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This article is about the meta-ethical theory. For non-cognitivism regarding religious language, see theological noncognitivism.

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Non-cognitivism is the view that there are no moral properties or moral facts . A non-cognitivist believes that there are no truth conditions that a moral statement can meet, so they can neither be true or false. They are opposite to the cognitivist view, which states that ethical statements express propositions, so they can be true or false. A non-cognitivist believes that ethical statements are closer to expressions of desire, either agreeing or disagreeing with a statement.

Non-cognitivism began with "The Meaning of Meaning" a book published in 1923 by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. It started as a theory about moral judgements and was expanded by later thinkers. The view today has been expanded to include most evaluative statements, not just moral ones.

Arguments against[edit source]

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One argument against non-cognitivism is that it ignores any external causes of emotional and prescriptive reactions. If someone says "Matt is a good person," then something about Matt or his actions must have caused that reaction. If Matt is the person's best friend, volunteers at an animal shelter, and is an avid recycler, then these could be what inspire the speaker to think that Matt is a good person. It would then be plausible for the speaker to say "Matt is a good person because he is my best friend, volunteers at an animal shelter, and is an avid recycler." If the speaker believes that people who volunteer at animal shelters are intrinsically good, then that would inspire the positive beliefs the speaker has for Matt.

Another argument against non-cognitivism is the "embedding problem" which comes from Peter Geach's "Assertion" , also known as the Frege-Geach problem, in which ethical sentences are embedded into more complex sentences. Consider the following examples:

• Eating meat is not wrong.
• Is eating meat wrong?
• I think that eating meat is wrong.
• Mike doesn't think that eating meat is wrong.
• I once thought that eating meat was wrong.
• She does not realize that eating meat is wrong.

Attempts to translate these sentences in an emotivist framework seem to fail (e.g. "She does not realize 'Boo to eating meat!'"). Prescriptivist translations fare only slightly better ("She does not realize that she is not to eat meat"). Even the act of forming such a construction indicates some sort of cognition in the process.

According to some non-cognitivist points of view, these sentences simply assume the false premise that ethical statements are either true or false. They might be literally translated as:

• "Eating meat is wrong" is a false statement.
• Is "eating meat is wrong" a true statement?
• I think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
• Mike doesn't think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
• I once thought that "eating meat is wrong" was a true statement.
• She does not realize that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.

These translations, however, do not fit with how people actually use language and speak. A non-cognitivist would have to disagree with someone saying, "'Eating meat is wrong' is a false statement" (since "Eating meat is wrong" is a moral statement and therefore not true or false), but may be tempted to agree with a person saying, "Eating meat is not wrong."

One might more constructively interpret these statements to describe the underlying emotional statement that they express, i.e.: I disapprove/do not disapprove of eating meat, I used to, he doesn't, I do and she doesn't, etc.; however, this interpretation is closer to ethical subjectivism than to non-cognitivism.

A similar argument against non-cognitivism is that of ethical arguments. A common argument might be, "If killing an innocent human is always wrong, and all fetuses are innocent humans, then killing a fetus is always wrong." Most people would consider such an utterance to represent an analytic proposition which is true a priori. However, if ethical statements do not represent cognitions as non-cognitivists believe, it seems odd to use them as premises in an argument, and even odder to assume they follow the same rules of syllogism as true propositions. However, Hare, , a proponent of universal prescriptivism, has argued that the rules of logic are independent of grammatical mood, and thus the same logical relations may hold between imperatives as hold between indicatives.

Many objections to non-cognitivism based on the linguistic characteristics of what purport to be moral judgments were originally raised by Peter Glassen in "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments" , published in Mind in January 1959, and in Glassen's follow-up article "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments: A Rejoinder to Miss Schuster" in the January 1963 issue of Mind.

Arguments in favor [edit source]

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As with other anti-realist meta-ethical theories, non-cognitivism is largely supported by the argument from queerness, which comes from John Mackie's 1977 book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. "If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else."

