Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908–1979) was an American philosopherbest known for his pioneering work in the field of metaethics(roughly: the study of the meaning and nature of moral language,thought, knowledge, and reality) and, specifically, as a centralfigure along with C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (1923) and A. J. Ayer(1936) in the development of emotivism. Emotivism, a precursor to themetaethical expressivism today championed by Simon Blackburn (1993,1998), Alan Gibbard (1990, 2003), and Michael Ridge (2014), amongothers, is typically understood as a theory of moral languageaccording to which ethical sentences may be usefully compared toexclamative and imperative sentences (‘Hooray!’, ‘Bekind’) in that they are used to express a speaker’s affective ornoncognitive psychological states (such as approval or disapproval).This contrasts with views according to which the primary use of suchsentences would be todescribe some action, person,institution, etc. Stevenson’s emotivism, however, was more than atheory of moral language, his account of moral language was but onepart of a metaethical theory, grounded in moral and linguisticpsychology. It was intended to clarify the nature and structure ofa whole range of normative problems common to everydaylife—ethical, aesthetic, political, etc.—as well as themethods typically used to resolve them.

• 1. Life and Work
• 2. Ethics and Psychology
  • 2.1 Ethics, Metaethics, and Moral Problems
  • 2.2 Disagreement in Belief and Disagreement in Attitude
  • 2.3 Moral Disagreement and Non-Cognitivism about Moral Judgment
• 3. Language and Psychology
  • 3.1 Pragmatic Meaning
  • 3.2 Dispositional Theory of Meaning
  • 3.3 Emotive and Descriptive Meaning
• 4. Ethics, Language, and Methods
  • 4.1 Patterns of Analysis
  • 4.2 Reason and Reasons
  • 4.3 Persuasion and Persuasive Definitions
• 5. Objections to Stevenson’s Emotivism
  • 5.1 Objections to Stevenson’s Account of Moral Thought
  • 5.2 Objections to Stevenson’s Account of Moral Language
• 6. Stevenson’s Legacy
• Bibliography
  • Works by C. L. Stevenson Cited in This Article
  • Other References and Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and Work

C. L. Stevenson was born in 1908 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his youth, hedeveloped a life-long passion for literature and the arts, especiallypoetry and music, whose power to influence a person’s emotions andactions fascinated him—a fascination that would remain at thecenter of Stevenson’s personal and professional life.

In 1926, Stevenson entered Yale University, earning a prize for bestentrance examination for piano at the Yale School of Music. Hegraduated from Yale in 1930 with a B.A. in English Literature, a fieldhe intended to pursue upon entering Cambridge University, Englandlater that year. While at Cambridge, however, Stevenson becameincreasingly attracted to philosophy, in large part because ofacquaintances with I. A. Richards, G. E. Moore, and LudwigWittgenstein. Each of these figures produced important, and different,kinds of work on the nature, analysis, and use of language, had strongpersonalities, and shared Stevenson’s love for literature, arts, andaesthetics. Stevenson earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Cambridge in1933 and entered Harvard that same year to earn his Ph.D. in Philosophy,which he received in 1935. While at Harvard, Stevenson worked closelywith Ralph Barton Perry, whoseGeneral Theory of Value(1926), conversant in early American pragmatism and early Continentalphenomenology, had a lasting influence on Stevenson’s work (Sartris1984; Warnock 1978).

Stevenson remained at Harvard as an instructor for three years until1938, during which time three early essays were published inMind: “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”(1937), “Ethical Judgments and Avoidability” (1938a), and“Persuasive Definitions” (1938b). In 1939, Stevensonaccepted the position of Assistant Professor at Yale, where heremained until 1946, and during which time his landmarkEthics andLanguage was published in 1944. One of the conclusions Stevensonreached in this book was that some ethical disputes may be rationallyirresolvable. Apparently on these grounds, and in the historicalcontext of World War II atrocity, Stevenson was denied tenure.^[1] The University of Michigan immediately offered Stevenson a positionas Associate Professor, which he accepted, and where he remained until1978. Stevenson’s most important articles in ethics are collected inFacts and Values (1963a), which also contains an informativeretrospective essay (1963b) that clarifies, expands, and refines hismature views. His partly related work in aesthetics (e.g., 1950b,1957, 1958) remains uncollected.

Stevenson passed away in 1979 in Bennington, Vermont, where he hadmoved to be near family and where he had accepted a position asProfessor of Philosophy at Bennington College. He was survived by hissecond wife Nora, whom he married in 1965, after the death, two yearsearlier, of his first wife, Louise. With Louise, Stevenson had threechildren, including acclaimed poet Anne Stevenson.

2. Ethics and Psychology

2.1 Ethics, Metaethics, and Moral Problems

For Stevenson, a field of study is demarcated by the kinds of problemsinto which it inquires. Biology inquires into problems concerninglife; history inquires into problems concerning past social events andcultural developments; etc. Ethics inquires into ethical problems,problems about what is good or bad, what ought to be done, how weought to feel about something, etc. Ethical problems are ubiquitous.They are the “problems that are familiar in everydaydiscussions, and which range from idle bits of gossip about this orthat man’s character to prolonged and serious discussions ofinternational politics” (1963a, v). Stevenson conceives of hiswork as having “far less to say about thesummum bonumof the philosophers than about the judgments of the ordinary”person as they finish “reading the morning’s newspaper”(1963a, v). He writes about his approach to the nature of moralproblems as follows:

It requires us to abstract from the detailed subject matter of theproblems and pay selective attention to the aspects of them that aremost likely to prod us into problemsolving. It requires usto see these aspects not from a moral point of view (which wouldattend any attempt tosettle the problems) but rather fromthe point of view of an informal, common sense psychology. In effect,then, it asks for a generic description, given in psychological terms,of those ethical doubts and uncertainties, or discords anddisagreements, that we often resolve by inquiry, deliberation, anddiscussion, but which on some occasions can lead us into an impasse,and on other occasions can induce us temporarily to suspend judgment,acknowledging that we are not yet in a position to come to atrustworthy conclusion. (1963b, 186–187)

Stevenson’s aim was that of “sharpening the tools” for the“legislators, editorialists, didactic novelists, clergymen, andmoral philosophers” addressing ethical (and other normative)questions (1944,1). It is an interesting question how, precisely, thesharpened tools would help us in addressing such questions ofnormative ethics (Stevenson doesn’t say very much about this,but see 1944, Ch. 15) Quite independently of this issue, though,Stevenson’s insights into how moral problems arise and are dealt within our lives as social, communicative beings, are of seminalimportance to the development ofmetaethics.

2.2 Disagreement in Belief and Disagreement in Attitude

Moral problems can be interpersonal or personal. A moral problem isinterpersonal when there is disagreement among two or more people andpersonal when an individual is uncertain about a moral issue. But whatis thenature of this disagreement or uncertainty? These arethe questions around which Stevenson organizes all of his work inmetaethics and with which he begins bothEthics and Language(1944) andFacts and Values (1963a).

Interpersonal disagreement is of two broad kinds:disagreement inbelief anddisagreement in attitude. Very roughly, theidea is to distinguish between disagreement that involves opposed orincompatible beliefs and disagreement that involves opposed orincompatible attitudes: “the former is concerned with howmatters are truthfully to be described and explained; the latter isconcerned with how they are to be favored or disfavored, and hencewith how they are to be shaped by human efforts” (1944, 4).Stevenson’s discussion of disagreement in attitude has been highlyinfluential as a starting point for attempts to find an account ofdisagreement that would suit non-cognitivist, expressivist, orcontextualist views in metaethics (see, e.g., Blackburn 1998, 69;Gibbard 2003, 65–71; Dreier 2009; Ridge 2013; Toppinen 2013,272–280; Finlay 2017).

Disagreement in belief occurs when two people have beliefs that cannotboth be true and “neither is content to let the belief of theother remain unchallenged” (1948b, 1). If Smith believes thattheir and Jones’s anniversary is in June, while Jones believes theiranniversary is in July, their respective beliefs are incompatible,since they cannot both be true; but Smith and Jones only disagree inthe sense that Stevenson mostly focuses on when they desire, need, orattempt tocoordinate their beliefs, perhaps because theywould like to celebrate their anniversary as close to their weddingdate as possible. Their disagreement is resolved when they modifytheir beliefs in ways that make them compatible, or when both cease tocare about coordinating their incompatible beliefs.

