Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_123nqpx in philosophy
Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:
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Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.
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Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading
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Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.
Asleep-Television-24 t1_jdvshxg wrote
I was reading After Virtue by MacIntyre and came across "emotivism". MacIntyre's thesis in this book is that moral language that exists today has suffered a loss due to the Enlightenment project; 16th century philosophy from Hume to Diderot, Kant to Kierkegaard. This period led to what is known as emotivism, which originated in the early 20th century. An emotivist would say that all moral judgments are expressions of feelings, preferences, and attitudes. To put it colloquially: something is right "because I said so".
According to MacIntyre, emotivism has crept into our current political discourse, bureaucracies, etc. I am fascinated by his arguments on the social context and implications of emotivism, and thought that it would be interesting to share here.