A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF AYER’S ELIMINATION OF THE EMOTIVE THEORY VALUES (EMOTIVISM)

ABSTRACT: This research paper is aimed at demonstrating Ayer’s conception about the theory of emotivism or emotive theory of value which he rejected categorically as pseudo-statement in the field of science. Ethical values which only express emotion, feeling, and command about a situation or a subject matter, has failed in all dimensions to help in the progress and evolution of modern science. From the analysis of Ayer as a logical positivist, moral, religious, and metaphysical values together called speculative branches of philosophy could not stand the test of the verifiability principle aimed at proving a proposition or a statement as true or false. Observed from the analysis of Ayer, applying the verifiability criterion of meaning to ethical values is automatically meaningless, nonsensical and helpless in the scientific acquisition of knowledge. Thus, Ayer is of the fact that, moral values are of no importance to man in view of its abstract and sentimental nature. Finally we shall propose an alternative view that ruptures with Ayer’s conception with the aim of rehabilitating the necessity of moral and ethical values to human kind and it need to caution the works of modern science regarding its destructive activity to humanity.
KEY WORDS: Emotivism, Ethical Values, Logical Positivism, Metaphysics, Modern Science, Verifiability principle