Quotes & Sayings About Emotivism

In his book After Virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the present cultural moment to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. He argued that the West has abandoned reason and the tradition of the virtues in giving itself over to the relativism that is now flooding our world today. We are governed not by faith, or by reason, or by any combination of the two. We are governed by what MacIntyre called emotivism: the idea that all moral choices are nothing more than expressions of what the choosing individual feels is right. MacIntyre — Rod Dreher

For the subjectivist, moral judgments are reports or statements of fact about the attitude of the person who says them. For the emotivist, moral judgments are not facts at all, but emotional expressions about an action or person. The subjectivist will say, "Homosexuality is wrong!" This means, "I disapprove of homosexuality." For the emotivist, the same statement means, "Homosexuality, yuck! Boo!" Emotivism is thus a more sophisticated theory than subjectivism. Both share the idea that moral judgments are not normative statements and that objective moral facts are nonexistent. — Scott B. Rae