ON MORAL OBJECTIVITY:
CAN THERE BE OBJECTIVE MORAL EVALUATION WITHOUT INVOKING
THE EXISTENCE OF “QUEER” ONTOLOGICAL PROPERTIES?
by
ESTHER JANE DEVRIES
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Philosophy Stream
We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard
...............................................................................
Dr. Phillip Wiebe, PhD; Thesis Supervisor
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Dr. Robert Doede, Ph.D.; Second Reader
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Dr. Myron Penner, Ph.D.; Third Reader
TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY
July, 2014
© Esther Jane deVries
2
Introduction
Morality is a phenomenon that permeates our human experience; it sits at the very
core of human society as an essential contributor to peaceful and productive coexistence.
Not only is moral evaluation practical and rational, it also seems to provoke emotional
reactions: morality isn’t just something we think, it is also something we feel strongly
about.
Imagine the following scenario: you are sitting comfortably at home, watching your
favorite show, or deeply engrossed in reading a book when the doorbell rings. You
begrudgingly go to the door and open it, only to be confronted with a young woman who is
clearly suffering greatly; she is clutching her side and blood is gushing out. You look
around to see if anyone else is around, but it seems that none of your neighbors are home.
The girl doesn’t say anything; she just looks at you desperately. What is to stop you from
shutting the door, locking it and going back to your book or show? Why is it that the
circumstance seems a call to responsibility, seems to oblige you to take an action that goes
against your own personal interests? The woman is a complete stranger. There is no civil
law that obliges you to do anything about it and you were not the agent responsible for her
present unfortunate circumstance. Why is it that most of us are naturally disgusted, indeed
abhorred at the thought that anyone in such a scenario, would even consider shutting the
door and going back to their pastime? Where does the moral claim that you “ought” to
help that woman come from? Can it be found embedded somewhere as part of the facts of
circumstances, or perhaps in a relation that obtains between you and the circumstances? Is
3
it part of the education that we have received? Have we been indoctrinated even though it
wouldn’t actually be wrong to turn around and shut the door? It seems that all human
interaction is tainted by ethical evaluation. We don’t just affirm the facts, but are
bombarded by this persistent evaluating mechanism that cannot refrain from asking what
“ought” or “ought not” to be.
Our human experience of moral evaluation is the starting point and the inspiration
for the enquiry that ensues. The truth is that human society is pervaded by moral
evaluation. Modernity has reached a point probably unprecedented in which a universal
moral code has been established and assented to by the global community. It was on the
10th of December of 1948, in the aftermath of a gruesome world war, that the general
assembly of the United Nations adopted “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”,
which reached its resolution on the 10th of December 1948. Only 8 nations abstained from
the vote and none of them dissented from the declaration. How is it possible that the
diversity of the international community could come to consensus on anything at all, let
alone ethical issues? Just what is the meaning of the “Universal Declaration of Human
Rights”? Does it make a claim to be objective truth? Were “human rights” somehow
embedded in nature waiting for us to discover them just like laws of physics? Or are they
in fact rather arbitrary, invented by human society because morality and the protection of
human rights are things that are beneficial to human flourishing? How were those 18
members of the commission on human rights able to gain knowledge of these rights? Do
we humans have a special faculty that enables us to identify moral goodness, so that by
4
applying this faculty we are able to discern good from bad? Or have some people in high
places invented morality to have greater control over the masses?
Many ethical theories have been developed to account for the human experience of
moral evaluation and to provide guidelines or principles for moral evaluation. This piece is
not concerned with the question of what is right or wrong, it is concerned with asking if a
moral evaluation can be true or false. In other words, with whether or not moral claims can
be objective. To illustrate the applied nature of the issue at stake I would translate the
question into: Can we say that the claim that Nazi concentration camps were bad, indeed
evil, is true? The diversity of moral beliefs can be clearly observed among the people of
different nations, and recognizing this fact makes us tend to think that moral evaluation
must be relative, or a result of education and environment. Yet we do not shrink from
making categorical claims such as, “Genocide is wrong;” on an international level. I
believe that modernity finds itself in a moral dilemma: on one hand secularism wants to
deny that moral principles have been prescribed by a Supreme Being, and on the other hand
the “modern” wants to make the claim that there exist things such as “human rights” that
must be respected, so that to discriminate against anyone because of gender race or
ethnicity is wrong. The dilemma is that there is no reason for saying that things such as
discrimination are wrong other than to say that they are not beneficial to the “common
good.” So in the case that someone were to come along and demonstrate that in fact, for
the benefit of human flourishing, science has discovered that certain genetic make-ups are
better than others, and these should be granted more rights or better opportunities, one
would be forced to oblige. So maybe Nazi concentration camps weren’t so evil after all?
