But Mackie convicts moral language of a different problem, that of failure of reference. We may intend our language to be taken as referring to value aspects of the world, but there are, in fact, no such aspects. McDowell argues that the error theory is based on a misconception about how we commonly understand value properties. In the natural contrast, a primary quality would be objective in the sense that what it is for something to have it can be adequately understood otherwise than in terms of dispositions to give rise to subjective states. McDowell s complaint against Mackie is that it is a mistake to saddle the realist with a conception of value as that which is valuable from no perspective at all.
Values are values for creatures with our particular sensibility.
His position is again internalist, for the virtuous person s conception of the situation completely explains why she acted as she did the conception is sufficient to show the favorable light in which the agent viewed the action. The problem of the good robber lurks in the background of these essays, however. Thus, our explanations of why we responded in the way we did to a certain situation will require, not that we show how we were causally affected, by why the situation deserved our response and this must necessarily be attended by a critical outlook on what one takes to require such and such a response, and a willingness to change one s responses as necessary. This critical evaluative and justificative activity will not, as it were, be external to moral practice. For it is just such a broadly evaluative point of view that I earlier in this essay claimed was necessary to make intelligible one s particular responses, and which, I suggested, might require a retreat to the general.