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One should generally seek reasons as a defense from argument, not rationalization.
{Edit: My mistake, he really did mean emotivism and this paragraph kind of misses the point. Not going to delete, as it may confuse later comments.} More to the point, though, a refutation of emotivism is not a refutation of moral relativism, and, based on the little bit I could get off Amazon previews, relativism seems to be his problem, even if he wants to straw-man it as emotivism. Similarly, TGGP (given that he redundantly conjoins "I do not believe anything is good or bad in an objective sense" with "emotivism") seems to be more about the relativism than the emotivism specifically.
If that author actually manages to put a decent dent in moral relativism, please explain so I can go buy this book immediately, because I would be literally stunned to see such an argument.
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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 "moral"? It seems like a pretty straightforward category: when people express approval using moral language. This fails to predict when people will express moral approval rather than the ordinary type, but that hardly makes it magical.
Is there any moral theory to which the third bullet point does not apply? Surely, every moral theory has opponents who will apply it incorrectly to "good morning." The second bullet point says we should trust syntax, while the third that language is tricky.
The quoted part seems like a good response to virtually all of analytic philosophy; perhaps it can be rehabilitated. But surely emotivism is explicit about promoting performance over meaning? Isn't that thewhole point of emotivism as opposed to other forms of moral relativism?
1) "pretty large" tends to mean the same thing as "fundamental", "general", "widely binding" -- at least in my experience. E.g., "Godel's Theorem was a pretty large rejection of the Russell program."
And no, I'm not defending MacIntyre. All I'm trying to demonstrate is that his arguments against emotivism are worthy enough for emotivists to learn.
2) No. You've never heard someone say, "I may not like it, but it's still good?" For example, there are people who are personally dislike gay marriage, but support it anyway because they feel it is good.
3) Defining "moral approval" as "when people express approval using moral language" says nothing about what the term "moral" means, and that's something any ethical system really ought to get to eventually.
4) Yes: deontological systems don't give one whit about the syntax of a statement; if your 'intention' was bad, your speech act was still bad. Utilitarianism also is more concerned with the actual weal or woe caused by a sentence, not its syntatic form.
And I'm done. If you want to learn more about MacIntyre, read the damn book. I'm a mathematician, not a philosopher.