Describe the Strengths and Weaknesses of Emotivism

One appealing feature of emotivism is that it may promote a tolerant and accepting attitude towards moral diversity. Hence, according to emotivism as moral judgments are nothing more than ‘pure expressions of feeling’ no one has the right to say their morality is true and another’s is false. One must simply accept moral diversity in the same way that we have come to accept diversity in musical and culinary tastes. This is an appealing feature of emotivism as it may promote social harmony. However, as noted by G.J. Warnock, an unappealing feature of emotivism is that it seems absurd to reduce morality to emotions. It seems absurd as a) it is a common feature of moral debate that we don’t evaluate a moral judgment by its emotional force but the reasons that can be given in its support, and b) morality cannot be reduced to emotions as our emotions and moral judgments are not always in sync. In fact, our emotions are much more prone to change than our morals. This is an unappealing feature of emotivism as it doesn’t seem correct to reduce morality to emotions.