I don’t remember why I asked that question. It sure reads as a trick question. It’s certainly reasonable to treat things as a dichotomy if the overlap is not likely, but I think that’s wrong here. I endorse this very broad projectivist view that includes this example, and I imagine most emotivists agree; I doubt that most emotivists are sociopaths projecting their abnormality onto the general population. But I also think emotivism is possible, such as along the lines of this example, or more broadly.
I do think you’re treating projectivism as broad, and thus likely, and emotivism as narrow, and thus unlikely. In theory, that’s fine, except for miscommunication, but in practice it’s terrible. Either you give emotivism’s neighbors names, greatly raising their salience, or you don’t, greatly lowering their salience. (Contrast this to the first bullet point, which seems to reject emotivism on the ground that it’s broad. That’s silly.)
Since projectivism is a theory of mind and emotivism a theory of language or social interaction, they are potentially compatible, though it seems tricky to merge their simple interpretations. But neither minds nor meaning are unitary. If projectivism says that there’s a part of the mind that does something, that’s broad theory, thus likely to be true, but it also doesn’t seem to predict much. Emotivism is a claim about the overall meaning. That’s narrower than a claim that there exists a part of the mind that takes a particular meaning and broader than the claim that the mind is unitary and takes a particular meaning. But the overall meaning is the most important.
I don’t remember why I asked that question. It sure reads as a trick question. It’s certainly reasonable to treat things as a dichotomy if the overlap is not likely, but I think that’s wrong here. I endorse this very broad projectivist view that includes this example, and I imagine most emotivists agree; I doubt that most emotivists are sociopaths projecting their abnormality onto the general population. But I also think emotivism is possible, such as along the lines of this example, or more broadly.
I do think you’re treating projectivism as broad, and thus likely, and emotivism as narrow, and thus unlikely. In theory, that’s fine, except for miscommunication, but in practice it’s terrible. Either you give emotivism’s neighbors names, greatly raising their salience, or you don’t, greatly lowering their salience.
(Contrast this to the first bullet point, which seems to reject emotivism on the ground that it’s broad. That’s silly.)
Since projectivism is a theory of mind and emotivism a theory of language or social interaction, they are potentially compatible, though it seems tricky to merge their simple interpretations. But neither minds nor meaning are unitary. If projectivism says that there’s a part of the mind that does something, that’s broad theory, thus likely to be true, but it also doesn’t seem to predict much. Emotivism is a claim about the overall meaning. That’s narrower than a claim that there exists a part of the mind that takes a particular meaning and broader than the claim that the mind is unitary and takes a particular meaning. But the overall meaning is the most important.