Analogously, disagreement in attitude occurs when two or more peoplehave attitudes—e.g., desires, plans, or intentions, or otherstates whose general nature is that ofbeing for orbeingagainst something (1948b, 2)—that cannot all be jointlysatisfied (had, felt, etc.) and there is a desire, need, or attempt tocoordinate those attitudes. Importantly, disagreementinattitude is to be distinguished from disagreementaboutattitudes, which is a kind of disagreement in belief (1948b, 3;see also 1944, 9–10). If Smith and Jones desire to dinetogether, but Smith desires to dine at a restaurant where there ismusic, while Jones desires to dine at a quiet restaurant, theydisagree, in a quite ordinary sense of the term, about where to dine(1944, 3). This kind of disagreement, as Stevenson notes,“springs more from divergent preferences than from divergentbeliefs, and will end when they both wish to go the same place”(1944, 3). For Stevenson, disagreement in attitude is a very commonphenomenon:

Further examples are easily found. Mrs. A has social aspirations, andwants to move with the elite. Mr. A is easy-going, and loyal to hisold friends. They accordingly disagree about what guests they willinvite to their party. The curator of the museum wants to buy picturesby contemporary artists; some of his advisors prefer the purchase ofold masters. They disagree. John’s mother is concerned about thedangers of playing football, and doesn’t want him to play. John, eventhough he agrees (in belief) about the dangers, wants to play anyhow.Again, they disagree. (1944, 3)

Agreement, Stevenson notes, may be dealt with “mainly byimplication” (1944, 2–5). The accounts of disagreement andagreement differ in that while two persons only disagree when theyhave opposing beliefs or attitudesand when, moreover, atleast one party to the dispute “has a motive for altering orcalling into question” the belief or the attitude of the other,their agreement seems to be secured, on Stevenson’s view, simply invirtue of their having converging beliefs or attitudes (1944,4–5). People may “neither agree nor disagree—as willhappen when they are in a state of mutual indecision orirresolution,” or when they simplydiffer,“having divergent beliefs or attitudes without a sufficientmotive for making them alike” (1944, 4–5)

Ridge (2013, 41–45) contrasts Stevenson’s account ofdisagreement with what he calls aStevensonian view. Theformer demands that in order for two persons to disagree at least onemust be motivated to coordinate the relevant beliefs or attitudes,whereas the latter only demands that the two persons have, roughly,beliefs that cannot be jointly true or attitudes that cannot bejointly satisfied. The former account of disagreement may seemimplausible. It seems that two persons may disagree, both in beliefand in attitude, without even being aware of the existence of eachother (Ridge 2013, 45–49). The latter option, the Stevensonianview—which has been the more influential one in laterdiscussions of the idea of a disagreement in attitude—avoidsthis problem (Ridge 2013, 41–43). However, Stevenson’s viewplausibly was the Stevensonian one. We may distinguish betweendisagreement as a kind ofactivity—having adisagreement—and disagreement as astate (Cappelen& Hawthorne 2009, 60–61). While two people who are not awareof the existence of each other may be in a state of disagreement, theywon’t be engaged in having a disagreement. Plausibly, Stevenson isoperating with a distinction along these lines, and simply wishes tofocus on disagreement in the sense of a kind of activity. This isunderstandable, given his focus on moralproblems and on theways of dealing with such problems. So, when Stevenson contrastsmerelydiffering with having adisagreement (1944,4–5 and 111) the contrast is plausibly meant to capture thecontrast between merely being in a state of disagreement and having adisagreement. He writes, for instance:

There are times, of course, when people differ in their attitudeswithout having a sufficient motive for resolving the difference. Theymay feel that the difference will lead to no clash; they may be tootimid, too aloof, or too economical of their time to make an issue ofthe matter; they may consider certain men too fixed in their ways tobe changed, and others capable of leading their own lives. (Stevenson1944, 111)

Clearly, in these sorts of cases, Stevenson sees the relevant peopleas disagreeing in an important sense, despite the fact that they seeno point inengaging or in arguing with each other. Indeed,he then goes on to point out that in certain kind of circumstances(e.g., when concerted social action is needed) the motives forarguing in a way that “may change disagreement inattitude to agreement” become manifold—thus implicitlyapplying the notion of a disagreement in attitude also to a mereconflict of attitudes (1944, 112).

Stevenson does not assume that interpersonal disagreement alwayssignals that one is intending to get another to change their beliefsor attitudes, to win the argument as it were. It may, and often is,the case that one is open to having their own beliefs or attitudeschanged in the course of open-minded discussion or deliberation. Thusneither disagreement in belief nor disagreement in attitude need be an“occasion for forensic rivalry; it may be an occasion for aninterchange of aims, with a reciprocal influence that both partiesfind to be beneficial” (1944, 4–5).

Uncertainty in attitude occurs when an individual isuncertain about how to feel or about what to do. For example, Smithmay have conflicting attitudes about some particular legislationproposal (being in disagreement with themselves, so to speak).Alternatively, they may, while currently having no attitudes regardingthe proposal, wish to determine whether to be for or against it, sothat they can vote responsibly (1963b, 191–199; 1950a,55–60). Stevenson doesn’t say much aboutuncertainty inbelief, but it is, presumably, a matter of being disposed both tobelieve and to disbelieve some proposition, or of wanting to settle ona belief regarding some issue.

Especially inEthics and Language, Stevenson’s focus isprimarily on interpersonal disagreement rather than on personaluncertainty, but this is not because he would have deemed the latterless important. Rather, he is supposing that personal uncertainty maybe usefully understood in terms of a person being in disagreement withthemselves (1944, 131). However, Stevenson later came to have someregrets over the lack of emphasis on personal deliberation anduncertainty, which, he thought, also contributed to a somewhatmisleading picture of interpersonal moral problems. In particular, hecame to worry that this emphasis made it easy to think of his theoryas downplaying the difficulty of moral questions and the preparednessof people to revise their moral views, and contributed to theimpression that there would be “something more to ethics”than what Stevenson had been able to find (1963b, 186–194).

How, then, is the crucial distinction between beliefs and attitudes tobe understood? Stevenson adopts a dispositional theory, according towhich these states are distinguishable by their respective complexcausal relations (1944, 7–8; 1950a). (More will be said aboutStevenson’s view of dispositions inSection 3.2.) While he concedes that the complexity of the relevant dispositionsmakes them difficult to specify, he does think that beliefs andattitudes are easily distinguishable in our daily experience. Consideran onlooker who witnesses a chess expert open weakly against a noviceand wonders:

Does he make the move because hebelieves that it is a strongone, or because out of charity to his opponent, he doesn’twant to make a strong one? The distinction here between abelief and a want (attitude) is certainly beyond any practicalobjection. One can imagine the expert, with constant beliefs about theopening, using it or not in accordance with his changing desires towin; or one can imagine him, with constant desires to win, using it ornot in accordance with his changing beliefs. (1944, 7–8)

2.3 Moral Disagreement and Non-Cognitivism about Moral Judgment

Such an argument clearly represents a disagreement in attitude. Theunion isfor higher wages; the company isagainstthem, and neither is content to let the other’s attitude remainunchanged.In addition to this disagreement in attitude, ofcourse, the argument may represent no little disagreement in belief.Perhaps the parties disagree about how much the cost of living hasrisen and how much the workers are suffering under the present wagescale. Or perhaps they disagree about the company’s earnings and theextent to which the company could raise wages and still operate at aprofit. Like any typical ethical argument, then, this argumentinvolves both disagreement in attitude and disagreement in belief.(1948b, 4)

However, although moral problems almost always involve both types ofdisagreement or uncertainty, their distinguishing feature isdisagreement or uncertainty in attitude.

If the men come to agree in belief about all the factual matters theyhave considered, and if they continue to have divergent aims in spiteof this … they will still have an ethical issue that isunresolved. But if they come to agree [in attitude], they will havebrought their ethical issue to an end; and this will be so even thoughvarious beliefs … still remain debatable. Both men may concludethat these remaining beliefs, no matter how they are later settled,will have no decisive effect on their attitudes. (1944, 14–15;see also 1948b, 6)

Stevenson accepts, then,non-cognitivism, a view according towhich moral judgments are essentially constituted at least in part byattitudes and moral disagreement is essentially disagreement inattitude. Stevenson’s main focus project is on developing, insufficient detail, an attractive non-cognitivist account of moralproblems, rather than on arguing for the superiority ofnon-cognitivism over the competing views (although see 1937; 1944, ch.12; 1950a). However, he does support his claim that moraldisagreements would essentially involve disagreement in attitude byconsidering a number of examples (e.g., 1944, 13–18; 1948b,3–4). In addition to the kinds of cases mentioned above,Stevenson invites us to consider, for instance, a person who seems tobe fully persuaded that what he did was wrong and, for that veryreason, is more in favor of doing it again:

Temporarily puzzled to understand him, we shall be likely to conclude,‘This is his paradoxical way of abusing what he considers ouroutworn moral conventions. He means to say that it is really all rightto do it, and that one ought to do it flagrantly in order to discreditthe many people whoconsider it wrong’. But whatever wemay make of his meaning (and there are several other interpretationspossible) we shall scarcely take seriously his protestations ofagreement. Were we not trying all along to make him disapprove of hisaction? Would not his ethical agreement with us require that he shareour disfavor—that he agree with us inattitude? (1944,16–17)

Here Stevenson seems to appeal tomotivational internalism,or to the idea that, roughly, a moral judgment is necessarilyaccompanied with having some motivation to act accordingly (seeSection 3.2 of the entry onmoral motivation), or with a favorable attitude toward acting in the relevant way.Indeed, elsewhere Stevenson notes that “‘goodness’must have, so to speak, a magnetism”: a person who“recognizes X to be good mustipso facto acquire astronger tendency to act in its favour” (1937, 16).

