## 1. Life and Work



C. L. Stevenson was born in 1908 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his youth, he
developed a life-long passion for literature and the arts, especially
poetry and music, whose power to influence a person's emotions and
actions fascinated him--a fascination that would remain at the
center of Stevenson's personal and professional life.



In 1926, Stevenson entered Yale University, earning a prize for best
entrance examination for piano at the Yale School of Music. He
graduated from Yale in 1930 with a B.A. in English Literature, a field
he intended to pursue upon entering Cambridge University, England
later that year. While at Cambridge, however, Stevenson became
increasingly attracted to philosophy, in large part because of
acquaintances with I. A. Richards, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Each of these figures produced important, and different,
kinds of work on the nature, analysis, and use of language, had strong
personalities, and shared Stevenson's love for literature, arts, and
aesthetics. Stevenson earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Cambridge in
1933 and entered Harvard that same year to earn his Ph.D. in Philosophy,
which he received in 1935. While at Harvard, Stevenson worked closely
with Ralph Barton Perry, whose *General Theory of Value*
(1926), conversant in early American pragmatism and early Continental
phenomenology, had a lasting influence on Stevenson's work (Sartris
1984; Warnock 1978).



Stevenson remained at Harvard as an instructor for three years until
1938, during which time three early essays were published in
*Mind*: "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms"
(1937), "Ethical Judgments and Avoidability" (1938a), and
"Persuasive Definitions" (1938b). In 1939, Stevenson
accepted the position of Assistant Professor at Yale, where he
remained until 1946, and during which time his landmark *Ethics and
Language* was published in 1944. One of the conclusions Stevenson
reached in this book was that some ethical disputes may be rationally
irresolvable. Apparently on these grounds, and in the historical
context of World War II atrocity, Stevenson was denied
 tenure.[1]
 The University of Michigan immediately offered Stevenson a position
as Associate Professor, which he accepted, and where he remained until
1978. Stevenson's most important articles in ethics are collected in
*Facts and Values* (1963a), which also contains an informative
retrospective essay (1963b) that clarifies, expands, and refines his
mature views. His partly related work in aesthetics (e.g., 1950b,
1957, 1958) remains uncollected.



Stevenson passed away in 1979 in Bennington, Vermont, where he had
moved to be near family and where he had accepted a position as
Professor of Philosophy at Bennington College. He was survived by his
second wife Nora, whom he married in 1965, after the death, two years
earlier, of his first wife, Louise. With Louise, Stevenson had three
children, 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 problems
into which it inquires. Biology inquires into problems concerning
life; history inquires into problems concerning past social events and
cultural developments; etc. Ethics inquires into ethical problems,
problems about what is good or bad, what ought to be done, how we
ought to feel about something, etc. Ethical problems are ubiquitous.
They are the "problems that are familiar in everyday
discussions, and which range from idle bits of gossip about this or
that man's character to prolonged and serious discussions of
international politics" (1963a, v). Stevenson conceives of his
work as having "far less to say about the *summum bonum*
of 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 moral
problems as follows:



> 
> 
> It requires us to abstract from the detailed subject matter of the
> problems and pay selective attention to the aspects of them that are
> most likely to prod us into problem *solving*. It requires us
> to see these aspects not from a moral point of view (which would
> attend any attempt to *settle* the problems) but rather from
> the 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 and
> disagreements, that we often resolve by inquiry, deliberation, and
> discussion, 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 a
> trustworthy conclusion. (1963b, 186-187)
> 
> 
> 



Stevenson's aim was that of "sharpening the tools" for the
"legislators, editorialists, didactic novelists, clergymen, and
moral philosophers" addressing ethical (and other normative)
questions (1944,1). It is an interesting question how, precisely, the
sharpened tools would help us in addressing such questions of
*normative 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 with
in our lives as social, communicative beings, are of seminal
importance to the development of *metaethics*.


### 2.2 Disagreement in Belief and Disagreement in Attitude



Moral problems can be interpersonal or personal. A moral problem is
interpersonal when there is disagreement among two or more people and
personal when an individual is uncertain about a moral issue. But what
is the *nature* of this disagreement or uncertainty? These are
the questions around which Stevenson organizes all of his work in
metaethics and with which he begins both *Ethics and Language*
(1944) and *Facts and Values* (1963a).



Interpersonal disagreement is of two broad kinds: *disagreement in
belief* and *disagreement in attitude*. Very roughly, the
idea is to distinguish between disagreement that involves opposed or
incompatible beliefs and disagreement that involves opposed or
incompatible attitudes: "the former is concerned with how
matters are truthfully to be described and explained; the latter is
concerned with how they are to be favored or disfavored, and hence
with how they are to be shaped by human efforts" (1944, 4).
Stevenson's discussion of disagreement in attitude has been highly
influential as a starting point for attempts to find an account of
disagreement that would suit non-cognitivist, expressivist, or
contextualist 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 cannot
both be true and "neither is content to let the belief of the
other remain unchallenged" (1948b, 1). If Smith believes that
their and Jones's anniversary is in June, while Jones believes their
anniversary is in July, their respective beliefs are incompatible,
since they cannot both be true; but Smith and Jones only disagree in
the sense that Stevenson mostly focuses on when they desire, need, or
attempt to *coordinate* their beliefs, perhaps because they
would like to celebrate their anniversary as close to their wedding
date as possible. Their disagreement is resolved when they modify
their beliefs in ways that make them compatible, or when both cease to
care about coordinating their incompatible beliefs.



Analogously, disagreement in attitude occurs when two or more people
have attitudes--e.g., desires, plans, or intentions, or other
states whose general nature is that of *being for* or *being
against* something (1948b, 2)--that cannot all be jointly
satisfied (had, felt, etc.) and there is a desire, need, or attempt to
coordinate those attitudes. Importantly, disagreement *in*attitude is to be distinguished from disagreement *about*attitudes, which is a kind of disagreement in belief (1948b, 3;
see also 1944, 9-10). If Smith and Jones desire to dine
together, but Smith desires to dine at a restaurant where there is
music, while Jones desires to dine at a quiet restaurant, they
disagree, 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 divergent
beliefs, and will end when they both wish to go the same place"
(1944, 3). For Stevenson, disagreement in attitude is a very common
phenomenon:



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



Agreement, Stevenson notes, may be dealt with "mainly by
implication" (1944, 2-5). The accounts of disagreement and
agreement differ in that while two persons only disagree when they
have opposing beliefs or attitudes *and* when, moreover, at
least one party to the dispute "has a motive for altering or
calling into question" the belief or the attitude of the other,
their agreement seems to be secured, on Stevenson's view, simply in
virtue of their having converging beliefs or attitudes (1944,
4-5). People may "neither agree nor disagree--as will
happen when they are in a state of mutual indecision or
irresolution," or when they simply *differ*,
"having divergent beliefs or attitudes without a sufficient
motive for making them alike" (1944, 4-5)



