What does ‘good’ really mean, anyway?

EMOTIVISM- Understanding the meaning and influence of ethical terms.

INTRODUCTION

Was I wrong in doing that? Is my action morally right? Is this particular deed good?

Ethical questions appear to be difficult to answer because we struggle to understand what exactly we are seeking, and what exactly emotive terms like ‘good’, ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ mean. In order to answer these questions, they must first be examined. A better understanding of emotive language (the deliberate choice of words to influence or to elicit emotion), and by extension, emotivism, is needed for this. For this, we will be discussing the role of emotive meaning in ethics according to C.L. Stevenson.

EMOTIVISM

The theory of emotivism was first expounded by A.J Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and developed by Charles Stevenson in Ethics and Language (1945).

According to C.L Stevenson, the major use of ethical judgements ‘is not to indicate facts, but to create an influence. Instead of merely describing people’s interests, they change or intensify them. For instance: When you tell a man that he oughtn’t to steal, your object isn’t merely to let him know that people disapprove of stealing. You are attempting, rather, to get him to disapprove of it. Your ethical judgment has a quasi-imperative force which, operating through suggestion, and intensified by your tone of voice, readily permits you to begin to influence, to modify, his interests…’. He stated these views in the Mind journal in 1937.

From this, it follows that when people disagree about an ethical issue, emotivism believes that each is trying to persuade the other to adopt their attitude and follow their advice by modifying behavior accordingly. They are not giving out information that might be true or false.

In emotivism, a moral statement is not merely a statement about the speaker’s feelings on the topic, but an expression of those feelings with emotive force. Moral statements try to persuade people to do, or not to do, what the speaker approves or disapproves of. When an ‘emotivist’ says “racism is wrong”, it’s like saying “down with racism!” or saying “racism!” with a horrified face.

THE ROLE OF ETHICAL TERMS

Ethical terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are instruments used in the complicated interplay and readjustments of human interests. People from different communities often have different moral attitudes. This can be because of their different social influences. Such influence is facilitated by ethical terms. But how does an ethical sentence acquire the power to influence people? What is the relation of this influence with the meaning of ethical terms? Do these considerations lead us to a sense of ‘good’ that meets the above-mentioned requirements?

We will discuss the question about the meaning of ethical terms in detail.

THE TWO PURPOSES OF LANGUAGE

There are two purposes of language — descriptive, in which words are used to record, clarify and communicate beliefs, and dynamic, in which words are used to express feelings, create moods or incite actions and attitudes. For our discussion, we are chiefly concerned with the latter. The tone of a person’s voice, their gestures, the circumstances under which they are speaking, etc. matter a lot when a person is speaking dynamically.

EMOTIVE MEANING

The emotive meaning of a word is a tendency of a word, arising through the history of its usage, to produce affective responses in people. These tendencies to produce affective responses are heavily dependent on words. For example, it would be difficult to express sorrow by using the word “Hurrah”. It is because of these persistent affective tendencies that we can classify them as ‘meanings’.

RELATION BETWEEN EMOTIVE MEANING AND DYNAMIC WORDS

What is the relation between emotive meaning and the dynamic use of words? The following example will help answer this. Suppose a guest tells the host that she found the food to be delicious, when she, in fact, did not. If we consider this remark to be innocent, will we remind her of her ‘lie’ to the host? No, we would not, because although she told the host something she believed to be false, and with the intent of making the host believe it was true the expression — ‘you lied to the host’ would emotively be too strong for the purpose. It would sound like a reproach, even if that was not the intent. Thus, because of their emotive meaning, words like ‘lied’ become suited for a certain kind of dynamic use. This might mislead the hearer when the word is used in another way. This shows that the louder a word’s emotive meaning is, the less likely people are to use it purely descriptively.

THE DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS OF EMOTIVE TERMS

Words differ in function, for example, to encourage or discourage people, and so on. It should also be noted that the emotive meaning accompanies a word more persistently than dynamic meaning. It is the emotive meaning of a word that leads us to classify remarks as laudatory or derogatory. This classification is of particular importance when we are dealing with terms like ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It should be noted that emotive terms are not limited to these four. They are of great variety and can be used to express or evoke amazement, horror, sympathy, sadness, etc.

MORAL AND NON-MORAL USE OF ‘GOOD’

The moral use of ‘good’ differs from the above-mentioned use as it is about a different interest. Instead of being about what we ‘like’, it is about strong approval. Because when we like something, we are pleased when it happens and disappointed when it does not. But when we morally approve of something, we experience a rich feeling of security when it prospers and a shocked or indignant feeling when it does not. Although, it should be noted that ‘good’ has an emotive meaning that adapts to suggestions, whether in moral or nonmoral usage.

THE THREE REQUIREMENTS OF ‘GOOD’

Stevenson’s analysis of ethical judgements is allied with the three requirements for the typical sense of ‘good’.

1. There must be room for sensible disagreement about whether something is ‘good’ or not. This rules out Hobbes’ definition, which has no room for contradictions or disagreements.
2. ‘Goodness’ should have some magnetism. A person who recognizes a certain action as ‘good’ must have a stronger tendency to act towards it. This rules out the Humean definition, in which what is ‘good’ is entirely dependent on the community and is not concerned with the tendency of the individual to favor it.
3. ‘Goodness’ of anything must not be verifiable only by a scientific method. Ethics is a part of philosophy, and it must not become psychology.

The traditional interest theories do not meet these requirements as they neglect emotive meaning, therefore neglect dynamic usage and subsequently, the type of disagreements and the methods to resolve them that arise from their usage.

DEFINE ‘GOOD’

We can now attempt to define ‘good’.

APPROACH 1

Often, when someone says “this is good”, we assume they like ‘this’. This is because we wrongly assume that ‘good’ is being used descriptively when it is being used dynamically. This ‘good’ is also used, subtly, as a suggestion. The word ‘good’ has a complimentary meaning that qualifies it for the dynamic use of suggesting favorable interest. But emotive meaning is absent in a sentence like ‘we like this’. So this interpretation of ‘good’ is inadequate.

APPROACH 2

We need to find a definiens whose emotive meaning leads to dynamic usage. But it is not possible to find this, as no two words have the same emotive meaning. So, the most we can do is find an approximation, like ‘desirable’ or ‘valuable’ for ‘good’. But this too is futile, because they do not clear up the connection between favorable and ‘good’. This should not mean we can use non-ethical terms, as that would be misleading. “I do like this; do so as well” is an inaccurate imperative interpretation of “this is good”. An ethical sentence differs from an imperative one because it enables one to make changes in a more subtle way. It centers the listener’s attention on the object of interest, and not her own interests. It also permits counter-suggestion that is characteristic of arguments dealing with values.

CONCLUSION

This shows that it is impossible to define ‘good’ in terms of favorable interest without distorting the emotive meaning, although it is possible to say “this is good” about the favorable interests of the speaker and listener, and that its emotive meaning is laudatory, which works as a suggestion.

Despite all the scientifically knowable properties a thing might have, it can always be questioned whether that thing is good. We ask this to know about its influence. And we can be influenced with regard to our interest in an object, whatever its scientific qualities may be. This shows the relevance of Stevenson’s theory of emotivism.