Editing Analytic philosophy (section)

===== Emotivism =====
The second is founded on logical positivism and its attitude that unverifiable statements are meaningless. As a result, they avoided normative ethics and instead began [[meta-ethics|meta-ethical]] investigations into the nature of moral terms, statements, and judgments.

The logical positivists opined that statements about [[Value (ethics)|value]]—including all ethical and aesthetic judgments—are [[non-cognitivism|non-cognitive]]; that is, they cannot be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted an [[emotivism|emotivist]] theory, which was that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. It is also known as the boo/hurrah theory. For example, in this view, saying, "Murder is wrong", is equivalent to saying, "Boo to murder", or saying the word "murder" with a particular tone of disapproval.

While analytic philosophers generally accepted non-cognitivism, emotivism had many deficiencies. It evolved into more sophisticated non-cognitivist theories, such as the [[expressivism]] of [[Charles Stevenson (philosopher)|Charles Stevenson]], and the [[universal prescriptivism]] of [[R. M. Hare]], which was based on J. L. Austin's philosophy of [[speech acts]].