Ridge (2013, 41-45) contrasts Stevenson's account of
disagreement with what he calls a *Stevensonian* view. The
former demands that in order for two persons to disagree at least one
must 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 be
jointly satisfied. The former account of disagreement may seem
implausible. It seems that two persons may disagree, both in belief
and in attitude, without even being aware of the existence of each
other (Ridge 2013, 45-49). The latter option, the Stevensonian
view--which has been the more influential one in later
discussions of the idea of a disagreement in attitude--avoids
this problem (Ridge 2013, 41-43). However, Stevenson's view
plausibly was the Stevensonian one. We may distinguish between
disagreement as a kind of *activity*--having a
disagreement--and disagreement as a *state* (Cappelen
& Hawthorne 2009, 60-61). While two people who are not aware
of the existence of each other may be in a state of disagreement, they
won't be engaged in having a disagreement. Plausibly, Stevenson is
operating with a distinction along these lines, and simply wishes to
focus on disagreement in the sense of a kind of activity. This is
understandable, given his focus on moral *problems* and on the
ways of dealing with such problems. So, when Stevenson contrasts
merely *differing* with having a *disagreement* (1944,
4-5 and 111) the contrast is plausibly meant to capture the
contrast between merely being in a state of disagreement and having a
disagreement. He writes, for instance:



> 
> 
> There are times, of course, when people differ in their attitudes
> without having a sufficient motive for resolving the difference. They
> may feel that the difference will lead to no clash; they may be too
> timid, too aloof, or too economical of their time to make an issue of
> the matter; they may consider certain men too fixed in their ways to
> be changed, and others capable of leading their own lives. (Stevenson
> 1944, 111)
> 
> 
> 



Clearly, in these sorts of cases, Stevenson sees the relevant people
as disagreeing in an important sense, despite the fact that they see
no point in *engaging* 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 for
*arguing* in a way that "may change disagreement in
attitude to agreement" become manifold--thus implicitly
applying the notion of a disagreement in attitude also to a mere
conflict of attitudes (1944, 112).



Stevenson does not assume that interpersonal disagreement always
signals that one is intending to get another to change their beliefs
or 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 attitudes
changed in the course of open-minded discussion or deliberation. Thus
neither disagreement in belief nor disagreement in attitude need be an
"occasion for forensic rivalry; it may be an occasion for an
interchange of aims, with a reciprocal influence that both parties
find to be beneficial" (1944, 4-5).



*Uncertainty in attitude* occurs when an individual is
uncertain about how to feel or about what to do. For example, Smith
may have conflicting attitudes about some particular legislation
proposal (being in disagreement with themselves, so to speak).
Alternatively, they may, while currently having no attitudes regarding
the proposal, wish to determine whether to be for or against it, so
that they can vote responsibly (1963b, 191-199; 1950a,
55-60). Stevenson doesn't say much about *uncertainty in
belief*, but it is, presumably, a matter of being disposed both to
believe and to disbelieve some proposition, or of wanting to settle on
a belief regarding some issue.



Especially in *Ethics and Language*, Stevenson's focus is
primarily on interpersonal disagreement rather than on personal
uncertainty, but this is not because he would have deemed the latter
less important. Rather, he is supposing that personal uncertainty may
be usefully understood in terms of a person being in disagreement with
themselves (1944, 131). However, Stevenson later came to have some
regrets over the lack of emphasis on personal deliberation and
uncertainty, which, he thought, also contributed to a somewhat
misleading picture of interpersonal moral problems. In particular, he
came to worry that this emphasis made it easy to think of his theory
as downplaying the difficulty of moral questions and the preparedness
of people to revise their moral views, and contributed to the
impression 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 to
be understood? Stevenson adopts a dispositional theory, according to
which these states are distinguishable by their respective complex
causal relations (1944, 7-8; 1950a). (More will be said about
Stevenson's view of dispositions in
 Section 3.2.)
 While he concedes that the complexity of the relevant dispositions
makes them difficult to specify, he does think that beliefs and
attitudes are easily distinguishable in our daily experience. Consider
an onlooker who witnesses a chess expert open weakly against a novice
and wonders:



> 
> 
> Does he make the move because he *believes* that it is a strong
> one, or because out of charity to his opponent, he doesn't
> *want* to make a strong one? The distinction here between a
> belief and a want (attitude) is certainly beyond any practical
> objection. One can imagine the expert, with constant beliefs about the
> opening, using it or not in accordance with his changing desires to
> win; or one can imagine him, with constant desires to win, using it or
> not in accordance with his changing beliefs. (1944, 7-8)
> 
> 
> 


### 2.3 Moral Disagreement and Non-Cognitivism about Moral Judgment

 Are moral problems essentially disagreements or
uncertainties in belief, attitude, or both? Are moral judgments
constituted by beliefs, attitudes, or both? Stevenson suggests that
moral problems almost always involve both types of disagreement or
uncertainty (1944, 11; 1948b, 4). For example, consider an ethical
disagreement between a union representative and a company
representative over an increase in employee wages:


> 
> 
> Such an argument clearly represents a disagreement in attitude. The
> union is *for* higher wages; the company is *against*
> them, and neither is content to let the other's attitude remain
> unchanged. *In addition* to this disagreement in attitude, of
> course, the argument may represent no little disagreement in belief.
> Perhaps the parties disagree about how much the cost of living has
> risen and how much the workers are suffering under the present wage
> scale. Or perhaps they disagree about the company's earnings and the
> extent to which the company could raise wages and still operate at a
> profit. Like any typical ethical argument, then, this argument
> involves both disagreement in attitude and disagreement in belief.
> (1948b, 4)
> 
> 
> 



However, although moral problems almost always involve both types of
disagreement or uncertainty, their distinguishing feature is
disagreement or uncertainty in attitude.



> 
> 
> If the men come to agree in belief about all the factual matters they
> have considered, and if they continue to have divergent aims in spite
> of this ... they will still have an ethical issue that is
> unresolved. But if they come to agree [in attitude], they will have
> brought their ethical issue to an end; and this will be so even though
> various beliefs ... still remain debatable. Both men may conclude
> that 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 to
which moral judgments are essentially constituted at least in part by
attitudes and moral disagreement is essentially disagreement in
attitude. Stevenson's main focus project is on developing, in
sufficient detail, an attractive non-cognitivist account of moral
problems, rather than on arguing for the superiority of
non-cognitivism over the competing views (although see 1937; 1944, ch.
12; 1950a). However, he does support his claim that moral
disagreements would essentially involve disagreement in attitude by
considering 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 to
be fully persuaded that what he did was wrong and, for that very
reason, 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 our
> outworn moral conventions. He means to say that it is really all right
> to do it, and that one ought to do it flagrantly in order to discredit
> the many people who *consider* it wrong'. But whatever we
> may make of his meaning (and there are several other interpretations
> possible) we shall scarcely take seriously his protestations of
> agreement. Were we not trying all along to make him disapprove of his
> action? Would not his ethical agreement with us require that he share
> our disfavor--that he agree with us in *attitude*? (1944,
> 16-17)
> 
> 
> 



Here Stevenson seems to appeal to *motivational internalism*,
or to the idea that, roughly, a moral judgment is necessarily
accompanied with having some motivation to act accordingly (see
Section 3.2 of the entry on
 moral 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 must *ipso facto* acquire a
stronger tendency to act in its favour" (1937, 16).



