Thanks for raising this important issue, and you’re correct: emotivism seems to claim that all ethical statements merely express “Yay!” or “Boo!” It’s elementary to see that this is not true, because we use the same word “ought” or “good” to convey different meanings all the time. Sometimes it is yay/booh, and sometimes it is intended to imply - as you say - that something is a social good (i.e., produces good consequences, or perhaps even good in a whole other way).
It’s in the nature of ethical language that it can convey any number of possible meanings, and that’s part of what makes it useful in everyday talk. Instead of having to say all of
- (a) I don’t like X
- (b) Don’t do X
- (c) X is illegal
- (d) God doesn’t like X
- (e) X will produce bad consequences for you, me or someone else,
- (f) “X is objectively wrong”
- (g) Foreboding-sounding gibberish about X
- (f) etc. etc.
or any combination of the above common-sense meanings, one can rather simply say, “You ought not X.” Or “X is bad.” This is useful, but for the same reason it is hard for ethicists to analyze.
When we hear these statements there is no way to know which combination of the above elements they are intended to mean, so we naturally cannot evaluate them, except conditionally based on suppositions about what the speaker meant:
- If they meant “yay/boo,” then emotivism would be the correct interpretation (regarding that statement only; same below)
- If they meant “all must do this” then universal prescriptivism would be correct
- If they meant “it’s objectively morally true,” then error theory, incoherentism, or noncognitivism would be correct (until the speaker clarifies his meaning)
- If they meant “I/we disapprove,” then individual subjectivism would be correct
- If they meant “God disapproves,” then interpretation within that religion (Divine Command theory) would be called for, or a religious debate could be started
- If they meant “It’s just wrong, OK” then non-cognitivist analysis is correct
Yet more likely, as mentioned above, it will take a combination of these interpretations, because most people use “ought” with multiple meanings as a matter of conversational convenience.
Another way to think about it: Say someone makes a statement, “You ought not do X,” and let’s assume their intended meanings turn out to be
- “I don’t like X.”
- “No one else likes X, either.”
- “Don’t do X.”
- “It’s just wrong, OK.”
Then they are really making four statements at once (this is extremely common, if you think about it):
- an individual subjectivist statement
- a universal statement of other’s preferences
- a universal prescriptivist statement
- a non-cognitive statement
We can then assign truth values to each of these four statements:
- True. (Provided they are being honest that they don’t like X.)
- False. (Barring the unlikely event that it’s really true that everyone else dislikes X.)
- N/A. (Commands aren’t subject to truth or falsehood.)
- N/A. (Incoherent statements aren’t subject to truth or falsehood.)
Only by unpacking these specific intended meanings can we get to the bottom of what ethical statements mean.
As for “objective ethics,” I pronounce it generally noncognitivist for now, but await further clarification to classify it into one of the above categories, or another one entirely.