Charles Stevenson
| Charles Leslie Stevenson | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
27 June 1908 Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Died | 14 March 1979 (aged 70) Bennington, Vermont |
| Alma mater |
Yale University Cambridge University |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School |
Analytic philosophy Emotivism |
| Institutions | University of Michigan |
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Main interests
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Ethics, aesthetics |
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Notable ideas
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The emotive meaning of ethical terms Terms |
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Influences
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The emotive meaning of ethical terms
Charles Leslie Stevenson (June 27, 1908 – March 14, 1979) was an American analytic philosopher best known for his work in ethics and aesthetics.
He was a professor at Yale University from 1939 to 1946, but was denied tenure because of his defense of emotivism. He then taught at the University of Michigan from 1946 to 1977. He studied in England with Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Among his students was Joel Feinberg.
He gave the most sophisticated defense of emotivism in the post-war period. In his papers "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937) and "Persuasive Definitions" (1938), and his book Ethics and Language (1944), he developed a theory of emotive meaning; which he then used to provide a foundation for his theory of a persuasive definition. He furthermore advanced emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that sharply delineated between cognitive, scientific uses of language (used to state facts and to give reasons, and subject to the laws of science) and non-cognitive uses (used to state feelings and exercise influence).
Stevenson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon A.J. Ayer's views and as a representation of one of "two broad types of ethical emotivism." An analytic philosopher, Stevenson suggested in his 1937 essay "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" that any ethical theory should explain three things: that intelligent disagreement can occur over moral questions, that moral terms like good are "magnetic" in encouraging action, and that the scientific method is insufficient for verifying moral claims. Stevenson's own theory was fully developed in his 1944 book Ethics and Language. In it, he agrees with Ayer that ethical sentences express the speaker's feelings, but he adds that they also have an imperative component intended to change the listener's feelings and that this component is of greater importance. Where Ayer spoke of values, or fundamental psychological inclinations, Stevenson speaks of attitudes, and where Ayer spoke of disagreement of fact, or rational disputes over the application of certain values to a particular case, Stevenson speaks of differences in belief; the concepts are the same. Terminology aside, Stevenson interprets ethical statements according to two patterns of analysis.
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