Interestingly, Stevenson suggests that a point in favor of hisnon-cognitivist or emotivist view is that it allows us to recognize“the cognitive content of ethics [...] in its fullvariety”—that “an emotive conception of ethics, sooften criticized for depriving ethics of its thoughtful, reflectiveelements, has actually just the opposite effect” (1950a, 60).The idea is a variation on Moore’s (1903) Open Question Argument: Letus suppose that being good may be identified, as a matter ofconceptual or meaning analysis, with having some descriptive feature,D—being promotive of survival, say. If one now wishesto determine whether some action would be good, it turns out that oneonly needs to consider its impact on the instantiation ofDness. This may be part of what is cognitively relevant. Butit is at least possible to deem all sorts of descriptive features asrelevant to determining what is good. And so most non-emotive accounts(Stevenson grants that there are exceptions) will be too restrictiveregarding what may be deemed to be cognitively relevant to ethics(1950a, 60–63). One type of non-emotive view that would escapethis argument is Moorean non-naturalism, according to which moraljudgments are beliefs concerning sui generis, non-naturalproperties. Stevenson applauds such views for recognizing “anadded factor” to the meaning of moral language that “thepurely scientific analyses of ethics are accustomed to ignore,”but takes them to unnecessarily intellectualize the “emotivemeaning into an indefinablequality” (1944, 272).

Stevenson also appeals, in passing, to an argument from the bestexplanation about the cause of the disparity of ethical views thatoften occur between people of widely different generations, ethnic orgeographic locations. According Stevenson, the disparity is adequatelyexplained if ethical disagreement were essentially disagreement inattitude, “for different temperaments, social needs, and grouppressures would more directly and urgently lead these people to haveopposed attitudes than it would lead them to have opposed factualbeliefs” (1944, 18).

3. Language and Psychology

For Stevenson, language is an instrument or tool for serving certainpurposes; ethical language is thus suited especially for the centralpurposes of ethics. Since the central purposes of ethics are toresolve or coordinate attitudes, an analysis of ethical language mustreveal how ethical language serves these dynamic purposes. It does so,according to Stevenson, by havingemotivemeaning inaddition to descriptive meaning, where meaning is to be cashed out in“pragmatic” or dispositional terms.

3.1 Pragmatic Meaning

Stevenson intends to provide a theory of emotive and descriptivemeaning in the “pragmatic” or “psychological”sense, where this sense of ‘meaning’ invokes the work ofCharles Morris. InFoundations of the Theory of Signs (1938),Morris had suggested a tripartite division of the study of signs into(i) syntax, the study of the relations among signs; (ii) semantics,the study of the relations among signs and their designations ordenotations; and (iii) pragmatics, the study of signs as they are usedby members of a community in order to “meet more satisfactorilytheir individual and common needs” (10), that is, the study ofsigns as they are used to coordinate mental and social life. Takinghis cue from Morris, Stevenson seeks to provide a theory of meaning interms of the “psychological reactions” of those who usethe signs (1944, 42), and, then, to distinguish emotive anddescriptive meaning by the different types of psychological reactionassociated with the use of emotive and descriptive languagerespectively.

According to Stevenson, explaining emotive and descriptive meaning inthis psychological sense of ‘meaning’ would be promisingif it did not encounter an immediate problem that “has long beenone of the most troublesome aspects of linguistic theory” (1944,42; 1937, 20). The problem, as Stevenson saw it, is that the meaningof an expression must be relatively stable across a variety of socialand linguistic contexts, lest the expression be unhelpful to ourunderstanding of the many contexts in which the expression is used;however, the psychological states associated with an expression varywidely across social and linguistic contexts. At a football game, forexample, ‘Hooray!’ may be shouted in connection withterrific excitement, but at other times with little emotion at all;likewise, to a postmaster who regularly sorts the mail,“‘Connecticut’ may cause only a toss of the hand,but for an old resident it may bring a train of reminiscences”(1944, 43). Similarly, the sentence ‘This legislation isjust’ may be used to express a favorable attitude towards aparticular piece of legislation, but not when embedded within the morecomplex sentence ‘Vote for this legislation only if it isjust’. Thus,

Some variation (of psychological states) must of course be allowed,else we shall end with a fictitious entity, serene and thoroughlyuseless amid the complexities of actual practice; but‘meaning’ is a term wanted for marking off somethingrelatively constant amid these complexities, not merely for payingthem deference. A sense is needed where a sign may ‘mean’less than it ‘suggests’—a sense in which meaningsare helpful to the understanding ofmany contexts, not somevagrant sense in which a word has a wholly different‘meaning’ every time it is used. (1944, 43)

Stevenson’s task, then, is to provide a psychological theory ofmeaning according to which the psychological state associated with anexpression’s use, and hence an expression’s meaning, remainsrelatively constant across contexts.

3.2 Dispositional Theory of Meaning

Stevenson’s solution to this problem of flux is to provide adispositional theory of meaning grounded in the causal-historicalrelations between a sign and the psychological states of those withina linguistic community who have used and reacted to, and continue touse and react to, the sign. For Stevenson, a sign’s meaning is notconstituted by its use on an occasion of utterance. Rather, a sign’smeaning is constituted by itspower—its“tendency,” “potentiality,” “latentability,” or “disposition” (1937, 20–22; 1944,46; 1948a, 158)—to evoke the psychological states of a hearer orto express those of a speaker. The power of an expression, like thepurchasing power of a dollar, or the stimulating power of coffee, isto be understood as a complex network of causal relations:

The word ‘disposition’ …, is useful in dealing withcomplicatedcausal situations, where some specified sort ofevent is a function of many variables. To illustrate … Althoughcoffee often ‘causes’ stimulation, it is never the onlycause. The degree of stimulation will depend as well on many otherfactors—the initial state of a man’s fatigue, the absorptivestate of his stomach, the constitution of his nervous system, and soon. (1944, 46)

Just as the stimulating power of coffee remains relatively unchangeddespite varied reactions or responses to the ingestion of coffee, sotoo does the meaning of an expression remain relatively unchangeddespite varied psychological states resulting from or leading to thearticulation of an expression (1944, 46–47).

The stimulating power of coffee, for instance, is a dispositionconstituted by a complex causal network consisting of: (i)stimuli, such as the variable amounts of coffee ingested; and(ii)responses, such as the resulting changes in energy,attention, anxiety, or irritation. These stimuli and responses aremediated by: (iii)attendant circumstances, such as adrinker’s fatigue at the time of ingestion, the absorptive rate oftheir stomach, or the constitution of their nervous system; and(iv) the basis of the disposition, such as the chemicalcomposition of the coffee or the soil conditions where it was grown.The responses, then, are a function of the stimuli, attendantcircumstances, and basis, and one who specifies these and whospecifies in detail their correlation “has said all about thedisposition that there is to say” (1944, 51).

The meaning of a term is the “conjunction” or union of twodispositions, one “active” disposition to evokepsychological states of a hearer, another “passive”disposition to be used to express the psychological states of aspeaker, where a disposition is a complex causal network of stimuli(e.g., an utterance, in the case of a sign’s active disposition, or amental state, in the case of a passive one), responses (e.g., abelief, in the case of an active disposition, or an utterance, in thecase of a passive one), attendant circumstances (e.g., the context ofutterance), and basis (perhaps the sign’s history of use within alinguistic community) (1944, 57–58). Stevenson warns that hisaccount of meaning, understood in causal-dispositional terms, shouldnot be taken as anything close to a complete theory of meaning, butonly as “half analysis, half analogy,” “a device forpointing to” one that must be extraordinarily complex (1944,58).

3.3 Emotive and Descriptive Meaning

For Stevenson, the meaning of a sign is, then, a complex dispositionalproperty. Consequently, since the sentences of a language havedistinguishable kinds of dispositions, they have distinguishable kindsof meaning.

The emotive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates the signto a range of attitudes (1944, 59–60). From a hearer or reader’spoint of view, feelings or attitudes are the responses, tokens of thesign are the stimuli; from a speaker or writer’s point of view,attitudes are the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses. Anattitude is itself a disposition whose stimuli and responses relate to“hindering or assisting” the object of the attitude, thatwhich one is for or against (1944, 60). As a disposition, the emotivemeaning of a sign remains relatively stable, though responses may varyacross contexts given different attendant, or contextual,circumstances (1944, 60). Thus, a speaker’s utterance of“Hooray!” may be occasioned by excitement or, on rareoccasion, even indifference; but the disposition of the sign to beused to express or to evoke these varying attitudes remains relativelystable, its stability a result of an “elaborate process ofconditioning” that gives rise to linguistic conventions (1944,60–62; for discussions of emotive meaning, more generally, andof Stevenson’s account, in particular, see, e.g., Stroll 1954, Kerner1966, Urmson 1968, and Satris 1987).

