Page "Non-cognitivism" Paragraph 15

Arguments for emotivism focus on what normative statements express when uttered by a speaker.

A person who says that killing is wrong certainly expresses her disapproval of killing.

Emotivists claim that this is all she does, that " Killing is wrong " is not a truth-apt declaration, and that the burden of evidence is on the cognitivists who want to show that in addition to expressing disapproval, the claim " Killing is wrong " is also true.

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 of 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 a property.

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 to adopt the simple explanation and say that this is all there is ; why insist that a genuine " badness " ( of murder, for example ) must be causing feelings, when a simpler explanation is available.