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with one another. Moral skeptics and moral objectivists offer different |
explanations of the relativity of morals. Moral skeptics argue that moral |
relativity is best explained by the fact that there are no objective moral principles; |
rather, people assert moral codes based on their familiarity with the |
moral codes they learn in their societies (P4 (i)). Moral objectivists argue |
that factual differences in the circumstances of various societies result in |
different applications of objective moral principles. Such different applications |
yield distinct moral codes despite agreement on objective moral principles |
(P4 (ii)). |
Mackie supports explanation (i) by appealing to a sentimentalist theory |
of the origins of moral expressions. Although Mackie does not call his |
argument an Inference to the Best Explanation, the reasoning here involves |
a comparative claim that the skeptical explanation accounts for the observed |
phenomena of moral expression better than the objectivist one. Inference |
to the Best Explanation arguments are comparisons of two or more explanations |
of observed phenomena and evaluations of each explanation on |
common standards. Commonly cited standards for comparing explanations |
are greater simplicity, greater explanatory power, and more coherence with |
other hypotheses and phenomena. Philosophers dispute what Inference to |
the Best Explanation argument implies, so the argument below includes P6 |
and C2 and P6 * and C2 * for comparison. P6 and C2 make a stronger |
claim, that explanation (i) shows that the belief in the existence of objective |
moral facts is unjustifi ed, rather than merely not as well justifi ed as disbelief |
in the existence of objective moral facts. |
The objection to the argument from relativity on behalf of moral objectivism, |
though unsuccessful according to Mackie, leaves moral skepticism |
in need of further argument. The argument from queerness claims there are |
two necessary conditions of the existence of objective moral facts. The fi rst |
condition is a claim about the ontology of moral facts. Putative moral facts |
would consist of a different kind of entity or relation than those known |
by scientifi c observation and hypothesizing, ordinary perception, and quasi - |
scientifi c methods. The second condition claims that mental ability humans |
would have to possess in order to have knowledge of moral facts would be |
something specifi cally moral. Such ability would be different in kind from |
other human mental abilities. Since neither necessary condition of the |
existence of objective moral facts is true, the antecedent of the conditional |
in P7 is false by modus tollens . |
234 Robert L. Muhlnickel |
The error theory argument concludes in C4 by conjoining C3, that objective |
values no not exist, and C2, the belief that objective moral facts is not |
justifi ed. The conjunction (C4) is put in the antecedent of a conditional (P9) |
to argue that the presumptive belief in the existence of object moral facts |
is erroneous. The presumptive belief is the target of the error theory argument, |
and the combined argument from relativity and argument from |
queerness presented here, form a valid argument that the presumptive belief |
is erroneous. |
Mackie fi rst presented the error theory argument in 1946 in “ A Refutation |
of Morals. ” He expanded the argument in Ethics: Inventing Right |
and Wrong (30 – 42). The selections below are from the latter work. |
Mackie states that an error theory argument is required against moral |
objectivism: |
[T]he traditional moral concepts of the ordinary man as well as the main |
line of western philosophers are concepts of objective value. But it is precisely |
for this reason that linguistic and conceptual analysis are not enough. The |
claim to objectivity, however engrained in out language and thought, is not |
self - validating. But the denial of objective values will have to be put forward |
not as the result of an analytic approach, but as an ‘ error theory, ’ a theory |
that although most people in making moral judgments implicitly claim, |
among other things, to be pointing to something objectively prescriptive, these |
claims are all false. ( Ethics , 35) |
The argument from relativity follows: |
The argument from relativity has as its premiss the well - known variation |
in moral codes from one society to another and from one period to another, |
and also the differences in moral beliefs between different groups and classes |
within a complex community. Such variation is in itself merely a truth of |
descriptive morality, a fact of anthropology which entails neither fi rst order |
nor second order ethical views. Yet it may indirectly support second order |
subjectivism: radical differences between fi rst order moral apprehensions |
make it diffi cult to treat those judgments as apprehensions of objective truths. |
But it is not the mere occurrence of disagreements that tells against the objectivity |
of values. [ … ] Disagreement about moral codes seems to refl ect people ’ s |
adherence to and participation in different ways of life. The causal connection |
seems to be mainly that way round: it is that people approve of monogamy |
because they participate in a monogamous way of life rather than that they |
participate in a monogamous way of life because they approve of monogamy. |
( Ethics , 36) |
Defenders of moral objectivism claim that moral relativity is explained |
by the application of objective moral principles to specifi c conditions rather |
than the nonexistence of objective moral principles. “ It is easy to show, ” |
The Error Theory Argument 235 |
Mackie writes, “ that such general principles, married with differing concrete |
circumstances, different existing social patterns, or different preferences, |
will beget different specifi c moral rules ” ( Ethics , 37). This argument |
fails, Mackie writes: |
[P]eople judge that some things are good or right, and others are bad or |
wrong, not because – or at any rate not only because – they exemplify some |
general principle for which widespread implicit acceptance could be claimed, |
but because something about those things arouses certain responses immediately |
in them, though they would arouse radically and irresolvably different |
responses in others. ( Ethics , 37) |
The argument from queerness: |
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. Correspondingly, if we are aware of them, it would have to be by |
some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from |
our ordinary ways of knowing anything else. [ … ] When we ask the awkward |
question, how we can be aware of this authoritative prescriptivity, of the truth |
of these distinctively ethical premisses or of the cogency of this distinctively |
ethical pattern of reasoning, none of our ordinary accounts of sensory perception |
or introspection or the framing and confi rming of explanatory hypotheses |
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