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Comment: Defense of Noncognitivism Defended

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  • Oppenheim, Felix E.

Abstract

Professor VanDeVeer has given a scrupulously fair account of my defense of noncognitivism (N), and has raised questions which are both searching and stimulating.His most basic criticism is that I fail to demonstrate N—the thesis that the utterance of a moral principle expresses the speaker's moral commitment, but does not affirm or deny that something is the case, and therefore does not result in a statement which is true or false. To provide adequate positive support for N would involve me—so he claims—in complicated problems of the theory of meaning. My reply is that I do, and can, rely on the very theory of meaning which, as Hempel states it, is generally accepted by contemporary philosophers of science, namely that… a sentence makes a cognitively significant assertion, and thus can be said to be either true or false, if and only if either (1) it is analytic or contradictory—in which case it is said to have purely logical meaning or significance—or else (2) if it is capable, at least potentially, of test by experiential evidence—in which case it can be said to have empirical meaning or significance.Given this basic principle (which Hempel says [p. 101] “is not peculiar to empiricism alone”), and given my demonstration that moral principles are neither analytic nor empirical, it follows that they are not cognitively either true or false.

Suggested Citation

  • Oppenheim, Felix E., 1971. "Comment: Defense of Noncognitivism Defended," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 1115-1116, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:65:y:1971:i:04:p:1115-1116_13
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    1. Rudyak, Valeri & Ershov, Igor, 1995. "Kinetic equations of interacting Brownian particles," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 219(3), pages 351-360.
    2. Mohanty, U. & Shuler, K.E. & Oppenheim, I., 1982. "On the exact and phenomenological Langevin equations for a harmonic oscillator in a fluid," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-20.
    3. Aizenbud, Boris M. & Gershon, Nahum D., 1981. "Hydrodynamic equations and VH light scattering from viscoelastic (solid like) systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 583-588.
    4. Posch, H.A. & Balucani, U. & Vallauri, R., 1984. "On the relative dynamics of pairs of atoms in simple liquids," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 516-534.
    5. Mazur, P. & van Saarloos, W., 1982. "Many-sphere hydrodynamic interactions and mobilities in a suspension," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 21-57.
    6. Titulaer, U.M., 1980. "Corrections to the Smoluchowski equation in the presence of hydrodynamic interactions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 251-265.
    7. Brey, J.J. & Casado, J.M. & Morillo, M., 1983. "On the derivation of an N-particle analogue of the Fokker-Planck equation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 122-134.
    8. Hess, W. & Klein, R., 1978. "Dynamical properties of colloidal systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 71-90.
    9. Aizenbud, Boris M., 1981. "Light scattering from fluids. A semi-phenomenological calculation of the coupling constants between the orientational and translational motion," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 404-422.
    10. Felderhof, B.U., 1987. "Brownian motion and creeping flow on the Smoluchowski time scale," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 203-218.
    11. Hynes, James T. & Kapral, Raymond & Weinberg, Michael, 1975. "Microscopic theory of brownian motion," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 81(4), pages 509-521.
    12. Van Kampen, N.G. & Oppenheim, I., 1986. "Brownian motion as a problem of eliminating fast variables," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 231-248.
    13. Balucani, U. & Vallauri, R., 1980. "Relative motions in atomic fluids: A molecular dynamics investigation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 70-86.
    14. Braun, E., 1980. "A model of Brownian dynamics for colloidal suspensions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 325-342.
    15. Aizenbud, B.M. & Gershon, N.D., 1977. "Hydrodynamic equations and VH light scattering from binary mixtures of fluids of nonspherical molecules," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 461-480.
    16. Aizenbud, Boris M. & Gershon, Nahum D., 1981. "Hydrodynamic equations and VH light scattering from viscoelastic (solid-like and fluid-like) systems. Phenomenological approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 126-142.
    17. Lindenberg, Katja & Mohanty, Udayan & Seshadri, V., 1983. "Hamiltonian model for the Brownian motion of a rigid rotor," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 1-16.

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