Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

Rating:
Summary: Fails to disprove the existence of objective moral values
Review: .L. Mackie's whole case against the existence of objective moral values rests on their apparent "queerness," which just means he doesn't believe they exist because they don't behave like physical objects. But if objective moral values do exist, why would Mackie expect them to behave like physical objects? On that basis, numbers, sets, propositions and other abstract entities are also "queer." Mackie's alleged "argument" against the existence of objective morals is an expression of his bias for naturalism.

Mackie surveys the various metaethical theories before concluding that objective moral values don't exist. Metaethics is a branch of philosophy that analyzes the meaning of moral statements (good, bad, evil, ought, etc). Mackie divides competing ethical theories into two sub-categories: cognitive and noncognitive. Noncognitive theories of ethics deny that moral statements, such as "murder is wrong," are indicative statements; that is, statements that are either true or false. Emotivists and imperativalists fall into this category. Emotivists claim that when someone says "murder is wrong," this just means "ugh! I hate murder!" In other words, moral statements to the emotivist are just expressions of emotions. Imperativalists agree with emotivists that moral statements are not indicative, but disagree that they are emotional expressions. Instead, imperativalists claim moral statements are simply moral commands. For instance, the statement "murder is wrong" is translated to mean "don't commit murder!"

Mackie sensibly rejects both emotivist and imperativalist theories as inadequate treatments of morality. Emotivism and imperativalism seem to make moral disagreements impossible. If one emotivist exclaims "murder is wrong," while another exclaims "murder is acceptable," this is translated to mean "ugh! I hate abortion" and "hurrah for murder!" There is no disagreement occurring here, since emotivists and imperativalists deny moral statements are factual claims that are either true or false.

Cognitivist theories of ethics claim that moral statements are indicative statements which convey descriptive information. One such theory is subjectivism. Subjectivist theories hold that moral statements convey informaton about the speaker's psychological state. Subjectivism is also an inadequate treatment of morality, as it does not prescribe what people ought to do, but rather, what people happen to like and don't like. That is, it transfers moral statements into nonmoral statements.

Objectivist theories of ethics agree with subjectivist theories in holding that moral statements are indicative statements, which convey factual information. They depart from subjectivist theories, however, in holding that moral statements convey information about the speaker's psychological state. Rather, objectivist theories claim moral statements are about the acts of morality themselves. There are two versions of objectivism: ethical naturalism and ethical nonnaturalism. Mackie makes no bones about his preference for the former.

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical terms ("right," "wrong," "good," "evil," etc) can be reduced to biological properties. The main problem with ethical naturalism is that it makes no normative moral prescriptions whatsoever. This theory, rather than explaining why something is right, merely explains why people believe something is right. Moral properties carry with them normative moral prescriptions -- they are "oughts." But biological properties don't carry moral prescriptions. They just are.

A good primer on metaethics, despite the poor critique of ethical nonnaturalism.

Rating:
Summary: Fails to disprove the existence of objective moral values
Review: J.L. Mackie's whole case against the existence of objective moral values rests on their apparent "queerness," which just means he doesn't believe they exist because they don't behave like physical objects. But if objective moral values do exist, why would Mackie expect them to behave like physical objects? On that basis, numbers, sets, propositions and other abstract entities are also "queer." Mackie's alleged "argument" against the existence of objective morals is an expression of his bias for naturalism.

Mackie surveys the various metaethical theories before concluding that objective moral values don't exist. Metaethics is a branch of philosophy that analyzes the meaning of moral statements (good, bad, evil, ought, etc). Mackie divides competing ethical theories into two sub-categories: cognitive and noncognitive. Noncognitive theories of ethics deny that moral statements, such as "murder is wrong," are indicative statements; that is, statements that are either true or false. Emotivists and imperativalists fall into this category. Emotivists claim that when someone says "murder is wrong," this just means "ugh! I hate murder!" In other words, moral statements to the emotivist are just expressions of emotions. Imperativalists agree with emotivists that moral statements are not indicative, but disagree that they are emotional expressions. Instead, imperativalists claim moral statements are simply moral commands. For instance, the statement "murder is wrong" is translated to mean "don't commit murder!"

Mackie sensibly rejects both emotivist and imperativalist theories as inadequate treatments of morality. Emotivism and imperativalism seem to make moral disagreements impossible. If one emotivist exclaims "murder is wrong," while another exclaims "murder is acceptable," this is translated to mean "ugh! I hate abortion" and "hurrah for murder!" There is no disagreement occurring here, since emotivists and imperativalists deny moral statements are factual claims that are either true or false.

