Emotion, Truth and Meaning

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

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2. The Original Emotive Theory

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 1-35

3. Criticism of the Original Emotive Theory

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 36-78

4. Prescriptivity

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 79-87

5. Universalisability

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 88-116

6. Imagination, Sympathy and Decisions of Principle

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 117-132

7. An Emotive Theory of Moral Psychology

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 133-173

8. The Psychologically Filled-Out Theory

   • Colin Wilks

   Pages 174-236

9. Back Matter

   Pages 237-243

   PDF

The aim of this book is to defend the Emotive Theory of Ethics, and, in particular, the versions of that theory proposed by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and by C. L. Stevenson in Ethics and Language (1944). For those readers who are familiar with the conventional history of Twentieth Century moral philosophy and the infamous place which the Emotive Theory occupies in that history, the question which may well spring to mind at this point is 'Why bother?' In order to answer this question, however, I will need to provide a rough sketch of the very unconventional history of Twentieth Century moral philosophy which inspired me to 'resurrect' a theory which most modem moral philosophers have long assumed to be safely dead and buried. From the very outset, the Emotive Theory (ET) was a misunderstood, misrepresented and unjustly ridiculed theory, but, contrary to what one might expect, it has, with the passing of time, become an even more misunderstood, misrepresented and unjustly ridiculed theory.

• ethics
• moral philosophy
• morality
• truth

• University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

  Colin Wilks

Policies and ethics