The descriptive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates thesign to a range of “cognitive” states, including belief,supposition, presumption, etc. From a hearer or reader’s point ofview, cognitive states are the responses, tokens of the sign are thestimuli. From a speaker or writer’s point of view, cognitive statesare the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses. Cognitivestates, like attitudes, are complex dispositions. (1944,62–71)

The emotive and descriptive meanings of signs are related in a varietyof ways. Signs may have both emotive and descriptive meaning, andoften do. Perhaps a noncontroversial example is the sentence‘That was courageous’, whose descriptive meaning relatestokens of the sentence to cognitive states that, in some way,represent the action referred to as one performed in spite of anactor’s fear, and whose emotive meaning relates tokens of the sentenceto favorable states, such as admiration towards the action or actor.According to Stevenson, almost all words in a natural language haveboth emotive and descriptive meaning owing to their historical uses inemotional contexts (1944, 71). The interplay of emotive anddescriptive meaning is complex. For example, the word‘democracy’ may have come to possess its laudatory emotivemeaning in certain contexts because the word refers, via itsdescriptive meaning, to properties of government that are favored inthese contexts. Under suitable circumstances, the word might retainits descriptive meaning and acquire a less laudatory emotive meaning,or change its descriptive meaning due to its emotive meaning remainingconstant (1944, 72).

4. Ethics, Language, and Methods

Ethical language should be suitable for the purposes of ethics. Since,for Stevenson, the purposes of ethics are to settle, coordinate, orotherwise resolve disagreements in attitude (and ethical uncertainty),an analysis of ethical language must display how ethical language isapt for performing these functions. It is apt, according to Stevenson,because ethical language (i) almost always has both emotive anddescriptive meaning, where (ii) emotive meaning is essential and (iii)often strongly independent of descriptive meaning (in the sense inwhich “thin” ethical terms, such as ‘good’,might be said to have emotive meaning that is strongly independent ofany descriptive meaning it might have). That ethical language hasessential emotive meaning—that is, has dispositions in whichattitudes play a most prominent role—implies as it should thatattitudes and feelings are at issue in cases of moral disagreement oruncertainty. That ethical language usually has both emotive anddescriptive meanings which often interact in various ways suggests asit should that beliefs, and therefore rational methods, can berelevant to resolving moral disagreement or uncertainty. That emotivemeaning is often strongly independent of descriptive meaning suggestsas it should that nonrational “persuasive” methods canalso play a role in settling or resolving moral disagreement oruncertainty.

4.1 Patterns of Analysis

Stevenson aims to clarify ethical language by using“tools” of analysis. One tool that Stevenson willnot use to clarify ethical language is the tool ofdefinition, at least in the sense of ‘definition’ thatimplies “finding synonym for synonym,” since he thinksthat ethical terms, due to their emotive meanings, are indefinable inthis sense (1944, 82). Rather, Stevenson’s analytic tool of choice isa set of models. The models highlight the respective dispositionalelements (i.e. elements of meaning) of ethical language that, via itsuse, are to varying degrees in linguistic play (1944, chapters II, IV,and IX; see esp. 82–83; for discussion, see also Urmson 1968,chapters 4 and 6).

Two such models, labeled ‘(P₁)’ and‘(P₄)’ below, receive a great deal ofStevenson’s attention, because they paradigmatically exemplify for thesentence ‘This is good’ what Stevenson calls respectivelyhis “First Pattern” and “Second Pattern” ofanalysis (1944, chapters IV and IX). These patterns and, hence,(P₁) and (P₄) differ most importantly indescriptive richness and emotive force. (P₁)’s descriptivecontent is scant, conveying only information about the speaker’sattitude and, therefore, conveying only somewhat more information thanis conveyed by (P₁)’s relatively strong emotive element;therefore, (P₁) well-models those uses of an ethicalsentence at which front and center is a speaker’s attitude.(P₄)’s descriptive content conveys more complex, preciseinformation about the qualities of which the speaker approves andmerely characterizes ‘This is good’ as conveying emotiveforce; therefore, (P₄) well-models those uses of an ethicalsentence at which front and center are a speaker’s moralstandards.

As models, (P₁) and (P₄) have differentstrengths and weaknesses, and while discussing them Stevenson suggestsor implies several other models: (P_2a)-(P_3c).Like (P₁), (P_2a)-(P_2c) exemplifyStevenson’s First Pattern of Analysis, and, like (P₄),(P_3a)-(P_3c) exemplify Stevenson’s Second Patternof Analysis. Notice that each subset of models, and each model withineach subset, is listed roughly in order of increasing descriptiverichness and decreasing emotive force.

Discussion begins with (P₁), returning later to(P_0a)–(P_0d).

‘This is good’ means:

(P_0a)

Approve of this!

(P_0b)

Let’s all approve of this!

(P_0c)

Hooray for this!

(P_0d)

Hooray for this for beingX,Y, andZ!

(P₁)

I approve of this; do so as well.

(P_2a)

I approve of this; let’s all do so!

(P_2b)

I approve of this; hooray for this!

(P_2c)

I approve of this; how I wish we would all do so!

(P_3a)

This isX; hooray for this!

(P_3b)

This isX; hooray for things that areX!

(P_3c)

This isX,Y, andZ; hooray forthings that areX,Y, andZ!

(P₄)

This isX,Y, andZ [“exceptthat ‘good’ has as well a laudatory emotive meaning whichpermits it to express the speaker’s approval and tends to evoke theapproval of the hearer”]

Stevenson devotes a great deal of space inEthics andLanguage discussing the various features and implications of(P₁). However, despite its usefulness, (P₁) isnot be taken as some sort of “official” model of ethicalsentences. Five of (P₁)’s misleading features, acknowledgedby Stevenson himself, are as follows:

Problem 1:

The imperative is “too blunt an instrument” (1944,32), evoking attitudes in a overly aggressive, crude way. Moralclaims, according to Stevenson,lead rather than commandpeople to alter their attitudes and, so, the force of the judgment‘This is good’ “has been poorly approximated”by (P₁) (1944, 32–33).

Problem 2:

The imperative suggests that the purpose of moral deliberation anddiscussion is to convert others. Since the use of a second-personimperative implies a position of authority over one’s audience, thismodel gives the impression that the speaker or writer “wishesonly to propagate his preconceived aims, without reconsideringthem” (1944, 32). However, most moral claims are oftenoccasioned not by a desire for “conquest,” but rather by adesire for mutual understanding (1944, 32).

Problem 3:

The declarative suggests that the descriptive element is oftenquite narrow and perhaps quite precise, when in point of fact it isoften quite broad or complex and quite vague (1944, 33–34 and206–213).

Problem 4:

The declarative fails to model the possibility of disagreement inbelief, which intuitively is a part of many moral disagreements.Suppose, for example, that Smith declares that complimenting others isgood, while Jones declares that complimenting others is bad, and thattheir disagreement is grounded in the conflict between Smith’s beliefthat complimenting others generally leads to a healthy degree ofself-esteem and Jones’s belief that complimenting others too oftenleads to excessive pride. According to (P₁), thedescriptive element of Smith’s utterance is rendered ‘I approveof complimenting others’, while Jones’s utterance is rendered‘I disapprove of complimenting others’ (1944, 22). Buthere, Smith and Jones disagree in belief not at all.

Problem 5:

The declarative implies, implausibly, that the full justificationof a moral claim always requires the provision of reasons forbelieving that a speaker approves or disapproves of that towhich she refers (1963b, 210–212).

Models (P_2a)–(P_2c) rectify Problems 1 and2 to some degree. They lessen the blunt force and authoritativeness ofthe second-person imperative by using a more interpersonally agreeablefirst-person plural imperative, exclamative, and optativerespectively. (P_2a), because it retains an imperative,models better than (P_2b) and (P_2c) thedispositions of moral sentences to evoke an audience’s attitudes orbehaviors. The latter two, containing instead an exclamative andoptative respectively, model better than (P_2a) thedispositions of moral sentences to express a speaker’s attitudes.

Models (P_3a)–(P_3c) rectify Problems 3-5 tosome degree. Each suggests that the descriptive element in ethicalsentences is more complex and perhaps more vague, suggesting as theydo a more general description of an action, person, policy, etc. asexemplifying certain characteristics or properties, rather than thenarrower and more precise description of a speaker as exemplifying aspecific attitude. Thus, each allows that moral disagreement may begrounded in disagreement in belief—e.g., Smith and Jones can use‘complimenting others is good’ and ‘complimentingothers is not good’ respectively as a means of disagreeing inbelief about whether complimenting others exemplifies property X (or Yor Z)—and, thereby, eliminates the implication that fullyjustifying a moral claim requires providing reasons forbelieving that a speaker has the particular attitude she isdescribed as having.

Stevenson’s (P₄), has a descriptive element that is moreprecise than (P_3a)–(P_3b). It also removeseven amodel of the emotive element, leaving instead just acharacterization to the effect that some emotive element is present.Thus, unlike (P_0a)–(P₁), which place thedispositional relations between ethical terms andattitudes—i.e., emotive meaning—front and center,(P₄) instead places front and center the dispositionalrelations between ethical terms and beliefs—i.e., descriptivemeaning. (P₄) thus captures the passive dispositions ofethical terms to be used as a result of a speaker or writer’s morespecific cognitive states about the properties or characteristics ofan action, person, etc., and the terms’ active dispositions tocause such cognitive states in an audience. Perhaps the moredescriptive “thick” ethical terms, such as‘cruel’, ‘kind’, or ‘courageous’provide the best examples of terms that possess such dispositions.

