A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “emotivism”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander examines how debates often revolve around vague concepts with positive or negative associations rather than specific claims, leading to logical fallacies and tribal thinking.
Scott explains that while people naturally use emotivism (the 'yay/boo' theory) for moral reasoning, this creates serious problems by lumping everything into 'good' or 'bad' categories, and argues that converting moral debates into specific questions about actions and applying utilitarianism provides a better framework for resolving complicated issues.