5
There have been philosophers who have seen this dilemma and have attempted to
respond to it with unorthodox approaches to morality. Among these philosophers, the
contributions of Australian J.L. Mackie stand out as particularly confrontational. Mackie is
a moral error-theorist, and although he believes that when we make moral judgments we
mean to make a statement that is true in the objective sense, he argues that in reality moral
values do not exist. To claim the existence of objective moral values would imply asserting
the existence of some natural or non-natural moral qualities or properties that would be of a
very strange, indeed a queer nature. He concludes that objective moral values must
therefore not exist.
In what follows, I intend to explore J.L. Mackie’s arguments in defense of the moral
error-theory, the contributions of his colleagues who defend the theory, as well those of the
objectors to his theory in search of an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of moral
evaluation so characteristic of human interaction. I shall open with an analysis of Hume’s
moral theory since it offers the backdrop for Mackie’s moral error-theory. The
interpretation of Hume’s moral theory that I detail in this dissertation is not to be taken as
indisputable, in fact I am aware that many philosophers would disagree with the way
Hume’s thought is represented. My intention however is to provide an account of Mackie’s
moral error-theory, and for this reason, what I outline below is Hume’s thought on morality
according to Mackie. At this point, it is probably convenient to add that that the
terminology employed throughout this work is also “Mackian”, so that terms such as
6
“categorical imperative” are to be understood from within this “Mackian context” and not
from a Kantian perspective.
The exposition on Hume shall be followed by an outline of J.L. Mackie’s argument
in support of the moral error-theory. I shall then give tribute to the contributions of other
moral error-theorists who have nuanced his argument granting it greater strength in the
wake of the surge of objections. In a fourth chapter, the opposition to the moral errortheory is outlined along with a representation of a variety of realist approaches to human
morality. I then suggest opening the door to a third option, a morality that is objective but
does not involve “objects” of the sort that the realists are forced to involve in their
understanding of objective truth. This third option incorporates Ethics without Ontology
authored by Hilary Putnam, as well as a contribution from Emmanuel Levinas’s “ethics of
presence.”
The conclusion shall consist of an analysis of the explanatory power of the three
approaches to morality that have been discussed throughout this piece. With the results of
said analysis, I hope to be able to provide an insightful response to the moral dilemma that
haunts our modern era. I also hope to be able to offer a better explanation of the human
moral experience that redeems objective moral evaluation from the Mackian accusation of
being “queer.”
“It is a hard fact that cruel actions differ from kind ones, and hence that we can
learn as in fact we all do, to distinguish them fairly well in practice, and to use the
words ‘cruel’ and ‘kind’ with fairly clear descriptive meanings; but is it an equally
hard fact that actions which are cruel in such a descriptive sense are to be
condemned?” 1
1
J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin books, 1990, 15
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Chapter 1
The Humean background of the moral dilemma
British empiricist, David Hume, dedicates Book III of his Treatise of Human
Nature, to the topic of morality. In the previous Books, he has defined reason as the
discovery of truth or falsehood: agreement or disagreement either to real relations of ideas
or to real existence and matters of fact. Truth, according to Hume, is the correspondence of
statements to states of affairs; p is true just in case p is the case. He argues that reason has
no influence upon actions and affections; it has no motivating power as it is exclusively
dedicated to the discovery of truth or falsity. Since morality involves teaching duty and
“begetting correspondent habits,”2 it cannot be a product of reason; morality therefore must
be the result of moral sentiment. Hume provides several arguments to demonstrate his
claim that moral judgment is the fruit of the reaction of our moral sentiments rather than the
product of rational activity.
