Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Special exclamation marks.

"If now I generalise my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning--that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written "Stealing money!!"--where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed."
- AJ Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic.

It seems no one can write about, or talk about Emotivism without sounding absolutely hilarious.

(Incidentally, though its kinda tempting, I'm definitely more of a Subjectivist than a Emotivist. I'm also not a Logical Positivist, but this book is surprisingly good anyway.)

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