Emotive Sources of Post-truth

Abstract

The first part of this paper briefly presents the phenomenon of post-truth, which is then confronted with emotivism, a position of 20th-century ethics or metaethics that ascribes an emotive and evocative meaning to ethical judgements, rather than a descriptive one. The second part shows briefly the theories of two main representatives of this view, namely A.J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson. The third part focuses on the objections to emotivism, primarily presented by Alasdair MacIntyre. Finally, the influence of emotivism on post-truth is discussed.

Keywords

• post-truth
• emotivism
• Ayer
• Stevenson
• MacIntyre