Interestingly, Stevenson suggests that a point in favor of his
non-cognitivist or emotivist view is that it allows us to recognize
"the cognitive content of ethics [...] in its full
variety"--that "an emotive conception of ethics, so
often criticized for depriving ethics of its thoughtful, reflective
elements, has actually just the opposite effect" (1950a, 60).
The idea is a variation on Moore's (1903) Open Question Argument: Let
us suppose that being good may be identified, as a matter of
conceptual or meaning analysis, with having some descriptive feature,
*D*--being promotive of survival, say. If one now wishes
to determine whether some action would be good, it turns out that one
only needs to consider its impact on the instantiation of
*D*ness. This may be part of what is cognitively relevant. But
it is at least possible to deem all sorts of descriptive features as
relevant to determining what is good. And so most non-emotive accounts
(Stevenson grants that there are exceptions) will be too restrictive
regarding what may be deemed to be cognitively relevant to ethics
(1950a, 60-63). One type of non-emotive view that would escape
this argument is Moorean non-naturalism, according to which moral
judgments are beliefs concerning *sui generis*, non-natural
properties. Stevenson applauds such views for recognizing "an
added factor" to the meaning of moral language that "the
purely scientific analyses of ethics are accustomed to ignore,"
but takes them to unnecessarily intellectualize the "emotive
meaning into an indefinable *quality*" (1944, 272).



Stevenson also appeals, in passing, to an argument from the best
explanation about the cause of the disparity of ethical views that
often occur between people of widely different generations, ethnic or
geographic locations. According Stevenson, the disparity is adequately
explained if ethical disagreement were essentially disagreement in
attitude, "for different temperaments, social needs, and group
pressures would more directly and urgently lead these people to have
opposed attitudes than it would lead them to have opposed factual
beliefs" (1944, 18).


## 3. Language and Psychology



For Stevenson, language is an instrument or tool for serving certain
purposes; ethical language is thus suited especially for the central
purposes of ethics. Since the central purposes of ethics are to
resolve or coordinate attitudes, an analysis of ethical language must
reveal how ethical language serves these dynamic purposes. It does so,
according to Stevenson, by having *emotive* *meaning* in
addition 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 descriptive
meaning in the "pragmatic" or "psychological"
sense, where this sense of 'meaning' invokes the work of
Charles Morris. In *Foundations 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 or
denotations; and (iii) pragmatics, the study of signs as they are used
by members of a community in order to "meet more satisfactorily
their individual and common needs" (10), that is, the study of
signs as they are used to coordinate mental and social life. Taking
his cue from Morris, Stevenson seeks to provide a theory of meaning in
terms of the "psychological reactions" of those who use
the signs (1944, 42), and, then, to distinguish emotive and
descriptive meaning by the different types of psychological reaction
associated with the use of emotive and descriptive language
respectively.



According to Stevenson, explaining emotive and descriptive meaning in
this psychological sense of 'meaning' would be promising
if it did not encounter an immediate problem that "has long been
one of the most troublesome aspects of linguistic theory" (1944,
42; 1937, 20). The problem, as Stevenson saw it, is that the meaning
of an expression must be relatively stable across a variety of social
and linguistic contexts, lest the expression be unhelpful to our
understanding of the many contexts in which the expression is used;
however, the psychological states associated with an expression vary
widely across social and linguistic contexts. At a football game, for
example, 'Hooray!' may be shouted in connection with
terrific 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 is
just' may be used to express a favorable attitude towards a
particular piece of legislation, but not when embedded within the more
complex sentence 'Vote for this legislation only if it is
just'. Thus,



> 
> 
> Some variation (of psychological states) must of course be allowed,
> else we shall end with a fictitious entity, serene and thoroughly
> useless amid the complexities of actual practice; but
> 'meaning' is a term wanted for marking off something
> relatively constant amid these complexities, not merely for paying
> them deference. A sense is needed where a sign may 'mean'
> less than it 'suggests'--a sense in which meanings
> are helpful to the understanding of *many* contexts, not some
> vagrant 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 of
meaning according to which the psychological state associated with an
expression's use, and hence an expression's meaning, remains
relatively constant across contexts.


### 3.2 Dispositional Theory of Meaning



Stevenson's solution to this problem of flux is to provide a
dispositional theory of meaning grounded in the causal-historical
relations between a sign and the psychological states of those within
a linguistic community who have used and reacted to, and continue to
use and react to, the sign. For Stevenson, a sign's meaning is not
constituted by its use on an occasion of utterance. Rather, a sign's
meaning is constituted by its *power*--its
"tendency," "potentiality," "latent
ability," or "disposition" (1937, 20-22; 1944,
46; 1948a, 158)--to evoke the psychological states of a hearer or
to express those of a speaker. The power of an expression, like the
purchasing power of a dollar, or the stimulating power of coffee, is
to be understood as a complex network of causal relations:



> 
> 
> The word 'disposition' ..., is useful in dealing with
> complicated *causal* situations, where some specified sort of
> event is a function of many variables. To illustrate ... Although
> coffee often 'causes' stimulation, it is never the only
> cause. The degree of stimulation will depend as well on many other
> factors--the initial state of a man's fatigue, the absorptive
> state of his stomach, the constitution of his nervous system, and so
> on. (1944, 46)
> 
> 
> 



Just as the stimulating power of coffee remains relatively unchanged
despite varied reactions or responses to the ingestion of coffee, so
too does the meaning of an expression remain relatively unchanged
despite varied psychological states resulting from or leading to the
articulation of an expression (1944, 46-47).



The stimulating power of coffee, for instance, is a disposition
constituted 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 are
mediated by: (iii) *attendant circumstances*, such as a
drinker's fatigue at the time of ingestion, the absorptive rate of
their stomach, or the constitution of their nervous system; and
(iv) *the basis of the disposition*, such as the chemical
composition of the coffee or the soil conditions where it was grown.
The responses, then, are a function of the stimuli, attendant
circumstances, and basis, and one who specifies these and who
specifies in detail their correlation "has said all about the
disposition that there is to say" (1944, 51).



The meaning of a term is the "conjunction" or union of two
dispositions, one "active" disposition to evoke
psychological states of a hearer, another "passive"
disposition to be used to express the psychological states of a
speaker, where a disposition is a complex causal network of stimuli
(e.g., an utterance, in the case of a sign's active disposition, or a
mental state, in the case of a passive one), responses (e.g., a
belief, in the case of an active disposition, or an utterance, in the
case of a passive one), attendant circumstances (e.g., the context of
utterance), and basis (perhaps the sign's history of use within a
linguistic community) (1944, 57-58). Stevenson warns that his
account of meaning, understood in causal-dispositional terms, should
not be taken as anything close to a complete theory of meaning, but
only as "half analysis, half analogy," "a device for
pointing 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 dispositional
property. Consequently, since the sentences of a language have
distinguishable kinds of dispositions, they have distinguishable kinds
of meaning.



