Why Be Moral?

Why Be Moral?

A.J. Ayer: Emotivism and Plato: Collected Dialogues

A.J. Ayer was somewhat of an academic visionary but most notably recognized for questioning other traditional moral philosophers in his book Language, Truth and Logic, where he proposed the question “To what logical type do moral principles and moral judgments belong?” Ayer argues that ethical terms are not really propositions at all but rather “pseudoconcepts”, which do not add any factual content to sentences in which they are present, but merely express feelings of the speaker, and could neither be true or false. Ayer forms his conclusion by attempting to show that alternative theories of meaning regarding ethical terms, naturalistic theories, and the “absolutist” theory are incorrect. First, Ayer differentiates four common subjects of ethical philosophy, and says that only one of them is actually philosophy proper: (i) The exploration of the meaning of ethical terms; (ii) The study of propositions describing moral experience; (iii) Commands to be moral; and (iv), The study of actual moral judgments; (ii) Is not philosophy but rather psychology; (iii) is merely telling us what to do, and therefore does not belong in philosophy or science, and (iv), is not philosophy in the scope that it does not deal with ethical terms. So, only (i) is truly philosophy, simply by concluding that it does not deal with factual content. Ayer also argues against naturalistic theories by mollifying the two strongest naturalist theories: utilitarianism and subjectivism. Ayer rejects the utilitarian notion that ethical terms can be reduced to descriptions of empirical fact about happiness, pleasure, or satisfaction, because he says ethical statements were in fact NOT fact at all. In addition, Ayer also refuted subjectivism, which is the view that ethical terms reduce to psychological states of individuals must be rejected, because it would form conflict for a person to say that he approves of a thing that is not...