Cognitivist theories of ethics claim that moral statements are indicative statements which convey descriptive information. One such theory is subjectivism. Subjectivist theories hold that moral statements convey informaton about the speaker's psychological state. Subjectivism is also an inadequate treatment of morality, as it does not prescribe what people ought to do, but rather, what people happen to like and don't like. That is, it transfers moral statements into nonmoral statements.

Objectivist theories of ethics agree with subjectivist theories in holding that moral statements are indicative statements, which convey factual information. They depart from subjectivist theories, however, in holding that moral statements convey information about the speaker's psychological state. Rather, objectivist theories claim moral statements are about the acts of morality themselves. There are two versions of objectivism: ethical naturalism and ethical nonnaturalism. Mackie makes no bones about his preference for the former.

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical terms ("right," "wrong," "good," "evil," etc) can be reduced to biological properties. The main problem with ethical naturalism is that it makes no normative moral prescriptions whatsoever. This theory, rather than explaining why something is right, merely explains why people believe something is right. Moral properties carry with them normative moral prescriptions -- they are "oughts." But biological properties don't carry moral prescriptions. They just are.

A good primer on metaethics, despite the poor critique of ethical nonnaturalism.

Rating:
Summary: Classic defense of "moral skepticism."
Review: Mackie wants to convince us that objective values are not "part of the fabric of the universe." In other words, there are no moral claims that are objectively true, and no moral rules that are objectively binding on us. He gives three arguments in support of this claim. He argues that the best explanation for the diversity of ethical beliefs is that there is no matter of fact that some of us are getting right, while others are getting it wrong. He argues that the very existence of objective values is "queer" (by which he means "weird"), because they would have to have some strange sort of "intrinsic prescriptivity." And he argues that knowledge of objective values, if there were any, would require some strange, inexplicable form of moral intuition.

I personally am unconvinced by Mackie's arguments. For example, why should our ethical disagreements lead us to believe that there are no ethical facts? People disagree about lots of things that are objective if anything is (e.g., whether UFO's are space aliens). However, this is clearly one of the paradigmatic statements and defenses of "moral anti-realism."

For an alternative perspective to Mackie's, one might read Thomas Nagel's _The View from Nowhere_ (especially the chapters on ethics and value), or Alasdair MacIntyre's _After Virtue_.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic of Contemporary Moral Philosophy
Review: The first chapter of Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is the locus classicus for error theories in contemporary meta-ethics. There he argues that ordinary moral discourse and thought involve an assumption that there are what he calls "objective values," and that this assumption is false. Consequently, ordinary moral thought and language are infected by an error that precludes any ordinary moral claims and thoughts from being true.

Mackie first argues for a cognitivist interpretation of moral language. In other words, he argues that ordinary moral claims purport to describe facts about the world. In particular, ordinary moral language and thought purport to describe facts about objective moral values. What are objective moral values? They have two defining characteristics: (i) mind-independent existence (think of how chairs, trees, people, and electrons exist), and (ii) "intrinsic and categorical prescriptivity": that is, they are such that the mere apprehension of them will motivate a person to act in a certain way. The former characteristic is the source of their objectivity; the latter is the source of their normativity.

But, he claims, we have good reason to think that no such things exist. Mackie's fundamental worry about these putative objective values is that these things are especially "queer," that they are unlike any other things we have good reason to think exist. As I understand Mackie, underlying his worries about the queerness of these putative entities is his perception of a tension in their nature. He appears to believe that the objectivity of these putative entities is in tension with their intrinsic and categorical action-guidingness. That is, it is unclear to Mackie how something that exists as a mind-independent part of reality could have the sort of influence on human behavior that these objective values are supposed to have. It is unclear how something could be both objective and normative. The things that scientists study and that we encounter in the everyday world simply don't have this sort of categorical action-guidingness built into them. So, given the naturalistic conception of the world that Mackie favors, we have good a posteriori reasons to doubt the existence of objective moral values.

But, if Mackie is correct about the nature of ordinary moral thought and language, this commits us to regarding ordinary moral thought and language as involving a very fundamental sort of error, an error of presupposing that objective moral values exist. Mackie then completes his error theory by providing an explanation of our tendency to make this error, to mistakenly suppose that ordinary moral thought and language involve our successfully coming to know about the sorts of things he claims don't exist.

Mackie's book doesn't end here, however. Indeed, this is only the first chapter, and Mackie goes on to cover a wide range of territory in normative ethics and meta-ethics, along with a few issues in metaphysics (the existence of God and freedom of the will) that have some bearing on moral issues. In fact, despite his worries about the objectivity of morality, Mackie goes on to defend a substitute for morality, one that looks quite a bit like a broadly consequentialist moral theory, and he even weighs in on several controversial moral issues that are still with us. In short, in a little over two hundred pages of exceptionally clear prose, Mackie covers just about everything of interest in moral philosophy.