The emotive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates the sign
to a range of attitudes (1944, 59-60). From a hearer or reader's
point of view, feelings or attitudes are the responses, tokens of the
sign are the stimuli; from a speaker or writer's point of view,
attitudes are the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses. An
attitude is itself a disposition whose stimuli and responses relate to
"hindering or assisting" the object of the attitude, that
which one is for or against (1944, 60). As a disposition, the emotive
meaning of a sign remains relatively stable, though responses may vary
across contexts given different attendant, or contextual,
circumstances (1944, 60). Thus, a speaker's utterance of
"Hooray!" may be occasioned by excitement or, on rare
occasion, even indifference; but the disposition of the sign to be
used to express or to evoke these varying attitudes remains relatively
stable, its stability a result of an "elaborate process of
conditioning" that gives rise to linguistic conventions (1944,
60-62; for discussions of emotive meaning, more generally, and
of Stevenson's account, in particular, see, e.g., Stroll 1954, Kerner
1966, Urmson 1968, and Satris 1987).



The descriptive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates the
sign to a range of "cognitive" states, including belief,
supposition, presumption, etc. From a hearer or reader's point of
view, cognitive states are the responses, tokens of the sign are the
stimuli. From a speaker or writer's point of view, cognitive states
are the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses. Cognitive
states, like attitudes, are complex dispositions. (1944,
62-71)



The emotive and descriptive meanings of signs are related in a variety
of ways. Signs may have both emotive and descriptive meaning, and
often do. Perhaps a noncontroversial example is the sentence
'That was courageous', whose descriptive meaning relates
tokens of the sentence to cognitive states that, in some way,
represent the action referred to as one performed in spite of an
actor's fear, and whose emotive meaning relates tokens of the sentence
to favorable states, such as admiration towards the action or actor.
According to Stevenson, almost all words in a natural language have
both emotive and descriptive meaning owing to their historical uses in
emotional contexts (1944, 71). The interplay of emotive and
descriptive meaning is complex. For example, the word
'democracy' may have come to possess its laudatory emotive
meaning in certain contexts because the word refers, via its
descriptive meaning, to properties of government that are favored in
these contexts. Under suitable circumstances, the word might retain
its descriptive meaning and acquire a less laudatory emotive meaning,
or change its descriptive meaning due to its emotive meaning remaining
constant (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, or
otherwise resolve disagreements in attitude (and ethical uncertainty),
an analysis of ethical language must display how ethical language is
apt for performing these functions. It is apt, according to Stevenson,
because ethical language (i) almost always has both emotive and
descriptive meaning, where (ii) emotive meaning is essential and (iii)
often strongly independent of descriptive meaning (in the sense in
which "thin" ethical terms, such as 'good',
might be said to have emotive meaning that is strongly independent of
any descriptive meaning it might have). That ethical language has
essential emotive meaning--that is, has dispositions in which
attitudes play a most prominent role--implies as it should that
attitudes and feelings are at issue in cases of moral disagreement or
uncertainty. That ethical language usually has both emotive and
descriptive meanings which often interact in various ways suggests as
it should that beliefs, and therefore rational methods, can be
relevant to resolving moral disagreement or uncertainty. That emotive
meaning is often strongly independent of descriptive meaning suggests
as it should that nonrational "persuasive" methods can
also play a role in settling or resolving moral disagreement or
uncertainty.


### 4.1 Patterns of Analysis



Stevenson aims to clarify ethical language by using
"tools" of analysis. One tool that Stevenson will
*not* use to clarify ethical language is the tool of
definition, at least in the sense of 'definition' that
implies "finding synonym for synonym," since he thinks
that ethical terms, due to their emotive meanings, are indefinable in
this sense (1944, 82). Rather, Stevenson's analytic tool of choice is
a set of models. The models highlight the respective dispositional
elements (i.e. elements of meaning) of ethical language that, via its
use, 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 of
Stevenson's attention, because they paradigmatically exemplify for the
sentence 'This is good' what Stevenson calls respectively
his "First Pattern" and "Second Pattern" of
analysis (1944, chapters IV and IX). These patterns and, hence,
(P1) and (P4) differ most importantly in
descriptive richness and emotive force. (P1)'s descriptive
content is scant, conveying only information about the speaker's
attitude and, therefore, conveying only somewhat more information than
is conveyed by (P1)'s relatively strong emotive element;
therefore, (P1) well-models those uses of an ethical
sentence at which front and center is a speaker's attitude.
(P4)'s descriptive content conveys more complex, precise
information about the qualities of which the speaker approves and
merely characterizes 'This is good' as conveying emotive
force; therefore, (P4) well-models those uses of an ethical
sentence at which front and center are a speaker's moral
standards.



As models, (P1) and (P4) have different
strengths and weaknesses, and while discussing them Stevenson suggests
or implies several other models: (P2a)-(P3c).
Like (P1), (P2a)-(P2c) exemplify
Stevenson's First Pattern of Analysis, and, like (P4),
(P3a)-(P3c) exemplify Stevenson's Second Pattern
of Analysis. Notice that each subset of models, and each model within
each subset, is listed roughly in order of increasing descriptive
richness and decreasing emotive force.



Discussion begins with (P1), returning later to
(P0a)-(P0d).



'This is good' means:



(P0a)
Approve of this!
(P0b)
Let's all approve of this!
(P0c)
Hooray for this!
(P0d)
Hooray for this for being *X*, *Y*, and
*Z*!


(P1)
I approve of this; do so as well.
(P2a)
I approve of this; let's all do so!
(P2b)
I approve of this; hooray for this!
(P2c)
I approve of this; how I wish we would all do so!


(P3a)
This is *X*; hooray for this!
(P3b)
This is *X*; hooray for things that are *X*!
(P3c)
This is *X*, *Y*, and *Z*; hooray for
things that are *X*, *Y*, and *Z*!


(P4)
This is *X*, *Y*, and *Z* ["except
that 'good' has as well a laudatory emotive meaning which
permits it to express the speaker's approval and tends to evoke the
approval of the hearer"]


Stevenson devotes a great deal of space in *Ethics and
Language* discussing the various features and implications of
(P1). However, despite its usefulness, (P1) is
not be taken as some sort of "official" model of ethical
sentences. Five of (P1)'s misleading features, acknowledged
by Stevenson himself, are as follows:



Problem 1:
The imperative is "too blunt an instrument" (1944,
32), evoking attitudes in a overly aggressive, crude way. Moral
claims, according to Stevenson, *lead* rather than command
people 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 and
discussion is to convert others. Since the use of a second-person
imperative implies a position of authority over one's audience, this
model gives the impression that the speaker or writer "wishes
only to propagate his preconceived aims, without reconsidering
them" (1944, 32). However, most moral claims are often
occasioned not by a desire for "conquest," but rather by a
desire for mutual understanding (1944, 32).
Problem 3:
The declarative suggests that the descriptive element is often
quite narrow and perhaps quite precise, when in point of fact it is
often quite broad or complex and quite vague (1944, 33-34 and
206-213).
Problem 4:
The declarative fails to model the possibility of disagreement in
belief, which intuitively is a part of many moral disagreements.
Suppose, for example, that Smith declares that complimenting others is
good, while Jones declares that complimenting others is bad, and that
their disagreement is grounded in the conflict between Smith's belief
that complimenting others generally leads to a healthy degree of
self-esteem and Jones's belief that complimenting others too often
leads to excessive pride. According to (P1), the
descriptive element of Smith's utterance is rendered 'I approve
of complimenting others', while Jones's utterance is rendered
'I disapprove of complimenting others' (1944, 22). But
here, Smith and Jones disagree in belief not at all.
Problem 5:
The declarative implies, implausibly, that the full justification
of a moral claim always requires the provision of reasons for
*believing* that a speaker approves or disapproves of that to
which she refers (1963b, 210-212).


