A Study On The Differences Between Ayer And Stevenson’s Metaethics Of Emotivism

Emotivist metaethics is a distinctive,influential,yet widely criticized metaethical theory.However,many of the criticisms simplify the emotivist perspective,and these accusations may pose a threat to Ayer’s emotivist theory,but they do not do justice to Stevenson’s emotivist theory.More crucially,Ayer and Stevenson arrive at their views on moral language based on two different research trails,and on this basis,some scholars even argue that the two views are completely unrelated emotivist theories.It is by analyzing the differences that exist between the two that this paper highlights the complexity and diversity within emotivist theory,in part to break down the simplistic,one-sided understanding of emotivism and the criticisms based on that understanding.The differences between Ayer and Stevenson are manifested in four main ways: First,the theoretical background is different.Ayer,as a logical positivist,has a theoretical interest in scientificizing philosophy and revealing the logical relations behind everyday language,while Stevenson,influenced by late Wittgenstein and behaviorist psychology,understands moral language as stimulus symbols that can provoke specific response tendencies among different language games.The second is a different understanding of the meaning of language.Ayer understands the meaning of language on the basis of logical positivism,while Stevenson elaborates on the dualistic nature of moral language from both scientific and psychological perspectives,and the dualistic meaning derived from it.Third,the understanding of moral disagreement is different.Ayer argues that there is no moral disagreement;Stevenson argues that moral disagreement does exist and that it can be divided into belief disagreement and attitude disagreement.Fourth,Ayer’s theory is an extreme emotionalism,while Stevenson’s is a moderate emotionalism.Emotivist theories face many accusations,and the author tries to respond to these accusations based on the positions of Ayer and Stevenson respectively to further highlight the differences between the two emotivist theories.These accusations can be broadly divided into three categories: accusations on the objectivity side;accusations on the semantics side;and accusations on the normative side.For the criticism of the objectivity aspect of morality(in the case of Dworkin’s criticism),Ayer can defend his theory from the perspective that it is a second-order analysis of moral language,while Stevenson must clarify that his theory is a methodological study of moral arguments.For the semantic criticism(in the case of the Frege-Geach problem),Ayer can be defended on the aspect that moral language contains knowledge of semantics,while for Stevenson this criticism is that his theory is not understood from a psychological perspective.For the normative aspect of the criticism(exemplified by Scanlon’s criticism based on justification foundationalism),the author argues that neither Ayer nor Stevenson can give a strong response,although the reasons and ways in which they fail on this issue remain different,and this again partly reveals the differences between the two theories.