This book is, of course, essential reading for anyone interested in meta-ethics. Understanding some of the material and its importance may require some background knowledge, but enough of the book is more generally accessible that it also constitutes a good wide-ranging introduction to issues in both meta-ethics and normative ethics for a person with some background in philosophy (and perhaps for the general reader). Furthermore, the book, while not a work of history, is sufficiently informed about the history of the issues it discusses to provide the reader with an entry into study of the history of the subject.

If you're especially interested in Mackie's meta-ethical views, you should attempt to track down a copy of Morality and Objectivity (Ted Honderich, ed.), as it includes interesting and important reactions to Mackie's views by some major names (John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, R. M. Hare, Bernard Williams, et al.) in moral philosophy.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic of Contemporary Moral Philosophy
Review: The first chapter of Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is the locus classicus for error theories in contemporary meta-ethics. There he argues that ordinary moral discourse and thought involve an assumption that there are what he calls "objective values," and that this assumption is false. Consequently, ordinary moral thought and language are infected by an error that precludes any ordinary moral claims and thoughts from being true.

Mackie first argues for a cognitivist interpretation of moral language. In other words, he argues that ordinary moral claims purport to describe facts about the world. In particular, ordinary moral language and thought purport to describe facts about objective moral values. What are objective moral values? They have two defining characteristics: (i) mind-independent existence (think of how chairs, trees, people, and electrons exist), and (ii) "intrinsic and categorical prescriptivity": that is, they are such that the mere apprehension of them will motivate a person to act in a certain way. The former characteristic is the source of their objectivity; the latter is the source of their normativity.

But, he claims, we have good reason to think that no such things exist. Mackie's fundamental worry about these putative objective values is that these things are especially "queer," that they are unlike any other things we have good reason to think exist. As I understand Mackie, underlying his worries about the queerness of these putative entities is his perception of a tension in their nature. He appears to believe that the objectivity of these putative entities is in tension with their intrinsic and categorical action-guidingness. That is, it is unclear to Mackie how something that exists as a mind-independent part of reality could have the sort of influence on human behavior that these objective values are supposed to have. It is unclear how something could be both objective and normative. The things that scientists study and that we encounter in the everyday world simply don't have this sort of categorical action-guidingness built into them. So, given the naturalistic conception of the world that Mackie favors, we have good a posteriori reasons to doubt the existence of objective moral values.

But, if Mackie is correct about the nature of ordinary moral thought and language, this commits us to regarding ordinary moral thought and language as involving a very fundamental sort of error, an error of presupposing that objective moral values exist. Mackie then completes his error theory by providing an explanation of our tendency to make this error, to mistakenly suppose that ordinary moral thought and language involve our successfully coming to know about the sorts of things he claims don't exist.

Mackie's book doesn't end here, however. Indeed, this is only the first chapter, and Mackie goes on to cover a wide range of territory in normative ethics and meta-ethics, along with a few issues in metaphysics (the existence of God and freedom of the will) that have some bearing on moral issues. In fact, despite his worries about the objectivity of morality, Mackie goes on to defend a substitute for morality, one that looks quite a bit like a broadly consequentialist moral theory, and he even weighs in on several controversial moral issues that are still with us. In short, in a little over two hundred pages of exceptionally clear prose, Mackie covers just about everything of interest in moral philosophy.

This book is, of course, essential reading for anyone interested in meta-ethics. Understanding some of the material and its importance may require some background knowledge, but enough of the book is more generally accessible that it also constitutes a good wide-ranging introduction to issues in both meta-ethics and normative ethics for a person with some background in philosophy (and perhaps for the general reader). Furthermore, the book, while not a work of history, is sufficiently informed about the history of the issues it discusses to provide the reader with an entry into study of the history of the subject.

If you're especially interested in Mackie's meta-ethical views, you should attempt to track down a copy of Morality and Objectivity (Ted Honderich, ed.), as it includes interesting and important reactions to Mackie's views by some major names (John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, R. M. Hare, Bernard Williams, et al.) in moral philosophy.

Rating:
Summary: this is absolutely a good book
Review: The startling thing is that this book even needs to be written.
There are no objective moral facts -- if you think otherwise,
then name one. Whatever you name, I deny it (I can safely
do this without knowing what you name, since I deny all
purported objective moral facts). What argument can you muster
that it IS an objective moral fact? Any valid argument must
be based on some other objective moral fact, which I in turn
deny. I may well agree with this or that moral statement,
but that's simply a matter of subjective views. Some moral
statements might be agreed to by every subjective human being
on the planet -- that does not make them objective. This is
quite different from such objective facts as that the sun rose
this morning -- this is not a question that is open to
deliberation, or opinion. One has no choice but to agree
with the raw facts of observation; they are forced upon us in
a way that is not true of any moral claim.