RE: Community help for Non-Cognitive?
October 30, 2012 at 8:33 am
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2012 at 9:30 am by TROC.)
You're correct - emotive and non-cognitive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cognitivism) do sound very similar. There's only a subtle difference in definition - emotive accepts an emotional statement as positive or negative (yea/boo) where non-cog philosophically defines that certain statements "do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false".
It's a much 'harder' line and I suspect it's at the heart of my trouble. Most cognitive atheists will accept an emotive origin "That person finds God makes them happy" is an accurate observation. But to declare the statement non-cognitive (God has no truth value and therefore cannot be true or false) takes the debate away from their comfort zone (arguing the god hypothesis) and forces them to deal with the emotive origin. In short they're comfortable handling facts/proofs but not so much the sticky business of human nature so they "kill" the acceptability of non-cognitive to get back to pascal's wager.
Although we can agree on the philosophical definition, I think cognitives are in fact emotionally bound to 'proving or disproving' whereas I am not which causes practical difficulties in individual and group communications - not being able to express myself effectively in such groups or to declare my position and avoid time wasting. Just like I discovered calmly declaring myself an 'atheist' in the right way avoided evangelists - what is the succinct term to describe my desired outcome...
You haven't gotten your head round my argument because I haven't' yet myself :-(. Unfair for me to use you all as a sounding board to figure out what I'm trying to say but I do appreciate the help.
Or more succinctly:
Emotive: "I observe this person's emotional preferences"
Non-Cognitive: "I observe this person's emotional preferences, and de gustibus non disputatum est (thou shall not debate matters of preference)"
Emotive: "I love my wife"
Non-Cognitive: "I love my wife and trying to debate me out of it is a bad idea"
It's a much 'harder' line and I suspect it's at the heart of my trouble. Most cognitive atheists will accept an emotive origin "That person finds God makes them happy" is an accurate observation. But to declare the statement non-cognitive (God has no truth value and therefore cannot be true or false) takes the debate away from their comfort zone (arguing the god hypothesis) and forces them to deal with the emotive origin. In short they're comfortable handling facts/proofs but not so much the sticky business of human nature so they "kill" the acceptability of non-cognitive to get back to pascal's wager.
Although we can agree on the philosophical definition, I think cognitives are in fact emotionally bound to 'proving or disproving' whereas I am not which causes practical difficulties in individual and group communications - not being able to express myself effectively in such groups or to declare my position and avoid time wasting. Just like I discovered calmly declaring myself an 'atheist' in the right way avoided evangelists - what is the succinct term to describe my desired outcome...
You haven't gotten your head round my argument because I haven't' yet myself :-(. Unfair for me to use you all as a sounding board to figure out what I'm trying to say but I do appreciate the help.
Or more succinctly:
Emotive: "I observe this person's emotional preferences"
Non-Cognitive: "I observe this person's emotional preferences, and de gustibus non disputatum est (thou shall not debate matters of preference)"
Emotive: "I love my wife"
Non-Cognitive: "I love my wife and trying to debate me out of it is a bad idea"
