Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun ethics The meta-ethical stance that ethical judgments, such as those containing the words "should" and "ought to", are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another.

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Examples

  • Meinong based values on feelings and not on desires, and he critically contrasted his kind of emotivism to Ehrenfels™ voluntarism, a more conative, desire-based theory of values.

    Salvation Santa 2009

  • Moving on, I would not characterize my position as "emotivism" but rather as "relativism," the recognition that viewpoint is critical in moral and ethical judgements and even in the formulation of the self.

    Max Stirner and the Problem of Compassion James Killus 2007

  • Part of the blame for the mindless "emotivism," as MacIntyre calls it, can be attributed to the more extreme elements in the pro-life movement, who have stifled reasoned argument with their cries of "Murder!"

    On Abortion: A Lincolnian Position 1995

  • Non-cognitivist theories (Hare's prescriptivism, Ayer's emotivism, more recently Allan Gibbard's expressivism), which variously deny that moral statements can be true or false, render moral judgment so subjective and capricious that, strictly speaking, it might just as well extend to "the wrongness of running round trees right-handed or looking at hedgehogs in the light of the moon".

    Philippa Foot obituary Jane O'Grady 2010

  • The tightest connection which requires motivation in anyone who accepts the judgment that some action is right is rather well explained by a very simple version of emotivism on which a judgment that some action is right conventionally expresses one's approval of that action.

    Boys in White Suits 2009

  • The varieties of emotivism which postulate both descriptive meaning and emotive meaning have sometimes aroused such suspicions.

    Boys in White Suits 2009

  • If so, simple emotivism of the sort described is refuted because the sincerity conditions for making the judgment require the motivation not present in the amoralist.

    Boys in White Suits 2009

  • MacIntyre has much to say about emotivism and the contemporary impasse in the discussion of moral issues.

    The US may be in bad shape papabear 2008

  • MacIntyre has much to say about emotivism and the contemporary impasse in the discussion of moral issues.

    Archive 2008-08-10 papabear 2008

  • Another a priori objection to DMR was suggested by Philippa Foot (1978a and 1978b) in a response to emotivism.

    Moral Relativism Gowans, Chris 2008

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