Models (P2a)-(P2c) rectify Problems 1 and
2 to some degree. They lessen the blunt force and authoritativeness of
the second-person imperative by using a more interpersonally agreeable
first-person plural imperative, exclamative, and optative
respectively. (P2a), because it retains an imperative,
models better than (P2b) and (P2c) the
dispositions of moral sentences to evoke an audience's attitudes or
behaviors. The latter two, containing instead an exclamative and
optative respectively, model better than (P2a) the
dispositions of moral sentences to express a speaker's attitudes.



Models (P3a)-(P3c) rectify Problems 3-5 to
some degree. Each suggests that the descriptive element in ethical
sentences is more complex and perhaps more vague, suggesting as they
do a more general description of an action, person, policy, etc. as
exemplifying certain characteristics or properties, rather than the
narrower and more precise description of a speaker as exemplifying a
specific attitude. Thus, each allows that moral disagreement may be
grounded in disagreement in belief--e.g., Smith and Jones can use
'complimenting others is good' and 'complimenting
others is not good' respectively as a means of disagreeing in
belief about whether complimenting others exemplifies property X (or Y
or Z)--and, thereby, eliminates the implication that fully
justifying a moral claim requires providing reasons for
*believing* that a speaker has the particular attitude she is
described as having.



Stevenson's (P4), has a descriptive element that is more
precise than (P3a)-(P3b). It also removes
even a *model* of the emotive element, leaving instead just a
characterization to the effect that some emotive element is present.
Thus, unlike (P0a)-(P1), which place the
dispositional relations between ethical terms and
attitudes--i.e., emotive meaning--front and center,
(P4) instead places front and center the dispositional
relations between ethical terms and beliefs--i.e., descriptive
meaning. (P4) thus captures the passive dispositions of
ethical terms to be used as a result of a speaker or writer's more
specific cognitive states about the properties or characteristics of
an action, person, etc., and the terms' active dispositions to
cause such cognitive states in an audience. Perhaps the more
descriptive "thick" ethical terms, such as
'cruel', 'kind', or 'courageous'
provide the best examples of terms that possess such dispositions.



Returning to (P0a)-(P0d), these rectify to
some degree an additional problem, one that encumbers all of
(P1)-(P4).



Problem 6:
It is often simply too difficult to determine whether the
descriptive meaning of ethical language is *strictly
designated* or merely *suggested* (1944, 85-87).


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



> 
> 
> The distinction which the question presupposes, that between what
> 'good' *means* and what it *suggests*, is
> often beyond the precision of ordinary language. It is a distinction
> between descriptive dispositions of the term, one of which is
> preserved by linguistic rules and the other is not. In the rigorous
> discourse of science or mathematics, which avails itself of
> interrelated sets of definitions or formal postulates, the distinction
> is readily made. In the rough contexts of daily life, however, a great
> many rules are not stipulated, being imperfectly evident from people's
> linguistic habits; and even those rules which are occasionally
> stipulated are not constantly followed. Certain rules, of course,
> *are* always observed; for 'good', whatever else,
> is 'not bad' and 'not indifferent'. But many
> other rules remain as mere possibilities. If such a rule is
> specifically called to a person's attention he may accept
> it--though usually only temporarily, for a given purpose. Not
> until a great many rules are permanently settled, though, do we get
> beyond the undecided region that separates descriptive meaning from
> suggestiveness. When rules are *in the course of becoming*
> generally accepted, there is a long period over which we may either
> accept or reject them without violence to conventional language. Our
> decision may settle the matter for our own usage, and determine what
> is *afterward* to be called the term's descriptive meaning, and
> what is to be called its suggestiveness; but our finished product is
> by no means the same as the raw material. (1944, 86; see also 1948a,
> 154-158; 1963b, 208-210)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, Stevenson's distinction between 'strictly
designates' and 'suggests' is plausibly captured by
the later Gricean distinction between that which is "said"
or "conventionally implicated" on the one hand, and that
which is "conversationally implicated" on the other (Grice
1975). Models (P0a)-(P0d), then, are
useful for reminding us that the "strict" meaning of
ethical terms *may* 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 or
uncertainty in attitude, though it is often constituted by
disagreement or uncertainty in belief as well. Resolving an ethical
problem, therefore, requires coordinating attitudes, sometimes by
coordinating beliefs that causally affect those attitudes. Attitudes
may be coordinated by methods that do not involve the use of language;
physical force, bribery, and physical seduction are just a few
nonlinguistic means of shaping and coordinating attitudes. Stevenson,
however, is interested only in *linguistic* methods of
coordinating attitudes, which he categorizes as either
"rational" or "nonrational." Rational methods
seek to shape or coordinate attitudes by using language to produce
reasons; Stevenson thus calls the set of such methods, aptly enough,
"Reason." Nonrational methods seek to shape or coordinate
attitudes by using language in other ways; Stevenson calls this set of
methods "Persuasion."



A reason, for Stevenson, is "*any* statement about
*any* matter of fact which *any* speaker considers
likely to alter attitudes" (1944, 115). "Whether this
reason will in fact support or oppose the judgment will depend,"
Stevenson says, "on whether the hearer believes it, and upon
whether if he does, it will actually make a difference to his
attitudes; but it may conveniently be called a reason (though not
necessarily a 'valid' one) regardless of whether it is
accepted or not" (1944, 115). Thus, a reason is a statement
whose content, if believed, is causally relevant to altering
attitudes. (This may seem like a very surprising account of what it is
to be a reason for some attitude; see also
 Section 5.1,
 below.)



Stevenson provides a plethora of examples throughout his work to
clarify the variety of ways in which beliefs, in their intermediary
roles, may serve to strengthen or weaken attitudes (1944, especially
Chapters V, VI, VIII). For example, suppose that Smith disapproves of
policies that put a great burden on the poor and make little
difference 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
(P3a), their claim is akin to the claim "This policy
does not put great burden on the poor while making little difference
to the rich; hooray for this policy." Jones might then, in
appealing to the claim that the policy puts great burden on the poor
and makes little difference to the rich, alter Smith's attitude toward
the policy either by directly contradicting a belief of Smith's
(assuming model (P3a)) or by leading Smith to accept that
they do not approve of the policy, which again contradicts their
belief (assuming model (P1)). Here the impact of Smith's
newly acquired belief on their earlier moral judgments is due to the
*logical* relation between the beliefs. Next consider a case
where Smith hasn't really thought about the policy before. They might
nevertheless be disposed, upon coming to believe that the policy puts
a great burden on the poor while making little difference to the rich,
to disapprove of the policy. Here the newly acquired belief would not
contradict an earlier belief of Smith's, but it might nevertheless
have an impact, thanks to a suitable *psychological* relation,
on their beliefs and attitudes. Other sorts of examples, discussed by
Stevenson, of reasons for attitude revision without a logical relation
to existing beliefs include appeals to authority, or to the genealogy
of beliefs or attitudes (1944, 123-125).