These arguments are relevant to our topic of investigation since they have come to
form part of the foundation for the moral error theory that shall be discussed in greater
depth in the following chapter. Hume argues that if reason could perform moral
evaluation, then the characters of virtue and vice would have to lie either in some relation
or in some matter of fact that could be identified. He acknowledges that there are many
2
David Hume, Enquiry concerning the principles of morals,
The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals, by David Hume, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4320/pg4320.txt
8
philosophers who would contend that morality does lie in a relation and is hence
discoverable by reason. If this were the case, however, argues Hume, the relation would
have to be one found not only in rational beings but also in irrational beings and even in
inanimate objects, because such is the character of relations. Hume identifies four types of
relations: resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality and proportion, all of which belong
just as much to our actions and passions as they do to matter. To re-enforce his argument,
he points out that if a man were to murder his parent, all would react declaring the event to
be horrific and morally evil. In contrast, when a sapling grows to destroy the oak from
which it sprung, nobody is horrified by the evilness of the event. The same occurs when
we speak of incest; we are disgusted by the practice of incest among humans but when it
comes to animals nobody even raises an eyebrow. “Here then the same relations have
different causes; but still the relations are the same: And as their discovery is not in both
cases attended with a notion of immorality, it follows, that that notion does not arise from
such a discovery.”3 With these examples, Hume intends to demonstrate that morality cannot
lie in a relation because we apply moral evaluations exclusively to humans and not to
animals or inanimate objects.4 Hence, not only is Hume indicating that morality cannot be a
relation, he also seems to be pointing out that morality is something specifically
3
David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Gutenberg Project, Book III, Part I, Sect I,
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4705/pg4705.txt, accessed 03/24/2014
4
One could object that moral evaluation can involve inanimate objects in the case of
natural disaster or disease for example. Although the convention of attributing moral
evaluation to certain natural events might be common practice, we do however traditionally
say that only the free agent can act morally since only such agents can choose their actions.
Morality seems to be accompanied by retribution for good actions or for virtue and
punishment for evil actions.
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characteristic of human beings who have it in their nature to react with either approval or
disapproval to events or states of affairs.
Hume goes on to consider the option of asserting that morality is a property or
quality that exists as a matter of fact, as a real existent recognized by reason as virtue or
vice. He argues, however, that no one has been able to discover real existence that
corresponds to those characteristics, and Hume is of the opinion that no matter how
technology advances, we shall never discover one.
“But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of
fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allowed to be
vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can
find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way
you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is
no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you
consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own
breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this
action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in
yourself, not in the object.”5
There is of course the option of claiming, as does G.E. Moore, that morality, or
rather, that “good” is a non-natural property that we can know by intuition. Hume however
rejects the possibility of any sort of non-natural property; he thinks that when we examine
our moral experience, all we find are sentiments of approbation or disapprobation and
believes that morality is not a function of human reason.
Hume is intrigued and fascinated by the peculiar prescriptive characteristic of moral
evaluation. It is the obligation to action entailed by moral assessments that Hume considers
to be overwhelming proof for his claim that moral evaluation cannot be a product of reason.
5
Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Gutenberg Project, Book III, Part I, Sect I
10
“Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows,
that they cannot be derived from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have
already proved, can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and
produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.
The rules of morality therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”6
A part of Hume’s Treatise is aimed at demonstrating that reason is inert, reason cannot
move to action. If moral judgment by nature prescribes action, how then are we to explain
that the rightness or wrongness of an action is discovered by reason if reason is inert?
“In order, therefore, to prove, that the measures of right and wrong are eternal laws,
obligatory on every rational mind, it is not sufficient to shew the relations upon
which they are founded: We must also point out the connexion betwixt the relation
and the will; and must prove that this connexion is so necessary, that in every welldisposed mind, it must take place and have its influence; though the difference
betwixt these minds be in other respects immense and infinite.”7
Hume asserts that there is no causal relation between understanding and the will and that no
rational discovery can ever single-handedly produce an action. Furthermore, if a causal
relationship between reason and the will were to exist, it would have to be a relationship so
necessary that any well-disposed mind would have to fall under its influence even if the
difference between minds were immense, or even infinite if we were to include the mind of
God.
