I took a couple of courses in community college on philosophy. And I was exposed to a couple of theories like Noncognitivism and Emotivism. These theories claim ethical statements like “lying is wrong” have no truth value to them, they are only expressions of the emotions of the person who states them. Now I am no scientist. And I don’t fully understand the logic behind these theories. So I suppose they could be accurate. But I just have a couple of questions concerning them:
1)What is the Noncognitivist/Emotivist answer to the question Was the Nazi Holocaust wrong? Because my answer would be, Yes! Definitely! How do they respond to questions like these that demand definite answers?
2)Hypothetically speaking, an advanced alien craft arrives on earth. They believe ethics are just an expression of human emotion too. So they enslave mankind and turn us into a food source too! How do we talk these aliens out of doing this if ethics are all just relative to emotion, and they seem to feel their way is the right way anyways?
How do Noncognitivists/Emotivists respond to the argument that as time goes on, humans become more kind and humane to one another. If ethics are just relative to emotions, how can there be any ethical “progress”.
And finally, 4) John believes A is wrong. Jane believes A is right. How do Noncognitivists/Emotivists suggest how to solve ethical conflicts like this?
Edit: Ack, I thought we were in IMHO, sorry. The following is my completely uneducated opinion; I did not mean for it to be a GQ factual answer, but I didn’t notice until I already typed it all out so I’m gonna let it stay…
IANA philosopher, just somebody who thought this was interesting after reading the Wikipedia articles (non-cognitivismand emotivism), so take it with a grain of salt…
It seems like they’re basically saying “right” and “wrong” are not properties that are innate to objects in the world. They are merely feelings that humans attach to things, so “The Holocaust is wrong” would translate (according to Wikipedia) into “Holocaust… boo!”. “Wrong” is reduced to a negative emotion experienced by that person, not an independent, measurable trait of the Holocaust itself – as opposed to, say, the trait “related to Jews”.
I don’t see why there’s anything INdefinite about this; just as two people can disagree on whether the Holocaust was wrong, it seems one emotivist can simply say, “Holocaust, yay!” and the other, “Holocaust, boo!”. They’d both give you definite (though opposed) answers/emotions.
Emotions (AFAIK) aren’t just the random results of a galactic 8-ball; they’re based on certain causes (survival, evolution, group dynamics, etc.) If the aliens can logically persuaded that eating us is somehow bad for them or would make them go “boo!” – for example, if they’re capable of feeling compassion and we’re capable of demonstrating pain in a way they recognize – maybe they’ll stop. In some ways, this seems similar to moral subjectivism; you just have to persuade the other side to see your point of view, basically. If you share SOME common ground, it might be possible.
I guess you might be able to draw a parallel to the vegetarian/vegan movements here on Earth, especially some of their more emotional arguments (animals are cute and fluffy and deserve love!).
Why can’t they simply realize, over time, that certain actions lead to certain emotions? For example, the first time they kill someone, they might go “Yay!” at first and then experience social shunning and loneliness afterward, turning it into a “Boo.”
Either one persuades the other, they both compromise, they both ignore each other, or one kills the other. Same way any ethical conflict is resolved.
Even if you can’t logically persuade someone in a disagreement, you can try and emotionally appeal to them. Toddlers and children often do this, for example.
That would be your opinion. It is also my opinion. And that is probably the opinion of nearly 100% of the people that you might ask today. But that still doesn’t keep it from being an opinion. We do not know all of the ramifications of having the Nazi Holocause versus not having the Nazi Holocaust. Therefore we can’t state as a fact or as known truth that it was wrong. Strength of opinion isn’t the deciding factor in truth.
I’m not familiar with the philosophical label that you have used however.
The response is that there aren’t any objective answers, only emotional responses.
All we can do is try to influence them on an emotional level. If we can’t get them to have a bad emotional respones to eating us, then we’re toast (or maybe we’re served on toast), but the non-cognitivist theory is that “right” and “wrong” only describe emotional responses and have no objective existence or meaning outside of those emotions.
I’m not sure that your premise that humans become more humane over time is valid, but the path to ethical “progress” would lie in trying to influence emotional responses. To some degree, this can be done by controlling external influences. For instance, people will be more amenable to positive emotional responses to others if very negative emotive states like fear or starvation can be minimized.
That depends on what you mean by “solve.” It can’t be definitively settled for objective truth value, but one might be successful at providing information or a reward which will alter the emotional response of the other. Or they might not.
Something that might help (and this is an anlogy I’ve used a lot in philosophical discussions) is to think of ethics as a personal aesthetic. Think of it as being like responses to smells and tastes. Flowers smell good to most people and shit smells bad, but that doesn’t mean there’s any such thing as objectively good or bad smells. If an alien thinks shit smells great, there’s nothing we can say that will convince them they’re wrong, just as nobody can convince us we don’t like the taste of our faborite beer or the sound of our favorite band.
That sounds like I’m trivializing ethics, but I’m not. Humans have very strong and intense emotional aversions to some kinds of behaviors and very pleasant and positive responses to others. We are wired to respond very warmly to our children and very negatively to those who mistreat children. These are evolved, biological, emotional responses and are near universal.
However, a starving lion doesn’t know or care about human evolved emotional responses and has no ethical problem with munching a human baby. Our ethical outlooks mean nothing outside of our own minds and skins and subjective universes.
This is NOT an observation which is meant to justify abandoning a personal ethic. On the contrary. Our personal ethical aesthetics can’t be abandoned. Our emotional responses are still there, and can’t be discarded just because we know what causes them. Physical pain has no objective existnece outside of our bodies either, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.
I will say that there are individuals who observe social expectations for ethical behavior based on fear of punishment, desire for reward or other reasons which are not connected to direct emotive responses to the specific behavior (i,e,they don’t steal because they don’t want to get caught, not because they really have a negative emotional response to stealing). This is not evidence for cognitive ethics, though, only for behavior designed to influence (or avoid influencing) emotive responses by others, and it’s behavior which is still, at its root, emotively motivated in itself.
Does this perhaps oversimply the connection between emotions and learning/conditioning? There are some emotional responses that may be hardwired or very nearly so, sure, but societies and cultures affect emotional responses as well. Do you get disgusted at the thought of eating worms? Are you afraid of Satan? Do you enjoy gladiator fights? These are all culturally imbued “emotions”.
Even aesthetics are affected. Do you prefer certain works of art? Do you like certain foods or smells? Avoidance of certain things might be relatively widespread, sure, but even things like shit are enjoyed by scat fetishists.
You layer these a few times, add in a few thousand years of history, and the issues becomes a lot more complicated. A lot of our preferences come from somewhere other than the womb, and I would argue that with enough conditioning, we may actually be able to make the alien think shit smells great – or if not them, maybe their next generation. Personally, I can say that I used to be repulsed by the smell of skunk, but after I started smoking weed and noticed the similarity, it doesn’t bother me as much anymore.