Returning to (P_0a)–(P_0d), these rectify tosome degree an additional problem, one that encumbers all of(P₁)–(P₄).

Problem 6:

It is often simply too difficult to determine whether thedescriptive meaning of ethical language isstrictlydesignated or merelysuggested (1944, 85–87).

The distinction between ‘strictly designates’ and‘suggests’ is most plausibly understood as invoking thedistinction between semantics and pragmatics, or the distinctionbetween that which is conveyed as a matter of convention or as amatter of conversational dynamics:

The distinction which the question presupposes, that between what‘good’means and what itsuggests, isoften beyond the precision of ordinary language. It is a distinctionbetween descriptive dispositions of the term, one of which ispreserved by linguistic rules and the other is not. In the rigorousdiscourse of science or mathematics, which avails itself ofinterrelated sets of definitions or formal postulates, the distinctionis readily made. In the rough contexts of daily life, however, a greatmany rules are not stipulated, being imperfectly evident from people’slinguistic habits; and even those rules which are occasionallystipulated are not constantly followed. Certain rules, of course,are always observed; for ‘good’, whatever else,is ‘not bad’ and ‘not indifferent’. But manyother rules remain as mere possibilities. If such a rule isspecifically called to a person’s attention he may acceptit—though usually only temporarily, for a given purpose. Notuntil a great many rules are permanently settled, though, do we getbeyond the undecided region that separates descriptive meaning fromsuggestiveness. When rules arein the course of becominggenerally accepted, there is a long period over which we may eitheraccept or reject them without violence to conventional language. Ourdecision may settle the matter for our own usage, and determine whatisafterward to be called the term’s descriptive meaning, andwhat is to be called its suggestiveness; but our finished product isby no means the same as the raw material. (1944, 86; see also 1948a,154–158; 1963b, 208–210)

Thus, Stevenson’s distinction between ‘strictlydesignates’ and ‘suggests’ is plausibly captured bythe later Gricean distinction between that which is “said”or “conventionally implicated” on the one hand, and thatwhich is “conversationally implicated” on the other (Grice1975). Models (P_0a)–(P_0d), then, areuseful for reminding us that the “strict” meaning ofethical termsmay include only its emotive meaning; if so,however, its descriptive meaning is strongly suggested and, thus,always remains in linguistic play (1944, 95–96).

4.2 Reason and Reasons

An ethical problem is essentially constituted by disagreement oruncertainty in attitude, though it is often constituted bydisagreement or uncertainty in belief as well. Resolving an ethicalproblem, therefore, requires coordinating attitudes, sometimes bycoordinating beliefs that causally affect those attitudes. Attitudesmay be coordinated by methods that do not involve the use of language;physical force, bribery, and physical seduction are just a fewnonlinguistic means of shaping and coordinating attitudes. Stevenson,however, is interested only inlinguistic methods ofcoordinating attitudes, which he categorizes as either“rational” or “nonrational.” Rational methodsseek to shape or coordinate attitudes by using language to producereasons; Stevenson thus calls the set of such methods, aptly enough,“Reason.” Nonrational methods seek to shape or coordinateattitudes by using language in other ways; Stevenson calls this set ofmethods “Persuasion.”

A reason, for Stevenson, is “any statement aboutany matter of fact whichany speaker considerslikely to alter attitudes” (1944, 115). “Whether thisreason will in fact support or oppose the judgment will depend,”Stevenson says, “on whether the hearer believes it, and uponwhether if he does, it will actually make a difference to hisattitudes; but it may conveniently be called a reason (though notnecessarily a ‘valid’ one) regardless of whether it isaccepted or not” (1944, 115). Thus, a reason is a statementwhose content, if believed, is causally relevant to alteringattitudes. (This may seem like a very surprising account of what it isto be a reason for some attitude; see alsoSection 5.1, below.)

Stevenson provides a plethora of examples throughout his work toclarify the variety of ways in which beliefs, in their intermediaryroles, may serve to strengthen or weaken attitudes (1944, especiallyChapters V, VI, VIII). For example, suppose that Smith disapproves ofpolicies that put a great burden on the poor and make littledifference to the rich. They say of a proposed policy that it is good.Assuming model (P₁), Smith’s claim is akin to the claim“I approve of this policy; do so as well.” Assuming model(P_3a), their claim is akin to the claim “This policydoes not put great burden on the poor while making little differenceto the rich; hooray for this policy.” Jones might then, inappealing to the claim that the policy puts great burden on the poorand makes little difference to the rich, alter Smith’s attitude towardthe policy either by directly contradicting a belief of Smith’s(assuming model (P_3a)) or by leading Smith to accept thatthey do not approve of the policy, which again contradicts theirbelief (assuming model (P₁)). Here the impact of Smith’snewly acquired belief on their earlier moral judgments is due to thelogical relation between the beliefs. Next consider a casewhere Smith hasn’t really thought about the policy before. They mightnevertheless be disposed, upon coming to believe that the policy putsa great burden on the poor while making little difference to the rich,to disapprove of the policy. Here the newly acquired belief would notcontradict an earlier belief of Smith’s, but it might neverthelesshave an impact, thanks to a suitablepsychological relation,on their beliefs and attitudes. Other sorts of examples, discussed byStevenson, of reasons for attitude revision without a logical relationto existing beliefs include appeals to authority, or to the genealogyof beliefs or attitudes (1944, 123–125).

Thus, ethical inquiry and deliberation often proceeds rationally bypresenting reasons to befor oragainst something,reasons whose effectiveness is tied to their logical or psychologicalrelation to others’ beliefs (for criticism and further discussion ofStevenson’s account reasons, see, again, alsoSection 5.1).

4.3 Persuasion and Persuasive Definitions

Not all linguistic attempts to coordinate or settle attitudes appealto reasons. For example, we often merely invoke or stress the purelyemotive element of words, or use metaphor, intonation, pleasantness ofspeech or rhythm, and the like. These are all nonrational, but stilllinguistic, methods of settling and coordinating attitudes thatStevenson calls “Persuasion.” Consider, first, the manyuses of thick ethical terms, such as ‘courageous’ or‘democratic’. Often, we try to coordinate attitudes byinvoking these words more for their emotive meanings than for theirdescriptive, especially when the descriptive meanings are taken forgranted. Saying that one acted in the face of fear may bedescriptively accurate; saying that one acted courageously, especiallywhen all relevant parties already believe that one acted in the faceof fear, is more likely an attempt to coordinate admiration among theparties. Consider also the persuasive strategy of repetition. Smithsays that Jones did the right thing; asked for a reason, Smith merelystates that Jones’s act was an instance of performing his duty. Here,Smith provides no reason at all, but merely attempts to coordinatepositive attitudes by relying on the repeated effect of the emotiveforce of evaluative terms. For a different use of repetition, considerthe persuasiveness of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s repetition of ‘Ihave a dream’ and ‘Let freedom ring’ during his“I Have a Dream” speech, delivered during the 1963 Marchon Washington. These are just a few examples of moral persuasion.

Persuasive techniques, according to Stevenson, play a vital role inattempts to modify the standards of a society or group. At the centerof such reform is the use of what Stevenson calls “persuasivedefinition,” or attempts to give “a new conceptual meaningto a familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning,and which is used with the conscious or unconscious purpose ofchanging, by this means, the direction of people’s interests”(1938b, 32; 1944, chapter IX). Suppose Smith recognizes that Jones hashad little formal education and uses grammatically incorrect sentencesand obvious literary references and, on this basis, claims that Jonesis simply not a person of “culture.” Rodriguez agrees thatJones has such qualities but claims that Jones is a person of culturenotwithstanding, for “in the true and full sense of the term,‘culture’ meansimaginative sensitivity andoriginality,” and these qualities Jones has inabundance:

It will be obvious that [Rodriguez], in defining‘culture’, was not simply introducing a convenientabbreviation, nor was he seeking to clarify ‘the’ commonmeaning of the term. His purpose was to redirect [Smith’s] attitudes,feeling that [Smith] was insufficiently appreciative of their friend’smerits. ‘Culture’ had and would continue to have, forpeople of their sort, a laudatory emotive meaning. The definitionurged [Smith] to stop using the laudatory term to refer to grammaticalniceties, literary allusions, and the rest, and to use it, instead, torefer to imaginative sensitivity and originality. In this manner, itsought to place the former qualities in a relatively poor light, andthe latter in a fine one, and thus to redirect [Smith’s] admiration.When people learn to call something by a name rich in emotive meaning,they more readily admire it; and when they learn not to call it bysuch a name, they less readily admire it. The definition made use ofthis fact. It sought to change attitudes by changing names. (1944,211–212; see also 1938b)

Persuasive definitions lie at the heart of much moral reform, whetherfor good or ill (1944, 209–210). “The words areprizes,” Stevenson writes, “which each man seeks to bestowon the qualities of his own choice” (1938b, 35).

5. Objections to Stevenson’s Emotivism

A number of objections have been leveled against Stevenson’s emotivismover the years. They fall within two categories, one related toStevenson’s account of moral thought and metaphysics, the other to hisaccount of moral language.

