Theory Of Stevenson's Mild Emotional Expression

Charles L. Stevenson is a well-known American ethicist, a master of the emotional expression. His theory of emotional expression is different from Ayer’s radical expression (radical emotivism), that is considered to be a mild emotional expression (moderate emotivism). By Ayer’s opinion, the moral discourse or moral judgment is the emotional expression of the speaker, it is essentially dose not mean any statement of fact or proposition. Ayer just define the moral judgment is emotional expression, therefore, it is hard to explain the confusion of the real moral differences in the real world. Stevenson amended Ayer’s radical emotional expression, he advocates that moral judgment is not only the expression of emotion, but also the facts. Moreover, Stevenson made the distinction between belief differences and attitude differences, he thought attitude differences are real differences, and moral differences just the kind of attitude differences. He tried to distinguish these two differences, in order to fix out that Ayer can not explain the real moral differences. Stevenson built the theory of analytical moral discourse, according to this theory, there will be the possibility of moral argument, as well as the moral argument can solve people’s moral differences. Furthermore, the mild emotional expression (moderate emotivism) got rich, and become more close to the live. This was the period when Stevenson’s theory full development.The main issue of Stevenson’s theory is that he believes to resolve fundamental differences of moral discourse, we can only resort to emotional rather than rational. But it will raise the risk, like the old saying "when a lie repeated a thousand thimes, it will become the truth". How to avoid this problem, now it is becoming a big topic for Western ethics.By Stevenson’s moral analysis, the analysis of the values of the description, and the analysis of the nature of moral differences, it is a good opportunity for us to think and discussion.