Basing his view on logic’s principle of conservation, Hume goes on to declare that
an “ought” can never be derived from an “is”, that there is no standing relation between
“is” and “ought” that permits a jump from one to the other without offering an explanation
6
7
Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Gutenberg Project, Book III, Part I, Sect I
Ibid.
11
of how one got the “ought” from the “is”. 8 Hume confronts moral philosophers who
defend cognitivism with the challenge of either proving this argument false, or providing a
plausible explanation for how an “ought” can be deduced from an “is”. J.L. Mackie,
acclaims the strength of this claim in his book Hume’s Moral Theory, declaring that:
“The thesis that remains unshaken is that an ought-statement which expresses a
categorical imperative cannot be validly derived by ordinary, general, logic – by
deductively valid reasoning- from any set of premises, each of which is either a
logical or mathematical truth or an ordinary empirical (including causal) statement:
the apparent exceptions rely on clusters of linguistic rules which, as clusters,
implicitly incorporate categorical imperatives.”9
Hilary Putnam, on the other hand, in The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy, rejects
Hume’s argument:
“The logical positivist fact/value dichotomy was defended on the basis of a
narrowly scientistic picture of what a ‘fact’ might be, just as the Humean ancestor
of that distinction was defended on the basis of a narrow empiricist psychology of
“ideas” and “impressions”. The realization that so much of our descriptive
language is a living counterexample to both (classical empiricist and logical
positivist) pictures of the realm of “fact” ought to shake the confidence of anyone
who supposes that there is a notion of fact that contrasts neatly and absolutely with
the notion of “value” supposedly invoked in talk of the nature of all “value
judgments”.10
There has been much dispute over Hume’s claim that one cannot derive an “ought” from an
“is” and although many have rejected the force of the argument, it has served to underscore
that peculiar characteristic of human morality: the fact that moral evaluation is
accompanied by an obligation towards a certain kind of behavior.
8
Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, BIII, part 1, sect 1
J.L. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory Routedge, Florence, KY, USA, 1980, 61
10
Hilary Putnam. Collapse of the fact/value dichotomy (Harvard University Press, 2002),
26
9
12
In An Enquiry concerning the principles of morals, Hume continues to unravel the
threads of his discourse on morality with the aim of discovering its true foundation. The
method employed is that of empirical investigation, founded on fact and on observation.
He proceeds to explore the virtues of benevolence and justice as they are lived and
evaluated by human society. As he develops his argument, he willingly acknowledges that
utility is the primary source of praiseworthiness:
“In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever
principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common
life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided
with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of
mankind.”11
It is the principle of usefulness that has the power to endow any particular type of behavior
with the title of meritorious. Hume however points out that although usefulness is
generally agreeable and inspires approbation, the approbation that we experience extends
farther than our own interest. He claims that a tendency to public good, and to the
promotion of peace, harmony and social order, are present in our human sentiment.
Principles of humanity and sympathy are deeply rooted in us, and exert a powerful
influence, able to excite either strong censure or applause of certain actions. He argues that
although these virtues may be useful, their merit is not derived from their usefulness, but
rather from the immediate pleasure that they “communicate to the person possessed of
them”. 12 We develop sentiments of approbation for these virtues or qualities independently
of their usefulness. The force of moral sentiment is what fuels the sense of obligation that
11
Hume, Enquiry concerning the principles of morals, Sect II. part II
David Hume, Enquiry concerning the principles of morals, Sect V.
12
13
accompanies moral judgments. The sentiments of approval and of aversion motivate to act
in a particular way whether or not the action itself is advantageous to the individual. This
line of argumentation amounts to a refutation of utilitarianism as an all-encompassing
moral system. Furthermore, it would seem that Hume also rejects cognitivism since he
repeatedly argues that moral judgment cannot be the result of human reason since reason
alone cannot motivate to action, and moral properties are unidentifiable. Having
ascertained that the two aforementioned moral theories fail to explain the human experience
of moral judgment, Hume suggests that the peculiar prescriptive nature of moral judgments
is best explained by viewing morality as a product of moral sentiment.