Thus, ethical inquiry and deliberation often proceeds rationally by
presenting reasons to be *for* or *against* something,
reasons whose effectiveness is tied to their logical or psychological
relation to others' beliefs (for criticism and further discussion of
Stevenson's account reasons, see, again, also
 Section 5.1).


### 4.3 Persuasion and Persuasive Definitions



Not all linguistic attempts to coordinate or settle attitudes appeal
to reasons. For example, we often merely invoke or stress the purely
emotive element of words, or use metaphor, intonation, pleasantness of
speech or rhythm, and the like. These are all nonrational, but still
linguistic, methods of settling and coordinating attitudes that
Stevenson calls "Persuasion." Consider, first, the many
uses of thick ethical terms, such as 'courageous' or
'democratic'. Often, we try to coordinate attitudes by
invoking these words more for their emotive meanings than for their
descriptive, especially when the descriptive meanings are taken for
granted. Saying that one acted in the face of fear may be
descriptively accurate; saying that one acted courageously, especially
when all relevant parties already believe that one acted in the face
of fear, is more likely an attempt to coordinate admiration among the
parties. Consider also the persuasive strategy of repetition. Smith
says that Jones did the right thing; asked for a reason, Smith merely
states that Jones's act was an instance of performing his duty. Here,
Smith provides no reason at all, but merely attempts to coordinate
positive attitudes by relying on the repeated effect of the emotive
force of evaluative terms. For a different use of repetition, consider
the persuasiveness of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s repetition of 'I
have a dream' and 'Let freedom ring' during his
"I Have a Dream" speech, delivered during the 1963 March
on Washington. These are just a few examples of moral persuasion.



Persuasive techniques, according to Stevenson, play a vital role in
attempts to modify the standards of a society or group. At the center
of such reform is the use of what Stevenson calls "persuasive
definition," or attempts to give "a new conceptual meaning
to a familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning,
and which is used with the conscious or unconscious purpose of
changing, by this means, the direction of people's interests"
(1938b, 32; 1944, chapter IX). Suppose Smith recognizes that Jones has
had little formal education and uses grammatically incorrect sentences
and obvious literary references and, on this basis, claims that Jones
is simply not a person of "culture." Rodriguez agrees that
Jones has such qualities but claims that Jones is a person of culture
notwithstanding, for "in the true and full sense of the term,
'culture' means *imaginative sensitivity* and
*originality,*" and these qualities Jones has in
abundance:



> 
> 
> It will be obvious that [Rodriguez], in defining
> 'culture', was not simply introducing a convenient
> abbreviation, nor was he seeking to clarify 'the' common
> meaning of the term. His purpose was to redirect [Smith's] attitudes,
> feeling that [Smith] was insufficiently appreciative of their friend's
> merits. 'Culture' had and would continue to have, for
> people of their sort, a laudatory emotive meaning. The definition
> urged [Smith] to stop using the laudatory term to refer to grammatical
> niceties, literary allusions, and the rest, and to use it, instead, to
> refer to imaginative sensitivity and originality. In this manner, it
> sought to place the former qualities in a relatively poor light, and
> the 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 by
> such a name, they less readily admire it. The definition made use of
> this 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, whether
for good or ill (1944, 209-210). "The words are
prizes," Stevenson writes, "which each man seeks to bestow
on the qualities of his own choice" (1938b, 35).


## 5. Objections to Stevenson's Emotivism



A number of objections have been leveled against Stevenson's emotivism
over the years. They fall within two categories, one related to
Stevenson's account of moral thought and metaphysics, the other to his
account of moral language.


### 5.1 Objections to Stevenson's Account of Moral Thought



Stevenson holds a non-cognitivist view, according to which moral
judgments or thoughts are essentially constituted at least in part by
desire-like attitudes, feelings, or interests, those mental states
whose general character is to be *for* or *against*
something. Several objections to Stevenson's theory have been due to
perceived 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 necessary
condition for an event's being bad (good, evil, etc.). Consider, for
example, Blanshard's (1949) example in which a rabbit has been caught
in a severe hunting trap for several days, causing the rabbit
unnecessary, prolonged, and extreme agony. According to Blanshard's
understanding of non-cognitivism, until a person has an unfavorable
attitude towards such an event or state of affairs, the rabbit's being
in such agony would not be bad. Since (the objection continues) this
conclusion is absurd, Stevenson's account of moral thought must be
false. However, this objection conflates Stevenson's theory of moral
thought with a theory of moral properties, assuming as it does that
having, for example, an unfavorable attitude towards an event
*constitutes* the badness of that event, at least in part. But
this is the kind of moral metaphysics that Stevenson's theory is
designed to avoid. According to Stevenson, either there is nothing
that constitutes badness (or goodness, etc.), because there are no
such moral properties, or, perhaps better: questions concerning what
constitutes the badness of an event are *ethical* questions of
what to disapprove of--questions to which non-cognitivism as a
*metaethical* theory offers no answers. Non-cognitivism is
silent on what it is in virtue of which things have the moral
properties that they have (if they have any). It just tells us what it
is to *think* that something is bad.



*Objection from Unemotional Moral Judgments*. Blanshard also
invites us to consider a person who thinks, with great contempt, that
unnecessary, prolonged, extreme agony is bad and claims repeatedly
that it is bad, still repeating the claim even a week later though
fatigue has dissipated all contempt:



> 
> 
> When we repeat the remark that such suffering was a bad thing, the
> feeling with which we made it last week may be at or near the
> vanishing point, but if we were asked whether we meant to say what we
> did before, we should certainly answer Yes. We should say that we made
> our point with feeling the first time and little or no feeling the
> second time, but that it was the same point we were making. And if we
> see that what we meant to say remains the same, while the feeling
> varies from intensity to near zero, it is not the feeling that we
> primarily 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 judged
the event as bad has partially or even completely dissipated over time
may seem incompatible with non-cognitivism. However, it is not clear
that this is correct. Stevenson's account of the meaning of evaluative
judgments, given in complex dispositional terms (see
 Section 3.2),
 allows for considerable variability in terms of the kinds of feelings
that may or may not attend a moral judgment. (Similar considerations
would apply to the question regarding whether it is possible to hold a
moral judgment without being suitably *motivated*. For
discussion, see, e.g., Svavarsdottir 1999.)



