Transcript Introduction to Ethics Lecture 7 Mackie & Moral Skepticism

Introduction to Ethics
Lecture 7
Mackie & Moral Skepticism
By David Kelsey
Mackie’s conclusion
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Mackie’s conclusion is that there are no objective values.
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Values are not part of the fabric of the world
Values include:
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moral values such as goodness
Non-moral values
Mackie’s view is:
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Second order. His view is about moral values and valuing. His view is about how
moral values fit into our world. He claims they don’t.
His view is not a first order moral view.
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He isn’t rejecting a particular morality.
Mackie isn’t a subjectivist
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Mackie isn’t a subjectivist:
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Subjectivism is misunderstood.
Some subjectivists think that everyone ought morally to do whatever they think best.
Mackie doesn’t think this.
On another interpretation of subjectivism the claim ‘This action is right’ means ‘I
approve of this action’. So moral judgments are reports of the speaker’s feelings…
What Mackie thinks:
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His view is a negative one: it says what there isn’t not what there is. Mackie says
objective values don’t exist.
An ontological thesis, not a linguistic or conceptual one. This isn’t a view about the
meaning of moral statements. His view is one about existence. Namely about the
non-existence of values.
An error theory
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Mackie’s theory is an error theory:
– Mackie thinks we talk as if there are objective values.
• Ordinary moral judgments include a claim to objectivity.
• This is seen in ordinary talk of morality but also in theoretical talk of morality.
From Kant to Mill to Moore to Ross it is assumed that values are objective.
• We see this objectivity in the analysis of moral terms like right, wrong or good.
• So Mackie is claiming that the objectivity of values is part of what our moral
judgments mean.
– But Mackie questions this objectivity. He argues that there aren’t any such
objective values.
– So Mackie’s view is an error theory. Although we talk as if there are
objective values we are in error…
– “although most people in making moral judgments implicitly claim…to be
pointing to something objectively prescriptive, these claims are all false.”
(544-5)
The Argument from Relativity
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The argument from relativity:
1. Moral codes vary from one society to another and from one period to another.
2. Moral beliefs vary widely between different individuals, groups and classes
within society.
Thus, 3. There are no objective values.
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Note:
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It is not mere disagreement that tells against objective values for disagreement in
questions of science or history don’t entail there are no objective facts in these areas.
In science disagreement often results from speculative inferences resulting from
inadequate evidence.
Instead, disagreement about morality reflects participation in a different way of life.
If we approve of monogamy it is because we live that way…
In reply to the argument from Relativity
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Mackie considers an objection:
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Some say in response that there are some very basic principles that are at least nearly
universal and so would count as objective values.
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For example, the principle of utility, or the formula of the end in itself, or the golden rule.
But now consider that if you combine these general principles with the specific
circumstances of a society this explains the more specific moral codes that arise there.
In response:
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Mackie claims “’Moral sense’ or ‘intuition’ is an initially more plausible description of
what supplies many of our basic moral judgments than ‘reason.’” (546)
So Mackie thinks the reason we make the specific moral judgments we do is not in
appeal to some general principle which is universally held.
Instead, we make those specific judgments because something about the particular
situation incites and arouses certain responses immediately in a person though they
could arouse “radically and irresolvably different responses in others.” (546)
The Argument from Queerness
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The argument has 2 parts, one metaphysical and one epistemological.
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The metaphysical complaint:
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1. “If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of
a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” (546)
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If they were real, values would have to be “intrinsically action-guiding and motivating.”
Values are said to have prescriptivity built in. If something is right you do it. So to-do-ness is in
the values themselves. But this is like nothing else in the universe…
2. The link between value and fact is utterly unique as well:
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Think also about values and how they relate to the natural features upon which they are found.
Take an act of deliberate cruelty: what is the link between it being such an act and it’s being
wrong. Some causal link or a relation of supervenience or maybe an entailment of some kind.
Just what the link is, is difficult to see…
The epistemological complaint
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The epistemological complaint:
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In response:
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If we were aware of values “it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or
intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.” (546)
We couldn’t be aware of values by way of any other mode of sense perception, or of scientific
reasoning, or of conceptual analysis, etc.
So we must be aware of values by way of some faculty of moral intuition. Moral problems must be
solved by having an ethical intuition.
Consider an act of cruelty. To see this as wrong, some intutive faculty “must be postulated which can
see at once the natural features that constitute the cruelty, and the wrongness, and the mysterious
consequential link between the two.”
one can claim that we appeal to intuition to solve disputes about other concepts such as essence or
number or space and time or of causation or of necessity.
We might claim that there is within us a faculty for discerning truth in such areas and this is just as the
faculty of moral intuition is.
Mackie’s reply:
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We need some account of how we come to have beliefs and knowledge in such areas as essence,
number, space and time, etc. Mackie gives no such account though…
Explaining objectification
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Mackie ends the paper with an explanation of why we objectify values given
there aren’t any objective values.
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His reasons:
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The objectification of moral values arises from the projection or objectification of moral
attitudes. We read our feelings into their objects.
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For example, if a fungus fills us with disgust we attribute foulness to it.
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And moral attitudes are socially established. Society puts pressure on its members to
see and hold the same values.
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And we have reasons for objectifying values: it helps regulate communication and
behavior. We want our moral judgments to be prescriptive for us as well as for others.
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Lastly, when we desire something we tend to then objectify it as valuable in some
sense.
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That something is good depends upon our desiring it, not the other way around. That
something is desired in an objective sense in no way makes the thing objectively valuable…