Actually, based on this comment, TGGP actually believes in emotivism as such.
He isolates three reasons in the second chapter:
"'Moral judgments express feelings or attitudes,' it is said. 'What kind of feelings or attitudes?' we ask. 'Feelings or attitudes of approval,' is the reply. 'What kind of approval?' we ask, perhaps remarking that approval is of many kinds. It is in answer to this question that every version of emotivism either remains silent or... becomes vacuously circular [by identifying the approval as moral approval]" (12, 13).
Emotivism conflates 'expressions of personal preference' ("I like this!") with 'evaluative expressions' ("This is good!"), despite the fact the first is gets part of its meaning from the person saying it ("I like this!") and the second doesn't.
Emotivism attempts to assign meaning to the sentence, when the sentence itself might express different feelings or attitudes in different uses. (See Gandalf's take on "Good morning!" in The Hobbit). This is probably where emotivism can be rehabilitated, as MacIntyre goes on to say:
"This suggests that we should not simply rely on these objections to reject the emotive theory, but that we should consider whether it ought not to have been proposed as a theory about the use -- understood as purpose or function -- of members of a certain class of expressions rather than about their meaning...." (13).
Note that I'm not defending MacIntyre's position, here; I'm only bringing it up because an emotivist should know what his or her response to it is, because it is a pretty large objection. My experience is that they go into absolute denial upon hearing the second and third objections, and that's just not cool.
What does "pretty large" mean of an objection other than "good"? But you say you're not defending MacIntyre.
I'd just like to know what the position is.
The second bullet point looks like the "point and gape" attack. It simply restates emotivism and replies by declaring the opposite to be fact. The whole point of emotivism is that the "I" is implicity in "this is good," that the syntax is deceptive. The defense seems to be that we should trust syntax.
Is "moral approval" any more magic than "mor...
For a long time, I wanted to ask something. I was just thinking about it again when I saw that Alicorn has a post on a similar topic. So I decided to go ahead.
The question is: what is the difference between morally neutral stimulus responces and agony? What features must an animal, machine, program, alien, human fetus, molecule, or anime character have before you will say that if their utility meter is low, it needs to be raised. For example, if you wanted to know if lobsters suffer when they're cooked alive, what exactly are you asking?
On reflection, I'm actually asking two questions: what is a morally significant agent (MSA; is there an established term for this?) whose goals you would want to further; and having determined that, under what conditions would you consider it to be suffering, so that you would?
I think that an MSA would not be defined by one feature. So try to list several features, possibly assigning relative weights to each.
IIRC, I read a study that tried to determine if fish suffer by injecting them with toxins and observing whether their reactions are planned or entirely instinctive. (They found that there's a bit of planning among bony fish, but none among the cartilaginous.) I don't know why they had to actually hurt the fish, especially in a way that didn't leave much room for planning, if all they wanted to know was if the fish can plan. But that was their definition. You might also name introspection, remembering the pain after it's over...
This is the ultimate subjective question, so the only wrong answer is one that is never given. Speak, or be wrong. I will downvote any post you don't make.
BTW, I think the most important defining feature of an MSA is ability to kick people's asses. Very humanizing.