5.1 Objections to Stevenson’s Account of Moral Thought

Stevenson holds a non-cognitivist view, according to which moraljudgments or thoughts are essentially constituted at least in part bydesire-like attitudes, feelings, or interests, those mental stateswhose general character is to befor oragainstsomething. Several objections to Stevenson’s theory have been due toperceived implications of non-cognitivism.

Objection from Moral Properties. According to this objection,if non-cognitivism is true, then something is bad (good, evil, etc.)only if a person has an unfavorable attitude towards it; however,having such an attitude (the objection goes) cannot be a necessarycondition for an event’s being bad (good, evil, etc.). Consider, forexample, Blanshard’s (1949) example in which a rabbit has been caughtin a severe hunting trap for several days, causing the rabbitunnecessary, prolonged, and extreme agony. According to Blanshard’sunderstanding of non-cognitivism, until a person has an unfavorableattitude towards such an event or state of affairs, the rabbit’s beingin such agony would not be bad. Since (the objection continues) thisconclusion is absurd, Stevenson’s account of moral thought must befalse. However, this objection conflates Stevenson’s theory of moralthought with a theory of moral properties, assuming as it does thathaving, for example, an unfavorable attitude towards an eventconstitutes the badness of that event, at least in part. Butthis is the kind of moral metaphysics that Stevenson’s theory isdesigned to avoid. According to Stevenson, either there is nothingthat constitutes badness (or goodness, etc.), because there are nosuch moral properties, or, perhaps better: questions concerning whatconstitutes the badness of an event areethical questions ofwhat to disapprove of—questions to which non-cognitivism as ametaethical theory offers no answers. Non-cognitivism issilent on what it is in virtue of which things have the moralproperties that they have (if they have any). It just tells us what itis tothink that something is bad.

Objection from Unemotional Moral Judgments. Blanshard alsoinvites us to consider a person who thinks, with great contempt, thatunnecessary, prolonged, extreme agony is bad and claims repeatedlythat it is bad, still repeating the claim even a week later thoughfatigue has dissipated all contempt:

When we repeat the remark that such suffering was a bad thing, thefeeling with which we made it last week may be at or near thevanishing point, but if we were asked whether we meant to say what wedid before, we should certainly answer Yes. We should say that we madeour point with feeling the first time and little or no feeling thesecond time, but that it was the same point we were making. And if wesee that what we meant to say remains the same, while the feelingvaries from intensity to near zero, it is not the feeling that weprimarily meant to express. (1949, 45)

The possibility of continuing to think that a certain event is bad,even though the attitude or feeling with which one originally judgedthe event as bad has partially or even completely dissipated over timemay seem incompatible with non-cognitivism. However, it is not clearthat this is correct. Stevenson’s account of the meaning of evaluativejudgments, given in complex dispositional terms (seeSection 3.2), allows for considerable variability in terms of the kinds of feelingsthat may or may not attend a moral judgment. (Similar considerationswould apply to the question regarding whether it is possible to hold amoral judgment without being suitablymotivated. Fordiscussion, see, e.g., Svavarsdóttir 1999.)

Objection from Moral Chaos. Stevenson grants that moraldisagreement may sometimes be rationally irresolvable. Some mightworry that if this is so, then moral chaos is likely to ensue. Takingthis objection to heart, Blanshard goes as far as to claim that“[The general acceptance of strong emotivism] would, so far asone can see, be an international disaster” (1949). Stevensoncould simply respond that even if true, this would not imply that hisaccount of moral thought is false. However, he also suggests that suchan objection arises from fear that cannot be assuaged by postulatingsome objective truth or robust moral properties awaiting to bediscovered (e.g., 1944, 336 and 1950a, 68–70). Rather, such fearcan be assuaged only when we have a clear, realistic understanding ofthe nature and complexity of moral disagreement and of the methods bywhich they can be, and often are, resolved:

The present analysis can afford no assurance that dictators andself-seeking politicians, whose skill in exhortation is so manifest,“inevitably must” fail, if left unopposed, in reshapingmoral codes to serve their narrow interests. … But this muchmust be said: Those who cherish altruism, and look forward to a timewhen a stable society will be governed by farsighted men, will servethese ideals poorly by turning from present troubles to fanciedrealms. For these ideals, like all other attitudes, are not imposedupon human nature by esoteric forces; they are a part of human natureitself. If they are to become a more integral part of it, they must befought for. They must be fought for with the words ‘right’and ‘wrong’, else these attitude-molding weapons will beleft to the use of opponents. And they must be supported withclear-minded reasons, else hypostatic obscurantism will bringcontempt to the cause it is intended to plead. (1944, 110; see also1961–62b)

Objection from Normativity. Stevenson writes that whether astatement, adduced as a reason in support of an ethical judgment,“will in fact support or oppose the judgment will depend onwhether the hearer believes it, and upon whether if he does, it willactually make a difference to his attitudes,” and that suchstatement or consideration “may conveniently be called a reason(though not necessarily a ‘valid’ one) regardless ofwhether it is accepted or not” (1944, 115). It may easily seem,then, as if Stevenson would wish to explain what it is for someconsideration,R, tocount in favor of some action,for instance, in terms of the causal efficacy of citingR inproducing the action in question, or in altering attitudes. It mayseem as if he would wish to explainnormativity, ornormative authority, directly in terms of psychological impact. Thismay seem implausible, regardless of the details of the psychologicalstory.

Objection from Irrelevant Reasons. Moreover, Stevenson’saccount of reasons seems to deliver wrong results, as what ispsychologically effective is not always normatively relevant. Acolleague of Stevenson’s, Richard Brandt, put the worry asfollows:

On the emotive theory, … if one is moved to disapprovesocialized medicine by the thought that any expression of approvalwould oust him from his favorite club, he has been moved, according tothe emotive theory, by as ethically relevant a consideration as anyother he might have thought of. Now, I do not think this describesordinary ethical thinking; we think some persuasive beliefs aredistinctlyirrelevant. (Brandt 1950a, 313)

The last two objections are based on a misunderstanding. We may givethe response in Stevenson’s own words:

… to say that a reason is “relevant” to a judgmentis sometimes to say that the reason …ought to make adifference to it. In this sense most people will agree that aman’s being ousted from his club is “irrelevant” to hisjudgment about socialized medicine; for they will feel his judgmentought not be influenced by such consideration. Whenever wesay what a man’s reasons ought to be, we are making a judgment of ourownabout the way he reacheshis judgment. That isan important thing to do, but it is not a part of the specialized taskthat I have set for myself. I have tried not to judge but only tounderstand what goes on in ethics—my metanormative inquiry beingitself nonnormative. (1950c, 528)

So, Stevenson escapes the Objection from Normativity because he isnot offering an account of normative authority, or ofreasonhood, in terms of efficacy in modifying attitudes. And he escapesthe Objection from Irrelevant Reasons because nothing in his theorysuggests that what is ethically relevant, or what is a (good) reasonfor what, would be determined by such considerations of efficacy.There remains, of course, an interesting challenge regarding how,exactly, we should understand judgments about normative reasons, orabout ethical relevance—an issue which Stevenson does notaddress in any detail (for Brandt’s concerns regarding what remarksStevenson offers, see Brandt 1950b; for a more recent discussion ofthis challenge in the context of contemporary expressivist views, seeSinclair 2016).

Objection from Fallibility. An interesting challenge isarticulated by Stevenson himself, regarding our judgments of ethicalfallibility. The question here is whether Stevenson’s emotive theoryallows us to “provide a proper place” for “ourwillingness to acknowledge that our judgments must often be held opento correction, as distinct from being proclaimed in a manner implyingthat we have said the last word” (1968, 203). We need (1) anaccount of expressions of ethical fallibility, and (2) an explanationfor why it makes sense to acknowledge our fallibility, given theemotivist account of the phenomenon. So, first, what does anexpression of ethical fallibility amount to, on the emotivist view?Stevenson suggests that just as we may acknowledge fallibility inbelief by saying “Many things that I believe to be the case maynot be the case,” we may also acknowledge fallibility in attitudeby saying “Many things that meet with my approval may not beright” (1968, 206). The function of this sort of acknowledgementis to indicate that the speaker is “prepared, on furtherreflection,” to change their mind, which creates “hope fortwo-way discussion” and allays fears to the effect that theaudience would be expected to listen to the speaker as their“disciples” (1968, 207–210). This preparedness torevise one’s attitudes is a matter of expecting that there are reasonsfor approving or disapproving that one has yet to consider (1968,214–215). On Stevenson’s account of such reasons, it would thenbe a matter of thinking that there may be considerations such thatought to influence one to revise one’s attitudes. Stevenson’s briefremarks on the topic do not provide us with a detailed account offallibility judgments, but it is suggestive of a later and muchdiscussed proposal by Blackburn (1998, 318; for discussion, see Egan2007 and, e.g., the literature cited in Bex-Priestley 2018).

