Wilks, Emotion, 26
37. Brandt, Ethical Theory, 225
38. Brandt, Ethical Theory, 226
39. Urmson, Emotive Theory, 38
40. Ross, Foundations, 33–34
41. Urmson, Emotive Theory, 38–40, 64
42. Stevenson, Ethics, 83
43. Stevenson, Ethics, 84
44. Philippa Foot, “Moral Beliefs,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 59 (1958), pp. 83-104.
45. ibid., p. 96.
46. ibid., p. 97�.
47. Urmson, Emotive Theory, 64–71
48. Wilks, Emotion, 45–46

References
Ayer, A. J. (1952) [1936]. "Critique of Ethics and Theology". Language, Truth and Logic. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-20010-8.
LCCN 52000860 (https://lccn.loc.gov/52000860).
Berkeley, George (1710). Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
Brandt, Richard (1959). "Noncognitivism: The Job of Ethical Sentences Is Not to State Facts". Ethical Theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
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External links
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/). Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
Emotivism, Intuitionism and Prescriptivism (http://www.rsrevision.com/Alevel/ethics/metaethics/index.htm#1) A clear explanation
Emotivism definition in philosophyprofessor.com (http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/emotivism.php)

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