Global Journal of Management and Business Research, A: Administration and Management, Volume 22 Issue 9

emotional attitudes. Emotivism is form of non- cognitivism o r expressivism. It stands in opposition to other forms of non-cognitivism (such as quasi- realism a nd universal prescriptivism) , as well as to all forms of cognitivism (including both moral realism a nd ethical subjectivism) . 8 Admittedly, the emotive theory did not begin with Alfred Julius Ayer, but it was in Ayer and Charles Leslie Stevenson that the theory gained its popularity. Charles Kay Ogden and 1vor Armstrong Richards were the first to propose the theory in their work The Meaning of Meaning. 9 They gave the term "good" a purely emotive meaning, since they felt that when one makes an utterance that a thing is good, one is merely evoking a semblance of the same feeling in other people. This concept, it is said, is the subject-matter of ethics although Ogden and Richards claimed that in the purely emotive use of 'good' in ethics, the speaker expresses an attitude and evokes a similar attitude in the listener. A Swedish philosopher, Axel Hagerstrom has been credited as the first to formulate the theory of emotvism in 1911. In one of his lectures: "On the Truth of Moral propositions," he formulated, in outline, the emotive theory with particular reference to the concept of duty. 10 It was in early 20th century that A.J. Ayer proposed his own theory of emotivism. In chapter 6 of his Language, Truth and Logic , one finds Ayer's earliest attempts to develop, in some detail, what came to be known as the emotive theory of ethics. Ayer claims that one cannot subject an ethical statement to empirical testing, since ethical statements are mere expressions of our personal preferences: 'For in saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, is not making factual statement, but merely an expression of certain moral sentiments.' 11 A. J. Ayer’s emotivism, originated from the school of Logical Positivism , whose proponents wanted to ground knowledge in what could be known through experience, or what was logically the case. They believed that anything which could not be verified by logical analysis or through sense-experience was deemed unverifiable. As such, to speak about unverifiable things was simply pointless (or meaningless). 12 The cornerstone of their beliefs was the principle of verification. This principle claims that statements about right and wrong are meaningless. They are neither true nor false, because they do not actually state anything. Like other positivists, Ayer was disturbed by the confusion caused by the improper use of language. In his work: Language, Truth, and Logic , he examined and analyzed ethical statements in order to find out their true nature, most especially to know whether they are scientific. In chapter 6 of Language, Truth and Logic, entitled: "Critique of Ethics and Theology" Ayer began by saying that judgments of value were "expressions of emotion," when he discussed ethics in particular (as opposed to aesthetics), he abandoned the term 'emotion' and instead used the terms 'sentiment', 'feeling' or 'attitude'. The reason is that some terms, such as 'sentiment', 'feeling', and 'attitude' as subject to moral and ethical qualifications. He argued that ethical judgments express and evoke ethical emotions that are different in kind from non-ethical emotions. 13 Chiefly, Ayer's fundamental claim was that statements could only be meaningful or valuable only if they had factual content. He thought it was possible to differentiate between meaningless and meaningful statements as the latter are either true by definition or, in principle, falsifiable (they could be shown to be true or false). All other statements are disregarded as having no value. Ayer scrutinized ethical statements in order to know whether they were verifiable or factual, and held that the fundamental ethical concepts cannot be analyzed insofar as there is no established criterion for testing their validity. 14 1. "Propositions that express definitions of ethical terms, or judgments about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions" In this chapter, Ayer divides "the ordinary system of ethics" into four classes namely: 2. "Propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience, and their causes" 3. "Exhortations to moral virtue," 4. “Actual ethical judgments.” 15 Ayer gives particular attention to propositions of the first class, moral judgments, saying that those of the second class belong to science, while those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered in normative ethics as opposed to meta- ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy. Thus, in saying that ‘Telling lies is (morally) wrong’, the speaker is not asserting any proposition, but only expressing a feeling or attitude of disapproval towards the action of telling lies. Consequently, the presence of an ethical symbol adds nothing to its factual content. The exception to this is C. L. Stevenson, who in his Facts and Values: Studies in Ethical Analysis (1963) argues 70 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue IX Version I Year 2022 ( ) A © 2022 Global Journals The Ethical Emotivism of A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson: A Tendentious Explanatory Matrix for Human Homosexual Behaviour 8 Kyle Swan (2002) “Emotivism and Deflationary Truth,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (3): 270–272. 9 Charles Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards, (1923) The Meaning of Meaning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) p. 125. 10 11 Alfred Julius Ayer, “Critique of Ethics and Theology” in Ayer writings in Philosophy, Language, Truth and Logic , (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) p. 110. 12 Alexander Miller (1998) “Emotivism and the Verification Principle,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (2):103–105. 13 Alfred Julius Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: Victor Gollanz 1936) p. 103. 14 Andreas Vrahimis (2020) “Language, Truth, and Logic and the Anglophone Reception of the Vienna Circle,” In Adam Tamas Tuboly (ed.), The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic , (Hampshire: Palgrave) pp. 41-42. 15 Alfred Julius Ayer, (1952) "Critique of Ethics and Theology," Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications), p. 77.