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Non-cognitivism
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=== Emotivism === Arguments for [[emotivism]] focus on what normative statements ''express'' when uttered by a speaker. A person who says that killing is wrong certainly expresses her disapproval of killing. Emotivists claim that this is ''all'' she does, that the statement "killing is wrong" is not a truth-apt declaration, and that the burden of evidence is on the [[Cognitivism (ethics)|cognitivists]] who want to show that in addition to expressing disapproval, the claim "killing is wrong" is also true. Emotivists ask whether there really is evidence that killing is wrong. We have evidence that Jupiter has a [[magnetic field]] and that birds are [[oviparous]], but as yet, we do not seem to have found evidence of moral properties, such as "goodness". Emotivists ask why, without such evidence, we should think there ''is'' such a property. [[Ethical intuitionism|Ethical intuitionists]] think the evidence comes not from science or reason but from our own feelings: good deeds make us feel a certain way and bad deeds make us feel very differently. But is this enough to show that there are genuinely good and bad deeds? Emotivists think not, claiming that we do not need to postulate the existence of moral "badness" or "wrongness" to explain why considering certain deeds makes us feel disapproval; that all we really observe when we introspect are feelings of disapproval. Thus the emotivist asks why not adopt the simple explanation and say that this is all there is, rather than insist that some intrinsic "badness" (of murder, for example) must be causing feelings when a simpler explanation is available.
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