Given the emotivist account of moral thought and discourse, does itmake sense to acknowledge our fallibility? Stevenson puts theworry as follows:

We acknowledge our fallibility in science, it may be urged, because weare convinced that the universe, as studied by science, is in somesense “out there” to be described. … When weexpress beliefs about these facts, then, we are very far from beingnon-objective painters, who are free to make such designs as theywill. Instead, we are realistic painters, intent on being faithful towhat we are representing. Now it is our attempt to be faithful to thefacts of the universe, it may be urged, that leads us to acknowledgeourscientific fallibility. The facts may belie our beliefs,just as the objects that a realistic painter is painting may belie hispicture. … But inethics, the objection continues, solong as that discipline is conceived as involving an expression ofattitudes, we have no such situation. We of necessity becomenon-objective painters rather than realistic painters, for we findnothing “out there” for our attitudes to represent.… And why, it may be asked, so long as we acceptthisconception of ethics, should we have any incentive to acknowledgeour fallibility? (1968, 211–212)

Stevenson replies that this worry is mistaken both in what it expectsfor ethics and in what it expects for science. In the case of beliefs,too, we don’t first look directly at the facts and then to our beliefs(as we might compare our model with a portrait that we have painted),but rather “accumulate as many reasons as [we] can that bear onthe question” (1968, 213). In both science and in ethics, whatwe worry about, in acknowledging our fallibility, is the possibilityof there being reasons for beliefs or attitudes that we haven’t takeninto consideration in forming our views. And in both cases, ouracknowledgments of fallibility serve the important functions ofencouraging further discussion and inquiry. Given the account offallibility judgments provided by the emotive theory, there is noreason to think that our expressions of fallibility in ethics wouldhave to be in any way half-hearted or capricious, and so ouracknowledgments of fallibility in attitude make perfectly good sense(1968, 212–215). Or this is, in any case, Stevenson’s reply tothe worry about fallibility, as he construes it.

5.2 Objections to Stevenson’s Account of Moral Language

Objections also arise in connection of Stevenson’s account of themeaning of moral language.

Objections from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary Conflation.Stevenson claims repeatedly that moral language is used to express aspeaker’s attitudes or to evoke or otherwise shape the attitudes ofothers. One might worry that this involves conflation of illocutionaryacts and perlocutionary intentions (e.g., Hare 1952 Section 1.7 and1997 Sections 1–5–1.6; Urmson 1968). Illocutionary actsare the acts that a speaker performs in uttering a sentence: warning,advising, describing, commanding, and so on. Like sentences,illocutionary acts are subject to logical constraints—it wouldbe logically inconsistent, in some intuitive sense, to direct one’shearer to both close and open a particular window (‘Close thatwindow and open that same window’), for example. Since sentencesand the illocutionary acts they are typically used to perform havesimilar logical constraints, illocutionary acts may plausibly beassociated in some appropriate way with the meanings of sentences. Nowwhen a speaker performs an illocutionary act in uttering a sentence,she often does so with particular intentions or effects in mind. Forexample, knowing that her audience often attempts to annoy her bydoing the opposite of what she asks, a speaker may utter ‘Keepthe window closed’ with the intention that her audience will infact open the window. Thus, there need be nologicalinconsistency between directing one to keep a particular window closedand an intention that the window be opened. Thus, it is concluded,perlocutionary intention ought not be associated with the semantics ormeanings of sentences. The Objection from Illocutionary/PerlocutionaryConflation, then, is that Stevenson’s theory of meaning incorporatesthat which is irrelevant to semantics, namely perlocutionaryintentions. This objection is related to the next.

The Objection from Instrumentalism. Stevenson’s theory mayseem to be an “instrumentalist” theory that explains themeaning of moral sentences by appealing to the illocutionary acts theyare typically used to perform, that is, to their typical illocutionaryforces. However, a great many uses of moral sentences fail to havesuch force. For example, when moral sentence 1 is used in utterancesof sentences 2 or 3, it is used without its usual expressiveforce.

1. Insulting others is wrong.
2. If insulting others is wrong, I’ll stop.
3. It is possible that insulting others is wrong.

Thus, the objection goes, Stevenson’s theory of meaning leaves toomuch unsaid about a great many uses of ethical language, andconsequently, is radically incomplete.

These last two objections are understandable, given how oftenStevenson appeals to the uses and purposes of moral language.Nevertheless, they miss their mark, for Stevenson’s theory of meaningis not an “instrumentalist” theory of meaning, but rathera dispositional theory (Section 3.2; Urmson 1968, Ch. 4; Warnock 1978, Ch. 3). Stevenson associates themeaning of a word or sentence with neither perlocutionary intentionsnor with illocutionary force, but rather with the conjunction or unionof its passive and active dispositions.

The Frege-Geach Objection. Because Stevenson’s theory isoften thought to succumb to the Objection from Instrumentalism, it isalso thought to succumb to the Frege-Geach Objection, perhaps the mostpressing objection to any emotivist or expressivist theory of meaning.This objection is so-called because Peter Geach (1958, 1960, 1965),relying on insights from Frege (e.g., 1918), argued persuasively thata sentence’s illocutionary force cannot constitute its meaning. Thestrength of the Frege-Geach Objection arises from the fact thatnatural languages are compositional and, thus, that a minimalcondition of adequacy on any semantic theory is that it specify thatwhich sentences contribute to the more complex sentences into whichthey are embeddable. For example, a minimally adequate semantic theoryfor English will entail that the meaning of sentence 1. remains thesame when it is embedded within sentences 2. or 3., since anunderstanding of the latter sentences rests on an understanding oftheir respective parts, including 1., and of the significance of theway those parts are combined. However, since (it is thought)Stevenson’s theory of meaning holds that moral sentences are used toexpress a speaker’s attitudes—i.e., used with expressiveillocutionary force—and since moral sentences are often used asparts of more complex sentences without such expressive force, as insentences 2. and 3., Stevenson has failed to provide a minimallyadequate theory of meaning for moral sentences.

The Frege-Geach objection may ultimately undermine Stevenson’s theoryof moral language, though not, as because his theory identifies asentence’s meaning with the illocutionary force of its utterance.Associating a sentence’s meaning instead with the set of its passiveand active dispositions, Stevenson’s theory of meaning implies thatsentences will have relatively stable meanings across contexts of use (Sections 3.1 and3.2), and therefore, that these dispositions might themselves becontributed to the more complex sentences into which they embed.Precisely how Stevenson’s dispositional theory could be extended toaccount for compositionality in this way is unclear, and Stevensonhimself appears never to have been sufficiently worried by theFrege-Geach objection to respond to it. One idea would be thatsentential operators, such as ‘if … then’ and‘it is possible that’ be treated as functions from thedispositions of the component sentences to a resulting set ofdispositions, where the latter would constitute the meaning of thecomplex sentence. Stevenson hints at such a possible extension of histheory while discussing the compositionality of atomic sentences:

No attempt has been made here to deal with one of the most difficultproblems that meaning-theory includes—that of explaining howseparate words, each one with its own meaning, can combine to yieldsentence-meanings. It is feasible, perhaps, to take each word ashaving a disposition to affect cognition, just as the full sentencedoes. The problem reduces, then, to one of explaining the interplay ofthe dispositions of the several words, when realized conjointly. Theanalogy of the magnets will still serve, used now to illustrate therelationship ofmeanings rather than ofbeliefs. Wemay compare the meaning of each word with the disposition of some oneof the magnets, and compare the meaning of the sentence with thedisposition that may be assigned to the group of magnets. Each wordhas an independent meaning in the sense that if it is replaced bycertain others in any context, there will be a typical sort ofdifference in the meaning of the context; but the precise way in whichthe word’s meaning is realized will depend on the meaning of the otherwords that accompany it. (1944, 67)

Since Stevenson suggests that he might explain the compositionality ofatomic sentences in terms of functions from the dispositions of asentence’s parts to a set of resulting dispositions, it is plausiblethat he might also wish to extend his theory in a similar way toexplain the compositionality of complex sentences. Whether such atheory could sustain additional scrutiny is debatable. For morein-depth but accessible discussion of emotivist and expressivistattempts to respond to the Frege-Geach Objection, see especiallySchroeder 2008 and 2010 and the entry onmoral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.

6. Stevenson’s Legacy

Stevenson remains a central figure in current day metaethics, a resultof his development of at least four key ideas:

1. Progress in ethical theory begins by focusing in the firstinstance on moral thought—on what it is tothink thatsomething is good, bad, evil, etc.
2. Moral thoughts are essentially constituted at least in part byattitudes or interests, that is, those feelings, attitudes, or otheraffective states that are most closely related to motivation andaction, which can be generally characterized as states ofbeingfor orbeing against.
3. Attitudes or interests can be, and often are, rationallygovernable.
4. Moral sentences have both emotive and descriptive meaning.

These four ideas remain central to current day expressivists, such asBlackburn (1984, 1993) and Gibbard (1990, 2003), whose work arisesespecially from ideas 1–3. Indeed, the title of Gibbard 1990,Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, suggests all three ideas. Currentdayhybrid theorists andrelational expressivists,such as David Copp (2001, 2009), Stephen Barker (2002), Michael Ridge(2006, 2014), Daniel Boisvert (2008), and Teemu Toppinen (2013) holdthat moral language is used conventionally to express both beliefs andattitudes—or states of being in some suitably related belief-and attitude states—and, thereby, continue to develop indifferent ways Stevenson’s idea that moral sentences have both emotiveand descriptive meaning (see also Schroeder 2009; 2013; Fletcher andRidge 2014; Toppinen 2018).

