Non-cognitivism

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Non-cognitivism is the view that ethical sentences do not express propositions; instead they express something else, such as emotions or recommendations.

So, when we say that something is "good," or "right," or "moral," then we aren't actually making a statement that can be true or false; all that we're doing is expressing a certain kind of emotion we feel, or trying to evoke or cause a certain kind of emotion in others, or we're implicitly commanding or recommending that people behave in certain ways. Different kinds of non-cognitivism differ in what ethical sentences are said to do. Emotivists, for example, say that ethical sentences express and evoke certain kinds of emotion. Prescriptivists, on the other hand, say that ethical sentences are implicit commands or recommendations. You aren't going to need to know the differences between these views really; the point is that it's not as though ethical sentences are totally meaningless. It's just that they don't have cognitive meaning -- which is to say that they don't express propositions. Their meaning is a little like the meaning of outbursts like "Hurray for kindness!" and "Murder -- boo, hiss!"

Another way to think of non-cognitive meaning is like this. Suppose one says, "If you steal money from your employer, you're doing something wrong." Then one could simply say, in a tone of shock or revulsion, "Stealing money from your employer!!" and that outburst would have about the same meaning as saying that stealing money is wrong. Saying that an action is wrong just expresses how you feel about the action.

Non-cognitivism was fairly widely advocated in the middle of this century. It isn't as popular as it once was, but it still has quite a few proponents. So we might wonder why anyone would advocate this theory. There are two reasons, the first of which is the first "argument," or as we were calling it the "line of thought," behind non-naturalism. Again, the basic idea there was that we can't perceive or bump into goodness or rightness. Now, Moore concluded from that, that "good" must be indefinable, standing for basic property; perhaps we know it by a faculty of moral intuition. But the non-cognitivists draw a different conclusion. They say that goodness and rightness aren't anything in the world at all. They aren't really properties of anything. When we use words like "good" and "right," all we're doing is expressing our emotions, or issuing commands. We aren't describing any sort of mysterious properties in the world. So non-cognitivism is motivated by the view that goodness and rightness, if they were something in the world, would appear to be rather mysterious or strange properties; and so non-cognitivism concludes that they really aren't in the world at all.

The second reason or motivation behind non-cognitivism is a perfectly legitimate observation. Namely, the observation that when we use moral sentences -- when we morally praise or blame people and their actions -- we are, in any case, doing more than merely making factual statements. Even if we are making statements about moral facts, we are also expressing our attitudes, or trying to shape other peoples? attitudes. Look at an example, "Mary is a good person." You can imagine Mary's friend saying this, and if we all know Mary, then we'll know why Mary's friend says it: for example, Mary never lies, she is a very responsible person, she is always nice, and so forth. Saying that she's a good person expresses approval of those good habits that we know Mary practices. It's as though Mary is saying, "Mary is good -- go thou and do likewise." So here's the point then: ethical sentences, regardless of whether they express propositions or not, do definitely have the function of expressing our attitudes and our recommendations. The non-cognitivist goes one step further than others, saying this is all ethical sentences do - express attitudes, and make recommendations.

Many find this result convenient in order to hold onto a sophisticated moral relativism. Indeed, this view underlies some educational theories, some of them based on teaching ethics in schools, which tend toward sympathy for non-cognitivism. When we talk about "good," "bad," "right," and "wrong," all we're doing is expressing how we feel. Some modern educationists have children "clarify" their values by asking them how they feel about different situations.

One objection is particularly powerful. The meaningfulness, or "understandability", of the claim that the meaning of ethical sentences consists entirely in how we feel about the person, or thing, or situation described; or what our recommendations are with regard to the item in question. But this raises a question: what it is about the item in question that makes us feel the way we do, or that makes us recommend what we do? Take the case of the good Mary again. The question in this case is: What is it about Mary that makes us say that she is a good person, that makes us express moral approval of her, and that makes us recommend to others that they emulate her? Surely there is something about her which makes us say she's good. It is not as if she were a nonentity with no properties. Mary is a complex human being about which (in our example) we know a great deal. The question is: What is it about her, out of all the things we know (or believe) about her, that makes us say that she's good? It would be rather obvious to anyone who knows Mary: she has a number of habits, like telling the truth, taking care of her responsibilities, treating others kindly and fairly, and so forth. And it's seeing all of those habits together which make us say that she's a good person.

However, if it is Mary's habits which make us say she is a good person, why do we not just say we can translate the ethical sentence, "Mary is a good person," into a sentence about Mary's habits? Why not say that "Mary is a good person" means "Mary tells the truth, takes care of her responsibilities faithfully, treats others kindly, and so forth"? Notice, the latter sentence doesn't contain any ethical terms, but just describes her habits. If Mary's habits allow us call her good, then we can say her goodness consists in her having all of those habits. By "Mary's goodness" we just mean "Mary's habits X, Y, and Z." And if Mary has habits like those, then she is good; and if she does not, or if she has other habits like the unfortunate tendency to kill people, for example, then she is bad.

So to generalize, we can criticize non-cognitivism by saying it seems to ignore the perfectly legitimate possibility that we can reduce ethical sentences to sentences about whatever it is about the items that make us state those ethical sentences. We can reduce a claim about the wrongfullness of stealing, or about the goodness of humanitarian aid, to claims about what it is about those actions which make us state the ethical sentences in question.

Also see Meta-ethics


References

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