Length: 1500-1800 words (c. 5-6 pages double-spaced). Typed in a 12-point font, double-spaced, with numbered pages, a title,

Citations should be placed in parentheses in the body of your text (there is no need for footnotes) and should contain the name of the author, an abbreviated title if necessary (if we read more than one thing by that author), and the page number (or section number, in Moore).

When the topics below ask you for arguments for or against a position, you should draw those arguments from the readings attached—you are not being asked to devise your own arguments. So be sure to carefully review the arguments in all the readings that are relevant to your chosen topic.

PAPER TOPIC: Emotivism (vs. Moore’s view).
a) What is emotivism? (Carefully explain the view.) What, in your view, are the main reasons to be an emotivist, or the best arguments in its favour? In what way(s) is the case for emotivism indebted to the arguments of Moore? Where does it depart from Moore’s line of argument? Where the two differ, are there reasons to find emotivism superior to Moore’s view, or a better response to the considerations which Moore himself raised?
b) What, in your view, are the most serious objections to emotivism? Are there adequate answers to any of those objections? In your reasoned opinion, would it have been better to stick with Moore’s view?

Readings:
1) A.J. Ayer “Language Truth and Logic”, Chapter 6 -“Critique of Ethics and Theology”(attached)
2) G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, §§ 1, 2, 5-15, 24-26 (attached)
3) Charles L. Stevenson, “Facts and Values”, Chapter 1 and 2 (“The Nature of Ethical Disagreement” and “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”). Can be accessed here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4119190;view=1up;seq=1)
4) Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality: ch. 3, ch. 4 (attached, do not read crossed out parts)
5) Judith Jarvis Thomson, selections from “Emotivism” (ch. 7 of Harman and Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity) (attached, do not read crossed out parts)
6) Terence Cuneo, selections from “Saying What We Mean: An Argument Against Expressivism” (ch. 2 of Oxford Studies in Metaethics 1): skip from start of new section on p. 47 to “I want to suggest that” on p. 59 (first para.)
Can be accessed here: http://site.ebrary.com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/lib/mcgill/detail.action?docID=10233716