Spilled Milk

When I was a senior in high school, I was required to take a philosophy course. Naturally, as a second semester senior heading off to college, I wasn’t exactly the best student. Well, I did okay on the coursework, but I wasn’t the best behaved. None of us were. To be frank, none of us really cared about philosophy.

Here I am, seven years later, finding a new interest in a topic that wasn’t interesting to me in the past. I’ve been watching YouTube videos on philosophy recently, and I find myself continuously coming back. I’ve encountered all kinds of philosophical concepts in the last week but one I find incredibly interesting is one called ethical emotivism.

The argument is essentially that no moral judgement can be factual. Our moral judgements can ultimately be reduced to just how we feel about the situation.

For example, we say that “murder is bad”. Well, why is that true? And before you go there – I’m unwilling to accept any biblical references. Nothing against it, in fact I’m from a Catholic family and think the Bible has many great lessons. I just think it has too many contradictions to be a true guide for morality.

Anyways, why is murder bad? Well, it takes away a life, and any potential acts that the life could have engaged in. It likely violates the victim’s rights and great harm can be caused to the family. Well, why is life good? And why is causing harm bad? Who says so?

Well, we say so. In fact, we feel so. We feel positively about life. We say: “Yay, life!”. On the other hand, we feel negatively about violating other’s rights, causing great emotional harm to others. We say: “Ewwwww, murder!”.

Of course, this is a very surface level representation of the belief. ‘m certain that I’ll come across a rebuttal that’s compelling and I’m unable to refute. I just think it’s an interesting belief, which holds stronger than many of the other philosophies I’ve encountered (i.e. utilitarianism, deontology).

Yay life! Ew murder! Stealing is yucky! Hooray for kindness!