People generally have a negative attitude towards murder, which presumably keeps most of us from murdering. But does the actual wrongness of murder play an independent role? Is there any evidence that there is a property of wrongness that some types of acts have? Some people might think that the strong feelings we have when we see or consider a murder provide evidence of murder's wrongness. But it is not difficult to explain these feelings without saying that wrongness was their cause. Thus there is no way of discerning which, if any, ethical properties exist; by Occam's razor, the simplest assumption is that none do. The non-cognitivist then asserts that, since a proposition about an ethical property would have no referent, ethical statements must be something else.

Universal prescriptivism[edit source]

Arguments for prescriptivism focus on the function of normative statements.

Prescriptivists argue that factual statements and prescriptions are totally different, because of different expectations of change in cases of a clash between world and world . For example if Matt were to have the belief that x is true (Let x= Matt believes it is nighttime). Then, Matt would get observational evidence against x (Matt looking outside and seeing bright sun). From this, Matt would change his belief to instead believe that ‘Not-x’ (‘It’s not sunny today’). This now can be contrasted under the context of desires . If Matt has the desire that x be true (e.g. let x = “Matt has great grades”), and then gets observational evidence against x (e.g. Matt sees his report card and it has all Fs), Matt would not change his desire to Not-x (e.g. Matt did not start desiring to have good grades). Instead, Matt tries to change the world—whereas in the case of belief, Matt didn’t start trying to prevent block out the sun; instead Matt adjusted his beliefs . However, if the norm "thou shalt not kill!" is uttered, and this command is disobeyed (by the fact of a person being murdered), the speaker is not to change his sentence upon observation of this into "kill other people!", but is to reiterate the moral outrage of the act of killing . Adjusting statements based upon objective reality and adjusting reality based upon statements are contrary uses of language; that is to say, descriptive statements are a different kind of sentence to normative statements . In summary, beliefs try to match the world; desires try to make the world match them .

Some cognitivists argue that some expressions like "courageous" have both a factual as well as a normative component which cannot be distinguished by analysis . Prescriptivists argue that according to the context of the statement, either the factual or the normative component of the meaning is dominant. The sentence "Matt was courageous for resigning to protest a company policy" is wrong, if Matt resigned for another job. But the sentence "Be brave and fight for the glory of your country!" has no truth value and cannot be falsified by someone who doesn't join the army.

Prescriptivism is also supported by how people actually speak. Many moral statements are given as recommendations or commands e.g a parent telling their kids "Lying is wrong." Prescriptivism can fit the theist idea of morality as obedience towards god. It is however different from the cognitivist supernaturalism which interprets morality as subjective will of god, while prescriptivism claims that moral rules are universal and can be found by reason alone without reference to a god.

According to Hare , prescriptivists cannot argue that amoralists are logically wrong or contradictory. Everyone can choose to follow moral commands or not. This is the human condition according to the Christian reinterpretation of the Choice of Heracles. According to prescriptivism, morality is not about knowledge (of moral facts), but about character (to choose to do the right thing). Actors cannot externalize their responsibility and freedom of will towards some moral truth in the world, virtuous people don't need to wait for some cognition to choose what's right.

Prescriptivism is also supported by imperative logic, in which there are no truth values for imperatives, and by the idea of the naturalistic fallacy: even if someone could prove the existence of an ethical property and express it in a factual statement, he could never derive any command from this statement, so the search for ethical properties is pointless.

Emotivism[edit source]

Arguments for emotivism focus on what normative statements express when uttered by a speaker . Emotivists ask whether there really is evidence that killing is wrong. We have evidence that Jupiter has a magnetic field and that birds are oviparous, but as yet, we do not seem to have found evidence of moral properties, such as "goodness". Emotivists ask why, without such evidence, we should think there is such . Ethical intuitionists think the evidence comes not from science or reason but from our own feelings: good deeds make us feel a certain way and bad deeds make us feel very differently. But is this enough to show that there are genuinely good and bad deeds? Emotivists think not, claiming that we do not need to postulate the existence of moral "badness" or "wrongness" to explain why considering certain deeds makes us feel disapproval; that all we really observe when we introspect are feelings of disapproval . Thus the emotivist asks why not adopt the simple explanation and say that this is all there is, rather than insist that some intrinsic "badness" (of murder, for example) must be causing feelings when a simpler explanation is available.