Bibliography

Works by C. L. Stevenson Cited in This Article

• 1937, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,”reprinted in Stevenson 1963a, pp. 10–31.
• 1938a, “Ethical Judgments and Avoidability,” reprintedin Stevenson 1963a, pp. 138–152.
• 1938b, “Persuasive Definitions,” reprinted inStevenson 1963a, pp. 32–54.
• 1944,Ethics and Language, New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.
• 1946 [1943], “Some Relations Between Philosophy and theStudy of Language,” reprinted in Stevenson 1963a, pp.175–185.
• 1948a, “Meaning: Descriptive and Emotive,” reprintedin Stevenson 1963a, pp. 153–174.
• 1948b [1941], “The Nature of Ethical Disagreement,”reprinted in Stevenson 1963a, pp. 1–9.
• 1950a, “The Emotive Conception of Ethics and Its CognitiveImplications,” reprinted in Stevenson 1963a, pp.55–70.
• 1950b, “Interpretation and Evaluation in Aesthetics,”inPhilosophical Analysis: a Collection of Essays, Max Black(ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp.xxx–xxx.
• 1950c, “Brandt’s Questions about Emotive Ethics,”Philosophical Review, 59(4): 528–534.
• 1957, “On ‘What is a Poem?’,”Philosophical Review, 66(3): 329–362.
• 1958, “On the ‘Analysis’ of a Work ofArt,”Philosophical Review, 67(1): 33–51.
• 1961–62a, “Reflections on John Dewey’s Ethics,”in Stevenson 1963a, pp. 94–116.
• 1961–62b, “Relativism and Nonrelativism in the Theoryof Value,” in Stevenson 1963a, pp. 71–93.
• 1963a,Facts and Values: Studies in Ethical Analysis, NewHaven: Yale University Press.
• 1963b, “Retrospective Comments,” in Stevenson 1963a,pp. 186–232.
• 1968, “Ethical Fallibility,” inEthics andSociety, T. De George (ed.), London: Macmillan, pp.197–217.
• 1973, “Richards on the Theory of Value,” inI. A.Richards: Essays in His Honor, Reuben Brower et. al (eds.), NewYork: Oxford University Press, pp. 119–134.

Other References and Secondary Literature

• Ayer, A. J., 1936,Language, Truth, and Logic, London:Victor Gollancz Ltd.
• Barker, S., 2002, “Is Value Content a Component ofConventional Implicature?,”Analysis, 60(3):268–279.
• Bex-Priestley, G., 2018, “Error and the Limits ofQuasi-Realism,”Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 21:1051–1063.
• Blackburn, S., 1993,Essays in Quasi-Realism, New York:Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1998,Ruling Passions, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Blanshard, B., 1949, “The New Subjectivism in Ethics,”reprinted inEthics: The Big Questions, 2nd edition, J.Sterba (ed.), 2009, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 43–49.
• Boisvert, D., 2008, “Expressive-Assertivism,”Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 89(2): 169–203.
• Brandt, R., 1950a, “The Emotive Theory of Ethics,”Philosophical Review, 59(3): 305–318.
• –––, 1950b, “Stevenson’s Defense of theEmotive Theory,”Philosophical Review, 59(4):535–540.
• –––, 1959,Ethical Theory: The Problems ofNormative and Critical Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Burks, A., 1978, Preface toValues and Morals: Essays inHonour of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and RichardBrandt, A. Goldman and J. Kim (eds.), Dordrecht: Reidel, pp.vii–xvii.
• Cappelen, H. and J. Hawthorne, 2009,Relativism and MonadicTruth, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Copp, D., 2001, “Realist Expressivism: A Neglected Optionfor Moral Realism,”Social Philosophy and Policy,18(2): 1–43.
• –––, 2009, “Realist Expressivism andConventional Implicature,” inOxford Studies in Metaethics,Volume 4, R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press,pp. 167–202.
• Dreier, J., 2001, “C. L. Stevenson,” inACompanion to Analytic Philosophy, A. Martinich and D. Sosa (eds.),Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 175–180.
• –––, 2009, “Relativism (and Expressivism)and the Problem of Disagreement,”PhilosophicalPerspectives, 23: 79–110.
• Egan, A., 2007, “Quasi-Realism and Fundamental MoralError,”Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85(2):205–219.
• Finlay, S., 2005, “The Emotive Theory of Ethics,”MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, M.Borchert (editor-in-chief), New York: Thomson Gale.
• –––, 2017, “Disagreement Lost andFound,” inOxford Studies in Metaethics (Volume 12), R.Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.187–205.
• Fletcher G. and M. Ridge, 2014,Having it Both Ways: HybridTheories and Modern Metaethics, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Frege, G., 1918, “Negation,” inThe FregeReader, Michael Beaney (ed.), 1997, Malden, MA: BlackwellPublishing, pp. 346–361.
• Geach, P., 1958, “Imperative and Deontic Logic,”Analysis, 18: 49–56.
• –––, 1960, “Ascriptivism,”Philosophical Review, 69: 221–225.
• –––, 1965, “Assertion,”Philosophical Review, 74: 449–465.
• Gibbard, A., 1990,Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory ofNormative Judgment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2003,Thinking How to Live,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Grice, P., 1975, “Logic and Conversation,” reprintedin P. Grice,Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
• Hare, R. M., 1952,The Language of Morals, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
• –––, 1997,Sorting Out Ethics, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Kerner, G. C., 1966,The Revolution in Ethical Theory,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kuklick, B., 2004, “Philosophy at Yale in the Century afterDarwin,”History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21(3):13–36.
• Moore, G. E., 1903,Principia Ethica, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press; revised edition with “Preface to thesecond edition,” T. Baldwin (ed.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993.
• Morris, C. W., 1938,Foundations of the Theory of Signs,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Ogden, C. K. and I. A. Richards, 1923,The Meaning ofMeaning, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• Perry, R. B., 1926,General Theory of Value: Its Meaning andBasic Principles Construed in Terms of Interest, Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.
• Richards, I. A., 1924,Principles of Literary Criticism,London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• –––, 1926,Science and Poetry, London:Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• Ridge, M., 2006, “Ecumenical Expressivism: FinessingFrege,”Ethics, 116(2): 302–336.
• –––, 2013, “Disagreement,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86(1):41–63.
• –––, 2014,Impassioned Belief, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Satris, S., 1987,Ethical Emotivism, Dordrecht: MartinusNijhoff Publishers.
• Schroeder, M., 2008, “What is the Frege-GeachProblem?,”Philosophy Compass, 3(4):703–720.
• –––, 2009, “Hybrid Expressivism: Virtuesand Vices,”Ethics, 119(2): 257–309.
• –––, 2010,Noncognitivism in Ethics,Abingdon: Routledge.
• –––, 2013, “Tempered Expressivism,”inOxford Studies in Metaethics (Volume 8), R. Shafer-Landau(ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 283–313.
• Searle, J., 1975, “Indirect Speech Acts,” inExpression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts,1985, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30–57.
• Sinclair, N., 2016, “Reasons, Inescapability andPersuasion,”Philosophical Studies, 173:2823–2844.
• Stroll, A., 1954,The Emotive Theory of Ethics, Berkeley:University of California Press.
• Svavarsdóttir, S., 1999, “Moral Cognitivism andMotivation,”Philosophical Review, 108:161–219.
• –––, 2006, “How Do Moral JudgmentsMotivate?”, inContemporary Debates in Moral Theory, J.Dreier (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 163–181.
• Toppinen, T., 2013, “Believing in Expressivism,” inOxford Studies in Metaethics (Volume 8), R. Shafer-Landau (ed.),Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 252–282.
• –––, 2018. “Hybrid Accounts of EthicalThought and Talk,” inThe Routledge Handbook ofMetaethics, T. McPherson & D. Plunkett (eds.), Abingdon:Routledge, pp. 243–259.
• Urmson, J., 1968,The Emotive Theory of Ethics, London:Hutchinson & Co.
• van Roojen, M., 2009, “Moral Cognitivism vs.Non-Cognitivism”,The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/moral-cognitivism/>.
• Warnock, M., 1978,Ethics Since 1900, third edition,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• Hickling, Alfred, 2004, “Profile: Anne Stevenson,”The Guardian, October 2, 2004, Guardian Review, p. 20.Article accessed November 16, 2010.
• King, M. L, 1963, “I Have a Dream—Address at March on Washington,” MLKOnline.net.
• Marturano, Antonio, 2005, “Non-Cognitivism in Ethics,”Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Related Entries

Ayer, Alfred Jules |cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral |Dewey, John: moral philosophy |dispositions |Hare, Richard Mervyn |intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties |metaethics |moral anti-realism |moral motivation |practical reason: and the structure of actions |Russell, Bertrand: moral philosophy

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Giulio Pietroiusti for especially helpful discussionconcerning Stevenson’s First and Second Patterns of analysis.