Hume’s discourse on the foundation of morality underlines the controversial aspects
that prevail to this day in philosophical disputes about moral theory. Mackie, like many
other philosophers, takes inspiration in Hume’s arguments to develop and expand on his
own account of human morality. Together with Hume, he thinks that a moral theory needs
to account for i) the fact that moral statements are regularly treated, both syntactically and
conversationally, as being capable of being simply true or false – and true or false through
and through, even in their distinctively moral aspect, not just with regard to a pre-moral
core – (ii) the way in which these statements are taken to be intrinsically, not only
contingently, action-guiding (statements that involve categorical imperatives).
Nevertheless, Mackie suggests that the thesis, for which Hume has argued forcefully: that
the essential fact of the matter that underlies moral judgments as well as aesthetic
judgments, is that people have various sentiments or rather that there are interpersonal
systems of sentiments of morality, leaves us with significant questions that need to be
14
considered and explained.13 According to Mackie, although it is a matter of fact that
human beings do experience moral sentiments, and that these sentiments are incorporated
into an accepted social framework such that we think that certain actions or characteristics
do possess intrinsic moral features, these features are actually fictitious. This is what
Mackie refers to as the objectification theory. He believes that morality is an instance of the
human mind’s propensity to spread itself on external objects, and that virtue is in fact an
artificial human construct that serves a purpose: that of resolving conflict in the human
situation.14
From this analysis of Hume’s approach to the problem of the foundation of human
morality, we can draw the conclusion that the most intriguing aspects of Hume’s arguments
are: his claim that we cannot find any relation between reason and objects that we could
identify as the moral relation; that there are no matters of fact or real existences that we
have discovered with our reason and have been able to identify as virtue or vice; and finally
that moral judgments appear to be intrinsically and necessarily motivational. They “beget
actions”, yet, by laws of logic, it is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is”, and for
this reason they cannot lie in some matter of fact.
These are the arguments that J.L.
Mackie draws on to defend and propose his moral error theory, which I examine in the
following chapter.
13
14
Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory, 70
Ibid, 155
15
Chapter 2
J.L. Mackie’s Moral Error Theory
The moral error theory was first developed by J.L. Mackie who expounded his
theory in a book called “Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong” originally published in 1977.
In his book, Mackie defines and defends moral skepticism on a meta-ethical level; he also
proposes his own views on practical morality calling his approach a rule-right-dutydisposition utilitarianism.
To begin, Mackie makes a distinction between first and second order moral
statements. First order ethical judgments are about the content of morality, while second
order ethical statements are about the status of ethics. The first part of the book is
dedicated to an analysis of second order moral statements - to the status of ethics or to what
some would call meta-ethics. “The present issue is with regard to the objectivity
specifically of value, not with regard to the objectivity of those natural, factual, differences
on the basis of which differing values are assigned.”15 What Mackie intends to argue is that
moral value does not exist, but he frames his argument on the meta-ethical level,
maintaining that since there can be moral objectivity on the level of first order moral
statements; human beings make the erroneous assumption that there is something called
objective moral value on the meta-ethical level. His theory has therefore been dubbed the
moral-error theory since it is a version of moral skepticism that acknowledges the
possibility of objective morality on one level while maintaining that there are no
15
Mackie, Ethics Inventing Right and Wrong,17
16
corresponding objective moral values on the meta-ethical level. Although Mackie is
convinced of the erroneous nature of moral evaluation, he asserts that the illusion of
objective morality is beneficial to the proper functioning of human society.
For the purpose of clarifying terms, it is important to begin by taking a look at what
Mackie means when he speaks of objectivity. According to Mackie, to say that there are
objective moral values is not the same as to say that there are certain moral principles that
are universally agreed upon. An evaluative statement endorsed by the general public is
authorized by public opinion and nothing beyond; in other words, inter-subjectivity is not
objectivity. The universalizability of a statement, such that it is considered to hold true for
all relevant similar cases, does not qualify as an occurrence of objectivity either. He
specifies that objective values do produce statements that are universalizable, but the
contrary is not true; universalizable statements do not amount to objective moral values.
