A.J. Ayer's Emotivist Theory of Moral Language

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This is a lecture about a specific version of Expressivism or Non-consequentialism about moral discourse or moral talk. The version is Emotivism, which was advocated most prominently by A.J. Ayer in his book Language, Truth, and Logic. This lecture comes from an introductory-level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics. This part of the course, however, focuses on metaethics.

[dalriada]

Jeffrey Kaplan, master educator. Novice speller.

[andrewdong]

35:54–36:04 ‘actually, pause the video, right now. And make up an argument either for the claim that marijuana should be legal or that it shouldn’t be… You di- you didn’t pause the video. You’re not actually gonna think of something, … you just wanna keep on watching… ’ 😅😂

[cw-on-yt]

All well explained! ...but, it's also good to have the solution presented. Alasdair MacIntyre explains how we got into the confusing cul-de-sac of Moral-Sentimentalism, in his book _After Virtue._ I'm hoping you'll do a video or two walking through that book's thesis: It sees the issue much more broadly than either Ayer or Moore.

[The_Maze_Is_Not_Meant_For_You]

Best meta-ethics lecture ever. Well done.

[dimitardobrev]

Comment for the algorithm. Get this man some views! Content is gold.

[xopowo]

I am just in love with this guy... I love listening to him and learning... I never get fed up... You are amazing ...

[MrThede]

Your grind has been very worthwhile, teacher, please continue to spread your knowledge and educating the masses, knowledge is power and power is freedom, cheers!

[The_Original_Default_Username]

I think the subjective viewpoint is correct. There's a social-behavior component to conflicting with another person over "yay pickled tomatoes" or "no pickled tomatoes". There's a will to dominate the other with one's preferences, in a social reality where violence is extremely expensive. The verbal combat of these preferences is a non-violent posturing to assert dominance over the other person's preferences.

It really does boil down to individual motives, in the context of our being social primates.

[dannagarcia]

thank you so much for this! honestly, I think I saw every video on this topic but NOW I FINALLY GET IT! "YAY LEARNING" (I hope you got my joke) :)

[planetary-rendez-vous]

This is by far my favorite video from the series until now. I've struggled with the relativism of truth for aesthetics and morality, because while both seemed entirely subjective, we still argue about it with facts and so there was some sort of conundrum my instincts didn't like. You either commit and say something is 100% arguable for a moral statement or aesthetics, or else you don't and it's meaningless to argue. And yet we do both and acknowledge both.

This is why I was never in favor of moral relativism, whatever it means (time to watch more videos), because it implies absolute subjectivism and that it is futile to argue (which would ironically render useless the Oscar's and prizes, reviews for the arts) which is not what happens in fact.

[darrellee]

3:45 Maybe I should watch the whole video first. But I reject the initial premise that emotive expressions don't have a truth value. The pragmatics of languages means I always translate the expression "Pickles- barf" into "You don't like pickles", but clearly you could say "Pickles - barf" and not mean it. And thus it would be false. Is Ayer's confusing the expression with the actual sensation or sentiment? Or am I not following that for the purpose of Ayer;s discussion the expression of the sentiment and the sentiment are taken to be equivalent? Maybe that's made clear later. But for me the expression is not the sentiment and the expression is pragmatically equivalent to a statement which has a truth value. So the rest of the discussion is probably going to go down a rabbit hole that leads nowhere.

[dans]

Wow! This video was a fantastic help for the undergrad essay im writing. I was stunned when I saw the view count, I was expecting hundreds of thousands, not hundreds.

You will massive someday soon

[FuriousGeorge]

According to subjectavism, "Violence is wrong" is shorthand for "I dislike violence." Could it be the view, that "Violence is wrong." means "I think violence is wrong but it indicates nothing about my predilection for liking or disliking violence." In other words, "Violence is wrong, but I recognize that I am not perfect and, to some degree, I don't mind a certain kind of violence whether it be enjoying boxing or MMA or watching an action movie."

Meaning that thinking something is wrong is not an indication of whether they enjoy or participate in that thing because that person recognizes their foibles as a human being and contradiction is a natural part of the human experience.

