Editing Non-cognitivism (section)

==Arguments against==
{{refimprove section|date=March 2007}}
One argument against non-cognitivism is that it ignores the external ''causes'' of emotional and prescriptive reactions. If someone says, "John is a good person," something about John must have inspired that reaction. If John gives to the poor, takes care of his sick grandmother, and is friendly to others, and these are what inspire the speaker to think well of him, it is plausible to say, "John is a good person because he gives to the poor, takes care of his sick grandmother, and is friendly to others". If, in turn, the speaker responds positively to the idea of giving to the poor, then some aspect of that idea must have inspired a positive response; one could argue that that aspect is also the basis of its goodness.

Another argument is the "embedding problem" in which ethical sentences are embedded into more complex sentences. Consider the following examples:
* Eating meat is not wrong.
* Is eating meat wrong?
* I think that eating meat is wrong.
* Mike doesn't think that eating meat is wrong.
* I once thought that eating meat was wrong.
* She does not realize that eating meat is wrong.

Attempts to translate these sentences in an emotivist framework seem to fail (e.g. "She does not realize 'Boo to eating meat!'"). Prescriptivist translations fare only slightly better ("She does not realize that she is not to eat meat"). Even the act of forming such a construction indicates some sort of cognition in the process.

According to some non-cognitivist points of view, these sentences simply assume the [[false premise]] that ethical statements are either true or false. They might be literally translated as:
* "Eating meat is wrong" is a false statement.
* Is "eating meat is wrong" a true statement?
* I think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
* Mike doesn't think that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.
* I once thought that "eating meat is wrong" was a true statement.
* She does not realize that "eating meat is wrong" is a true statement.

These translations, however, seem divorced from the way people actually use language. A non-cognitivist would have to disagree with someone saying, "'Eating meat is wrong' is a false statement" (since "Eating meat is wrong" is not truth-apt at all), but may be tempted to agree with a person saying, "Eating meat is not wrong."

One might more constructively interpret these statements to describe the underlying emotional statement that they express, i.e.: I disapprove/do not disapprove of eating meat, I used to, he doesn't, I do and she doesn't, etc.; however, this interpretation is closer to [[ethical subjectivism]] than to non-cognitivism proper.

A similar argument against non-cognitivism is that of ethical argument. A common argument might be, "If killing an innocent human is always wrong, and all fetuses are innocent humans, then killing a fetus is always wrong." Most people would consider such an utterance to represent an [[analytic proposition]] which is true ''[[a priori (philosophy)|a priori]]''. However, if ethical statements do not represent cognitions, it seems odd to use them as premises in an argument, and even odder to assume they follow the same rules of [[syllogism]] as true propositions. However, [[R.M. Hare]], proponent of [[universal prescriptivism]], has argued that the rules of logic are independent of [[grammatical mood]], and thus the same logical relations may hold between [[Imperative mood|imperative]]s as hold between [[indicative]]s.

Many objections to non-cognitivism based on the linguistic characteristics of what purport to be moral judgments were originally raised by [[Peter Glassen]] in "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments", published in [[Mind (journal)|''Mind'']] in January 1959, and in Glassen's follow-up article in the January 1963 issue of the same journal.<ref>Glassen, P., "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments", Mind 68:57-72 (1959); id. "The Cognitivity of Moral Judgments: A Rejoinder to Miss Schuster", ''Mind'' 72:137-140 (1963).</ref>