Varieties “See also: Expressivism”

Emotivism, associated with A. J. Ayer, and the Vienna Circle, suggests that ethical sentences are primarily emotional expressions of one's own attitudes and are intended to influence the actions of the listener. Under this view, "Killing is wrong" is translated as "Killing, boo!" or "I disapprove of killing."

A close cousin of emotivism, developed by R. M. Hare, is called universal prescriptivism. Prescriptivists interpret ethical statements as being universal imperatives, prescribing behavior for all to follow. According to prescriptivism, phrases like "Thou shalt not murder!" or "Do not steal!" are the clearest expressions of morality, while reformulations like "Killing is wrong" tend to obscure the meaning of moral sentences.

Other forms of non-cognitivism include Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism and Allan Gibbard's norm-expressivism.

According to quasi-realism , moral judgments represent our attitudes and emotions toward particular deeds or circumstances rather than describing the world as it is. Blackburn contends that we communicate with others about our values and ideal behaviors by using moral language to convey our practical thinking. A quasi-realist would argue that claims such as "killing is wrong," are literally neither true or false. However, quasi-realism says it is okay to treat such sentences as if they were true or false . When we say "killing is wrong," we are not defining any objective characteristic of the act of killing, such as its immorality, according to quasi-realism. Instead, based on our emotional and logical attitudes toward it, we are expressing our opposition to or condemnation of the killing . This is a key difference when comparing quasi-realism to other forms of non-cognitivism.

The norm-expressivism of Allan Gibbard is a meta-ethical theory that aims to clarify the significance and purpose of moral language in terms of how norms and attitudes are expressed through it. Norm Expressivism holds that moral statements are used to express our acceptance toward whole systems of norms rather than describing objective moral facts or qualities. For example, a norm-expressionist would say that “the act of killing is justified when it can protect the death of an innocent at the hands of a perpetrator”. This is contrary to other forms of non-cognitivism which might say “murdering a terrorist to protect civilians is justified”. Therefore, a norm-expressionist differs from other forms of non-cognitivism as it says function and meaning that cannot be reduced to either descriptive or prescriptive language. Overall, this view contends that moral statements convey our adherence to particular standards or ideals as well as our attitudes toward particular behaviors or circumstances.

See also[edit source]

• Amoralism
• Expressivism
• Theological noncognitivism
• Moral realism
• Moral skepticism
• Rudolf Carnap
• Richard Rorty

External links[edit source]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Non-cognitivism.

• Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by Mark van Roojen.
• rsrevision.com's pages on Metaethics Emotivism, Intuitionism and Prescriptivism with explanations, criticisms, and links.

v t e Philosophy of language

v t e Ethics

Categories:

• Metaethics
• Theories of language

Sources[edit source]

• Boisvert, Daniel and Teemu Toppinen, "Charles Leslie Stevenson", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/stevenson/>.
• Garner, Richard T.; Bernard Rosen (1967). Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to Normative Ethics and Meta-ethics. New York: Macmillan. pp. 219–220. ISBN 0-02-340580-5.
• Glassen, P., "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments", Mind 68:57-72 (1959); id. "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments: A Rejoinder to Miss Schuster", Mind 72:137-140 (1963).
• Hare, Richard Mervyn (1952). The Language of Morals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, URL = <https://philpapers.org/rec/HARTLO-50>.
• Joyce, Richard, "Moral Anti-Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/moral-anti-realism/>.
• Price, Anthony, "Richard Mervyn Hare", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/hare/>.
• Ripstein, Arthur. The Philosophical Review, vol. 101, no. 4, 1992, pp. 934–36. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2185966. Accessed 3 May 2023.
• Rosen, Gideon. Noûs, vol. 32, no. 3, 1998, pp. 386–405. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671940. Accessed 3 May 2023.

• van Roojen, Mark, "Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/moral-cognitivism/>.

References