[dmitrysamoilov]

This is all well and good about preferences and all that, however-

Where is the talk about framing moral statements as IF THEN statements?
Basically, every moral claim can be converted into an IF YOU DO THIS, I'LL DO THIS, form.

examples:
if you pick your nose in public, (in response) i will make a disgusted face and look at you funny
if you cheat on your test and i find out, (in response) i will give you an F
if you don't pay your credit card, (in response) i will lower your credit score
if you don't pay your mortgage, (in response) i will take your house
if you don't pay your rent, (in response) i will kick you out on the street
if we are in a relationship and you cheat on me, (in response) i will end the relationship

These examples illustrate (i hope) that if you try to articulate the application of moral statements (preferences),
they will show up as an easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to analyze IF THEN form.

for instance, if someone says
if you flip me off in public, (as a response) i will punch you in the face
:some people follow this rule
other people follow:
if you flip me off in public, (as a response) i will walk away
other people say:
if you flip me off in public, (as a response) i will try to have a level-headed conversation investigating why that happened
maybe that's like Tom Cruise, who did that to a guy who squirted him in the face


this is where preference comes in, you get to decide your reaction to any given event.
how successful those actions are in real life (in respect your overall goals in life) determines how "good" your reaction is.

Let's say my overall goal (SECRET BELIEFS/DESIRES) in life is to:
1)be the alpha male, protect my reputation, make everyone afraid of me
this person will punch you in the face
2)safety is more important than needless violence, don't care what strangers think, get out of sketchy situations
this person will walk away
3)want to make the world a better place, everyone who is mean is actually hurt in some way, maybe i can make a difference
this person will try to start a conversation

The interesting thing is this: you can find out a person's secret beliefs by observing how they react to any given situation.

[samadams]

I usually like your content but your dismissal of subjectivism is frustrating. Most people, in day to day life, express a lot of subjective opinions in the form of assertions, even though the actual thought behind the words isn’t an assertion. For example, I was out with a friend and the song “American pie” came on the radio. I said “I love this song”, whereas my friend responded “Really? This song is terrible”. I said “it’s not terrible, you just don’t like it”. He got confused for a second before saying, “yeah I guess so, it’s just not my thing.” People talk like this, another example would be me proclaiming “pineapple on pizza is the best!”. Clearly I don’t mean that on a technical semantic level, the actual meaning is “I personally enjoy pineapple on pizza”. The first statement shouldn’t be evaluated because it was never truly made.

The statements “violence is wrong” and “I dislike violence” are different statements, proving one correct says nothing about the other. That said, to the statement “violence is wrong”, I would say the person saying that is either 1. not accurately expressing their beliefs on a semantic level (such as my assertion of pineapple on pizza), and a more accurate statement is “I dislike violence”, meaning the first statement isn’t actually what they meant, and isn’t worth evaluating. Or 2. They really believe the assertion, in which case they’re adhering to some form of dogmatic behavior, as there is ultimately no objective basis for violence being wrong.

[huxleyleigh]

An expression like "pickles barf" is basically shorthand for "i don't enjoy eating pickles" which, depending on the speaker's opinion on pickles could be true or false (assuming the speaker is honest). So "pickles barf" could be true or false?

[NachoBearYeah]

Wait a freakin' second this makes way more sense than I anticipated

[aashikadevangshee]

"I dont know how to spell it" I see myself in this guy

[IsmaelLovecraft]

"pickles, BARF!" can be sincere or insincere, and surely sincere and insincere do have truth values.

[picassodilly]

I feel like there’s a fair number of issues with Ayer’s discussion.

Most of which are involved with his theory turning “moral statements” from general statements into statements about the speaker.

Like, if I say “Violence is wrong, ” if that means “Boo, violence!” it becomes a statement about me and not a general statement.

Creating the Sincere/ Insincere analog to true/ false creates a situation where the speaker of a statement plays more of a role in how that statement is evaluated than the statement itself.

And in the end, there’s the assumption that there exist some type of behavior that will universally be accepted as “good” or “bad” by everyone.