*Objection from Moral Chaos*. Stevenson grants that moral
disagreement may sometimes be rationally irresolvable. Some might
worry that if this is so, then moral chaos is likely to ensue. Taking
this objection to heart, Blanshard goes as far as to claim that
"[The general acceptance of strong emotivism] would, so far as
one can see, be an international disaster" (1949). Stevenson
could simply respond that even if true, this would not imply that his
account of moral thought is false. However, he also suggests that such
an objection arises from fear that cannot be assuaged by postulating
some objective truth or robust moral properties awaiting to be
discovered (e.g., 1944, 336 and 1950a, 68-70). Rather, such fear
can be assuaged only when we have a clear, realistic understanding of
the nature and complexity of moral disagreement and of the methods by
which they can be, and often are, resolved:



> 
> 
> The present analysis can afford no assurance that dictators and
> self-seeking politicians, whose skill in exhortation is so manifest,
> "inevitably must" fail, if left unopposed, in reshaping
> moral codes to serve their narrow interests. ... But this much
> must be said: Those who cherish altruism, and look forward to a time
> when a stable society will be governed by farsighted men, will serve
> these ideals poorly by turning from present troubles to fancied
> realms. For these ideals, like all other attitudes, are not imposed
> upon human nature by esoteric forces; they are a part of human nature
> itself. If they are to become a more integral part of it, they must be
> fought for. They must be fought for with the words 'right'
> and 'wrong', else these attitude-molding weapons will be
> left to the use of opponents. And they must be supported with
> *clear-minded reasons*, else hypostatic obscurantism will bring
> contempt to the cause it is intended to plead. (1944, 110; see also
> 1961-62b)
> 
> 
> 



*Objection from Normativity*. Stevenson writes that whether a
statement, adduced as a reason in support of an ethical judgment,
"will in fact support or oppose the judgment will depend on
whether the hearer believes it, and upon whether if he does, it will
actually make a difference to his attitudes," and that such
statement or consideration "may conveniently be called a reason
(though not necessarily a 'valid' one) regardless of
whether it is accepted or not" (1944, 115). It may easily seem,
then, as if Stevenson would wish to explain what it is for some
consideration, *R*, to *count in favor* of some action,
for instance, in terms of the causal efficacy of citing *R* in
producing the action in question, or in altering attitudes. It may
seem as if he would wish to explain *normativity*, or
normative authority, directly in terms of psychological impact. This
may seem implausible, regardless of the details of the psychological
story.



*Objection from Irrelevant Reasons*. Moreover, Stevenson's
account of reasons seems to deliver wrong results, as what is
psychologically effective is not always normatively relevant. A
colleague of Stevenson's, Richard Brandt, put the worry as
follows:



> 
> 
> On the emotive theory, ... if one is moved to disapprove
> socialized medicine by the thought that any expression of approval
> would oust him from his favorite club, he has been moved, according to
> the emotive theory, by as ethically relevant a consideration as any
> other he might have thought of. Now, I do not think this describes
> ordinary ethical thinking; we think some persuasive beliefs are
> distinctly *ir*relevant. (Brandt 1950a, 313)
> 
> 
> 



The last two objections are based on a misunderstanding. We may give
the response in Stevenson's own words:



> 
> 
> ... to say that a reason is "relevant" to a judgment
> is sometimes to say that the reason ... *ought to make a
> difference* to it. In this sense most people will agree that a
> man's being ousted from his club is "irrelevant" to his
> judgment about socialized medicine; for they will feel his judgment
> *ought not* be influenced by such consideration. Whenever we
> say what a man's reasons ought to be, we are making a judgment of our
> own *about* the way he reaches *his* judgment. That is
> an important thing to do, but it is not a part of the specialized task
> that I have set for myself. I have tried not to judge but only to
> understand what goes on in ethics--my metanormative inquiry being
> itself nonnormative. (1950c, 528)
> 
> 
> 



So, Stevenson escapes the Objection from Normativity because he is
*not* offering an account of normative authority, or of
reasonhood, in terms of efficacy in modifying attitudes. And he escapes
the Objection from Irrelevant Reasons because nothing in his theory
suggests that what is ethically relevant, or what is a (good) reason
for 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, or
about ethical relevance--an issue which Stevenson does not
address in any detail (for Brandt's concerns regarding what remarks
Stevenson offers, see Brandt 1950b; for a more recent discussion of
this challenge in the context of contemporary expressivist views, see
Sinclair 2016).



*Objection from Fallibility*. An interesting challenge is
articulated by Stevenson himself, regarding our judgments of ethical
fallibility. The question here is whether Stevenson's emotive theory
allows us to "provide a proper place" for "our
willingness to acknowledge that our judgments must often be held open
to correction, as distinct from being proclaimed in a manner implying
that we have said the last word" (1968, 203). We need (1) an
account of expressions of ethical fallibility, and (2) an explanation
for why it makes sense to acknowledge our fallibility, given the
emotivist account of the phenomenon. So, first, what does an
expression of ethical fallibility amount to, on the emotivist view?
Stevenson suggests that just as we may acknowledge fallibility in
belief by saying "Many things that I believe to be the case may
not be the case," we may also acknowledge fallibility in attitude
by saying "Many things that meet with my approval may not be
right" (1968, 206). The function of this sort of acknowledgement
is to indicate that the speaker is "prepared, on further
reflection," to change their mind, which creates "hope for
two-way discussion" and allays fears to the effect that the
audience would be expected to listen to the speaker as their
"disciples" (1968, 207-210). This preparedness to
revise one's attitudes is a matter of expecting that there are reasons
for approving or disapproving that one has yet to consider (1968,
214-215). On Stevenson's account of such reasons, it would then
be a matter of thinking that there may be considerations such that
ought to influence one to revise one's attitudes. Stevenson's brief
remarks on the topic do not provide us with a detailed account of
fallibility judgments, but it is suggestive of a later and much
discussed proposal by Blackburn (1998, 318; for discussion, see Egan
2007 and, e.g., the literature cited in Bex-Priestley 2018).



Given the emotivist account of moral thought and discourse, does it
*make sense* to acknowledge our fallibility? Stevenson puts the
worry as follows:



> 
> 
> We acknowledge our fallibility in science, it may be urged, because we
> are convinced that the universe, as studied by science, is in some
> sense "out there" to be described. ... When we
> express beliefs about these facts, then, we are very far from being
> non-objective painters, who are free to make such designs as they
> will. Instead, we are realistic painters, intent on being faithful to
> what we are representing. Now it is our attempt to be faithful to the
> facts of the universe, it may be urged, that leads us to acknowledge
> our *scientific* fallibility. The facts may belie our beliefs,
> just as the objects that a realistic painter is painting may belie his
> picture. ... But in *ethics*, the objection continues, so
> long as that discipline is conceived as involving an expression of
> attitudes, we have no such situation. We of necessity become
> non-objective painters rather than realistic painters, for we find
> nothing "out there" for our attitudes to represent.
> ... And why, it may be asked, so long as we accept *this*conception of ethics, should we have any incentive to acknowledge
> our fallibility? (1968, 211-212)
> 
> 
> 



Stevenson replies that this worry is mistaken both in what it expects
for 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 on
the question" (1968, 213). In both science and in ethics, what
we worry about, in acknowledging our fallibility, is the possibility
of there being reasons for beliefs or attitudes that we haven't taken
into consideration in forming our views. And in both cases, our
acknowledgments of fallibility serve the important functions of
encouraging further discussion and inquiry. Given the account of
fallibility judgments provided by the emotive theory, there is no
reason to think that our expressions of fallibility in ethics would
have to be in any way half-hearted or capricious, and so our
acknowledgments of fallibility in attitude make perfectly good sense
(1968, 212-215). Or this is, in any case, Stevenson's reply to
the 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 the
meaning of moral language.



