Ethical Language Is Purely Subjective

The view that ethical language is subjective is agreed with by intuitionists such as G.E.Moore and H.A. Pritchard, who argue that ‘good’ is indefinable, and that since there are objective moral truths, we must therefore knows these truths by intuition. On the other hand, some cognitivists will disagree with the statement, arguing that moral statements describe the world. In this essay I aim to prove that ethical language does have moral meaning, and that we can derive moral truth from such statements.

Firstly, the idea that things are good and bad independently of us is the principle of a cognitive approach to ethical language. According to cognitivists, there is an absolute meaning to an ethical statement; for example, if there is a statement such as ‘Murder is Wrong’, then it would be argued that murder has been given the property of ‘wrongness’, and thus the statement is either objectively true or false. American analytic philosopher, Charles L Stevenson, supported this idea, claiming that moral terms such as ‘honesty’ and ‘murder’ are both descriptive and emotive - they can express how we feel about them due to our reaction towards them. For example, we know that honesty is a moral good because it is a desirable trait to possess, unlike murder in which we have a negative feeling towards due to its negative connotations, showing us it is wrong. However, this view has been criticised because arguably, by Stevenson’s logic, our own moral judgements are merely trying to appeal to our reason, i.e, we are trying to please our own desires, and this therefore undermines the legitimacy of our moral decisions. Nonetheless, fellow emotivist and philosopher A.J. Ayer agreed with Stevenson, writing in his book ‘Language, Truth and Logic’: “ethical terms do not only serve to express feelings; they are calculated to arouse feeling so to stimulate action” - thus, through making an emotional connection with these moral statements, we are encouraged to act upon our morals. This theory has been praised for its humanistic approach to ethics.

Furthermore, some non-cognitivists argue that when someone makes a moral statement, they are not describing the world, but simply expressing their feelings or instructing people on what to do. Therefore, as the basis of a non-cognitivist argument suggests that moral statements are not descriptive, they cannot be described as true or false, proving that they are subjective. From a prescriptivist approach, although when referring to ethical language it may be subjective, it still maintains its significance and has a moral meaning. Ethicist R.M. Hare, who was influenced by utilitarian and kantian ideas, established the theory of prescriptivism, which states that the role of ethical statements is to say what ought to be done, and these prescriptions are moral because they are universal. This idea of universalisation is a clear link to Kantian ethics, in which for an act to be moral, it must agree with the categorical imperative, to which part of it is the theory of universalisation (would society fail it everyone did it). However, distinctively different from Kant, Hare argues that however we use the word ‘good’, it will always be done in relation to a set of standards. For example, a ‘good’ chair is one that supports your back, is comfortable, and fit for the purpose. Therefore, this means that the word ‘good’ always has a form of descriptive meaning, contradicting the view in the question that language is subjective, because there is a standard set of principles that apply to the word ‘good’. In his book, titled ‘Moral Thinking’, Hare wrote that “the freedom

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