Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Moral Reasoning 72
Shorter Paper #3
3/16/05
Ayer’s Meaningless Utterances and the “Frege Point” as Discussed by Blackburn
In Alfred Jules Ayer’s “Critique of Ethics and Theology” from Language, Truth
and Logic, he discusses utterances such as “Murder is wrong,” and makes the point that
such utterances are meaningless. Saying to someone, “You were wrong when you
murdered that person,” makes no further statement than saying “You murdered that
person.” The reason for this is that saying a certain type of action is right or wrong
makes no factual statement. It does not even say something about a person’s state of
mind, because it merely expresses moral sentiments. Another way of wording this is that
such a statement makes no statement at all, because it is just a pure expression of feeling.
In contrast to concepts that can be empirically verified, ethical concepts are pseudo-
concepts, and are therefore unable to be analyzed. To touch on the question of what
utterances such as “Murder is wrong” do, Ayer explains that the function of an ethical
word is “emotive,” which means that it is meant to express feelings. Additionally, ethical
terms can arouse feeling and stimulate action, but never to make an assertion of a genuine
proposition.
of Language, by Simon Blackburn, the author discusses the “Frege point.” Sentences that
they can occur in the context of other words, which makes them unasserted. The Frege
We will use the same example that Blackburn uses, so P is “It is wrong to tell lies” and Q
is “It is wrong to get your little brother to tell lies.” When P is used in the phrase “If it is
wrong to tell lies, then it is wrong to get your little brother to tell lies,” it is unasserted
because it is inside the context provided by other words. But since the Frege point says
that the meaning will be the same when it is by itself, even when it is not the antecedent
to truth or falsity, which supports Ayer’s account. While Ayer makes the argument that an
ethical utterance makes no factual statement, the Frege point helps make the same
Blackburn illustrates the Frege point with the above example. There are different
ways to illustrate this point with a conditional statement, such as: “It is wrong to murder
someone. If it is wrong to murder someone, then it is wrong to support capital
punishment. It is wrong to support capital punishment.” According to the Frege point,
the words “It is wrong to murder someone” mean the same thing, both when they are by
themselves, and when they are the antecedent of the conditional.