*Objections from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary Conflation*.
Stevenson claims repeatedly that moral language is used to express a
speaker's attitudes or to evoke or otherwise shape the attitudes of
others. One might worry that this involves conflation of illocutionary
acts and perlocutionary intentions (e.g., Hare 1952 Section 1.7 and
1997 Sections 1-5-1.6; Urmson 1968). Illocutionary acts
are 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 would
be logically inconsistent, in some intuitive sense, to direct one's
hearer to both close and open a particular window ('Close that
window and open that same window'), for example. Since sentences
and the illocutionary acts they are typically used to perform have
similar logical constraints, illocutionary acts may plausibly be
associated in some appropriate way with the meanings of sentences. Now
when a speaker performs an illocutionary act in uttering a sentence,
she often does so with particular intentions or effects in mind. For
example, knowing that her audience often attempts to annoy her by
doing the opposite of what she asks, a speaker may utter 'Keep
the window closed' with the intention that her audience will in
fact open the window. Thus, there need be no *logical*
inconsistency between directing one to keep a particular window closed
and an intention that the window be opened. Thus, it is concluded,
perlocutionary intention ought not be associated with the semantics or
meanings of sentences. The Objection from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary
Conflation, then, is that Stevenson's theory of meaning incorporates
that which is irrelevant to semantics, namely perlocutionary
intentions. This objection is related to the next.



*The Objection from Instrumentalism*. Stevenson's theory may
seem to be an "instrumentalist" theory that explains the
meaning of moral sentences by appealing to the illocutionary acts they
are typically used to perform, that is, to their typical illocutionary
forces. However, a great many uses of moral sentences fail to have
such force. For example, when moral sentence 1 is used in utterances
of sentences 2 or 3, it is used without its usual expressive
force.


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 too
much unsaid about a great many uses of ethical language, and
consequently, is radically incomplete.



These last two objections are understandable, given how often
Stevenson appeals to the uses and purposes of moral language.
Nevertheless, they miss their mark, for Stevenson's theory of meaning
is not an "instrumentalist" theory of meaning, but rather
a dispositional theory
 (Section 3.2;
 Urmson 1968, Ch. 4; Warnock 1978, Ch. 3). Stevenson associates the
meaning of a word or sentence with neither perlocutionary intentions
nor with illocutionary force, but rather with the conjunction or union
of its passive and active dispositions.



*The Frege-Geach Objection*. Because Stevenson's theory is
often thought to succumb to the Objection from Instrumentalism, it is
also thought to succumb to the Frege-Geach Objection, perhaps the most
pressing 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 that
a sentence's illocutionary force cannot constitute its meaning. The
strength of the Frege-Geach Objection arises from the fact that
natural languages are compositional and, thus, that a minimal
condition of adequacy on any semantic theory is that it specify that
which sentences contribute to the more complex sentences into which
they are embeddable. For example, a minimally adequate semantic theory
for English will entail that the meaning of sentence 1. remains the
same when it is embedded within sentences 2. or 3., since an
understanding of the latter sentences rests on an understanding of
their respective parts, including 1., and of the significance of the
way those parts are combined. However, since (it is thought)
Stevenson's theory of meaning holds that moral sentences are used to
express a speaker's attitudes--i.e., used with expressive
illocutionary force--and since moral sentences are often used as
parts of more complex sentences without such expressive force, as in
sentences 2. and 3., Stevenson has failed to provide a minimally
adequate theory of meaning for moral sentences.



The Frege-Geach objection may ultimately undermine Stevenson's theory
of moral language, though not, as because his theory identifies a
sentence's meaning with the illocutionary force of its utterance.
Associating a sentence's meaning instead with the set of its passive
and active dispositions, Stevenson's theory of meaning implies that
sentences will have relatively stable meanings across contexts of use
 (Sections 3.1
 and
 3.2),
 and therefore, that these dispositions might themselves be
contributed to the more complex sentences into which they embed.
Precisely how Stevenson's dispositional theory could be extended to
account for compositionality in this way is unclear, and Stevenson
himself appears never to have been sufficiently worried by the
Frege-Geach objection to respond to it. One idea would be that
sentential operators, such as 'if ... then' and
'it is possible that' be treated as functions from the
dispositions of the component sentences to a resulting set of
dispositions, where the latter would constitute the meaning of the
complex sentence. Stevenson hints at such a possible extension of his
theory while discussing the compositionality of atomic sentences:



> 
> 
> No attempt has been made here to deal with one of the most difficult
> problems that meaning-theory includes--that of explaining how
> separate words, each one with its own meaning, can combine to yield
> sentence-meanings. It is feasible, perhaps, to take each word as
> having a disposition to affect cognition, just as the full sentence
> does. The problem reduces, then, to one of explaining the interplay of
> the dispositions of the several words, when realized conjointly. The
> analogy of the magnets will still serve, used now to illustrate the
> relationship of *meanings* rather than of *beliefs*. We
> may compare the meaning of each word with the disposition of some one
> of the magnets, and compare the meaning of the sentence with the
> disposition that may be assigned to the group of magnets. Each word
> has an independent meaning in the sense that if it is replaced by
> certain others in any context, there will be a typical sort of
> difference in the meaning of the context; but the precise way in which
> the word's meaning is realized will depend on the meaning of the other
> words that accompany it. (1944, 67)
> 
> 
> 



Since Stevenson suggests that he might explain the compositionality of
atomic sentences in terms of functions from the dispositions of a
sentence's parts to a set of resulting dispositions, it is plausible
that he might also wish to extend his theory in a similar way to
explain the compositionality of complex sentences. Whether such a
theory could sustain additional scrutiny is debatable. For more
in-depth but accessible discussion of emotivist and expressivist
attempts to respond to the Frege-Geach Objection, see especially
Schroeder 2008 and 2010 and the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.


## 6. Stevenson's Legacy



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


1. Progress in ethical theory begins by focusing in the first
instance on moral thought--on what it is to *think* that
something is good, bad, evil, etc.
2. Moral thoughts are essentially constituted at least in part by
attitudes or interests, that is, those feelings, attitudes, or other
affective states that are most closely related to motivation and
action, which can be generally characterized as states of *being
for* or *being against*.
3. Attitudes or interests can be, and often are, rationally
governable.
4. Moral sentences have both emotive and descriptive meaning.



These four ideas remain central to current day expressivists, such as
Blackburn (1984, 1993) and Gibbard (1990, 2003), whose work arises
especially from ideas 1-3. Indeed, the title of Gibbard 1990,
*Wise Choices, Apt Feelings*, suggests all three ideas. Current
day *hybrid theorists* and *relational expressivists*,
such as David Copp (2001, 2009), Stephen Barker (2002), Michael Ridge
(2006, 2014), Daniel Boisvert (2008), and Teemu Toppinen (2013) hold
that moral language is used conventionally to express both beliefs and
attitudes--or states of being in some suitably related belief-
and attitude states--and, thereby, continue to develop in
different ways Stevenson's idea that moral sentences have both emotive
and descriptive meaning (see also Schroeder 2009; 2013; Fletcher and
Ridge 2014; Toppinen 2018).