What does emotivism mean?
Emotivism is a theory in metaethics holding that moral judgments are not statements of fact but expressions of emotion or attitude. On this view, when someone says 'Stealing is wrong,' they are not describing a moral property of stealing; they are doing something more like exclaiming 'Boo to stealing!' The theory emerged in the early twentieth century alongside logical positivism and was developed most influentially by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and by Charles Stevenson. Emotivism was significant because it denied moral statements truth values, making them neither true nor false, and it framed ethics as expressive rather than descriptive. Critics objected that it seemed unable to explain rational moral disagreement, and later expressivist theories were developed to address these weaknesses. Today the term appears mainly in philosophy courses, textbooks, and scholarly debate about the meaning of moral language.
nounThe metaethical theory that moral judgments do not state facts but instead express or arouse the speaker's emotions and attitudes. Associated chiefly with A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson, it holds that statements like 'stealing is wrong' are closer to exclamations than to descriptions.
- The metaethical doctrine that moral judgments express emotional attitudes rather than report objective facts.
"Under emotivism, calling an action 'wrong' is less like reporting a fact and more like voicing disapproval."
"Ayer's emotivism implied that ethical sentences are neither true nor false."
"Critics argued that emotivism could not account for the genuine disagreement we observe in moral debate."
On this view, saying 'murder is wrong' is grammatically a statement but emotionally just a very stern 'Boo to murder!'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does emotivism come from?
Emotivism derives from 'emotive,' which traces back through French émotion to Latin emovere, meaning 'to move out' or 'to stir up.' The term arose in early twentieth-century English as philosophers needed a label for the view that ethical language functions emotively rather than descriptively. It shares this Latin root with related words such as 'emotion' and 'emotional,' which likewise concern feelings and inner stirrings rather than facts.
Related word forms
How emotivism is actually used
Emotivism is a technical term of academic philosophy, used almost exclusively in discussions of metaethics and twentieth-century analytic philosophy; it is rare in everyday speech.
Easily confused with emotivism
Emotivism is the earlier, simpler noncognitivist theory that moral claims merely express emotion, while expressivism is the broader modern family of theories holding that moral claims express attitudes more generally.