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Charles Leslie Stevenson (June 27, 1908 – March 14, 1979) was an American analytic philosopher best known for his work in ethics and aesthetics.〔. "For many years, one of America’s most well-known analytic writers in ethics was Charles Stevenson, whose 1937 'The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,' and 1944 ''Ethics and Language'', had become classics."〕 He was a professor at Yale University from 1939 to 1946, but was denied tenure because of his defense of emotivism. He then taught at the University of Michigan from 1946 to 1977. He studied in England with Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Among his students was Joel Feinberg. He gave the most sophisticated defense of emotivism in the post-war period. In his papers "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937) and "Persuasive Definitions" (1938), and his book ''Ethics and Language'' (1944), he developed a theory of emotive meaning; which he then used to provide a foundation for his theory of a persuasive definition. He furthermore advanced emotivism as a meta-ethical theory that sharply delineated between cognitive, scientific uses of language (used to state facts and to give reasons, and subject to the laws of science) and non-cognitive uses (used to state feelings and exercise influence). ==Contributions to philosophy== Stevenson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon A.J. Ayer's views and as a representation of one of "two broad types of ethical emotivism."〔Wilks, ''Emotion'', 1: "Stevenson's version, which was intended to qualify the earlier views of Ayer (and others) … will then be treated as an elaboration of Ayer's."〕〔Satris, ''Ethical Emotivism'', 25: "It might be suggested that there are two broad types of ethical emotivism. The first, represented by Stevenson, is well grounded in philosophical and psychological theory relating to ethics … The second, represented by Ayer, is an unorthodox spin-off of logical positivism."〕 An analytic philosopher, Stevenson suggested in his 1937 essay "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" that any ethical theory should explain three things: that intelligent disagreement can occur over moral questions, that moral terms like ''good'' are "magnetic" in encouraging action, and that the scientific method is insufficient for verifying moral claims.〔Stevenson, ''Facts'', 15; Hudson, ''Modern Moral Philosophy'', 114–15〕 Stevenson's own theory was fully developed in his 1944 book ''Ethics and Language''. In it, he agrees with Ayer that ethical sentences express the speaker's feelings, but he adds that they also have an ''imperative'' component intended to change the listener's feelings and that this component is of greater importance.〔Stevenson, ''Facts'', 21: "Both imperative and ethical sentences are used more for encouraging, altering, or redirecting people's aims and conduct than for simply describing them."〕 Where Ayer spoke of ''values'', or fundamental psychological inclinations, Stevenson speaks of ''attitudes'', and where Ayer spoke of disagreement of ''fact'', or rational disputes over the application of certain values to a particular case, Stevenson speaks of differences in ''belief''; the concepts are the same.〔Wilks, ''Emotion'', 20〕 Terminology aside, Stevenson interprets ethical statements according to two patterns of analysis. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Stevenson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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