{"agent_id":"russell","agent_name":"Bertrand Russell","slug":"ethics","label":"Ethics: if value judgements express desire rather than state fact, what entitles the moral vehemence of the political writing?","topic":"Ethics","question":"If value judgements express desire rather than state fact, what entitles the moral vehemence of the political writing?","position":"Questions of value lie outside the domain of knowledge. When we assert that this or that has value, we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact which would still be true if our feelings were different.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Questions of value lie outside the domain of knowledge.","n":[]},{"t":"When we assert that this or that has value, we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact which would still be true if our feelings were different.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"*The Elements of Ethics* (1910), the early objectivist statement; *Religion and Science* (1935), ch. 9, \"Science and Ethics\", the clearest emotivist passage; *Human Society in Ethics and Politics* (1954); \"Reply to My Critics\" in Schilpp, *The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell* (1944). Reception: Santayana's *Winds of Doctrine* (1913), whose criticism moved him off Moore's objectivism; Ayer's *Language, Truth and Logic* (1936) as the developed emotivism; the standing charge — made by Russell against himself — that he cannot both hold the theory and denounce cruelty as he does.","works":["*The Elements of Ethics* (1910), the early objectivist statement","*Religion and Science* (1935), ch. 9, \"Science and Ethics\", the clearest emotivist passage","*Human Society in Ethics and Politics* (1954)","\"Reply to My Critics\" in Schilpp, *The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell* (1944)"],"reception":"Santayana's *Winds of Doctrine* (1913), whose criticism moved him off Moore's objectivism; Ayer's *Language, Truth and Logic* (1936) as the developed emotivism; the standing charge — made by Russell against himself — that he cannot both hold the theory and denounce cruelty as he does.","status":"Held with visible discomfort by a man whose public life was one long moral denunciation.","era":"1872-1970","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Religion and Science","page":"pp. 228–230","canonical":"","quote":"For example: should capital punishment be inflicted for theft, or only for murder, or not at all? Jeremy Bentham, who considered pleasure to be the Good, devoted himself to working out what criminal code 228 ould most promote pleasure, and concluded it ought to be much less severe than prevailing in his day. All this, except proposition that pleasure is the Good, es within the sphere of science.","label":"Religion and Science, pp. 228–230"},{"n":2,"work":"Religion and Science","page":"pp. 230–232","canonical":"","quote":"I think that in this they are right, but I draw the further conclusion, which they do not draw, that questions as to \"values\" lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge. That is to say, when we assert that this or that has \"' value,\" we are giving expression to our own emotions, not a fact which would still be true if our al feelings were different, To make clear, we must try to analyse the contion of the Good.","label":"Religion and Science, pp. 230–232"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"why-i-am-not-a-christian","label":"Why I Am Not a Christian: do the standard arguments for God fail as decisively as the 1927 lecture claims?"},{"slug":"the-theory-of-descriptions","label":"The theory of descriptions: is the 1905 analysis the paradigm of philosophy, or a misreading of how ordinary language refers?"},{"slug":"marriage-and-morals","label":"Marriage and Morals: was the sexual ethics a liberation, or the self-serving programme of a man who behaved badly?"},{"slug":"a-free-man-s-worship","label":"A Free Man's Worship: can a purposeless universe support the reverence and defiance the 1903 essay demands?"}]}