There is also a distinction to be made between objectivism and descriptivism. Mackie
defines descriptivism as a doctrine about the meanings of ethical terms or statements
according to which ethical terms are devoid of prescriptivity. The descriptivist does not
acknowledge the commendatory nature of moral valuing, and hence denies the prescriptive
nature of moral statements. The ontological doctrine of objectivism must therefore be
distinguished from descriptivism or a theory about meaning.16 Mackie points out that
Plato, Kant, Sidgwick all agreed that moral values are characterized not only by evaluative
statements, but also by prescriptivity. Since philosophers like Plato or Kant were willing to
admit to the difficulty of claiming that values are objective because of their prescriptive
16
Ibid, 24
17
nature, in Mackie’s view there is a strong reason for thinking that they are not so.17
The issue at stake, according to Mackie, is not just the objectivity of what ought to
be or of what is rational, but the specific objectivity of goodness. He does not deny that
there can be objectivity with respect to a set of established standards. Given certain
standards of performance, a dance routine for example, can be evaluated with objectivity.
The standards are not arbitrarily chosen; they are established with reference to the aim or
the purpose. This does not, in Mackie’s opinion pose a threat to the denial of the
objectivity of values: “Something may be called good simply in so far as it satisfies or is as
to satisfy a certain desire; but the objectivity of such relations of satisfaction does not
constitute in our sense an objective value”18 Using Kantian terminology, what Mackie
means to deny is that any categorical imperative is objectively valid. He is denying the
existence of values that are “action-directing absolutely, not contingently (in the sense that
it depends on the purpose desires or aims of the subject) upon the agent’s desires and
inclinations.”19 Kirchin and Joyce explain in the introduction to A World Without Values,
that: “what Mackie thinks is distinctive about morality is not its content but rather the
unusual nature of its norms: an authoritative normativity that purports to bind agents “from
the outside,” irrespective of their desires, projects, or interests.”20 It is this peculiar nature
of morality that Mackie finds strange and it is this claim that differentiates Mackie’s theory
17
Ibid, 25
Ibid, 29
19
Ibid, 31
20
R. Joyce, S. Kirchin (eds.), A World Without Values, Philosophical Studies Series 114,
intro, xiv, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3339-0_8, C _ Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
2010
18
18
from a non-cognitivist, or a subjectivist one. Mackie sees a claim to objectivity “ingrained
in our language and thought” 21 that is not self-validating. This assumption of objectivity
needs to be questioned, and the denial of the real existence of these objective values must
be presented as an “error theory.” We can therefore understand Mackie’s claim to be that
he wants to deny that there are objective moral values, which means that he is denying that
there is any case in which an occasion of a claim to a categorical imperative is valid. In
other words, what Mackie means when he speaks of objectivity, is that moral judgments are
prescriptive in an absolute way, and it is the existence of this type of objectivity that he
wants to deny. Since claims to such objective moral values are embedded in ordinary
language and in the natural thought of human beings, he is proposing an “error theory” with
which he does not deny the common sense claim to moral objectivity but holds that this
claim is false.
“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 descriptive, these claims are all false. It is this that makes the
name ‘moral sceptisicm’ appropriate.” 22
There are two arguments that Mackie presents to support his thesis: the argument
from relativity; and the argument from queerness. The first premise of the argument from
relativity is the divergence in moral codes and principles from culture to culture. Mackie
specifies however that the divergence that we observe of moral codes is not just about a
disagreement. Many other fields of study, even fields of scientific investigation, are ridden
21
22
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 38
Ibid, 38
19
with disagreement and argumentation. Moral disagreement is distinct because the discord
reaches greater depth due to the fact that it has an impact on lifestyle. People agree with
the moral codes that characterize their lifestyles, so that we for example, approve of
monogamy because we are accustomed to living in a monogamous society, and it is not the
other way around, it is not that we choose a monogamous society because we approve of
monogamy. Mackie does however acknowledge that moral judgments are not merely
conventional since it is true that in human history there have been moral “reformers”.
However, these reforms, according to Mackie, are to be attributed to the lack of coherence
or of consistency in a particular moral system. Diversity in moral codes is not simply the
result of different ways of reasoning about how to apply some general universal principle,
argues Mackie, rather it is “moral sense” or “intuition” that leads to radically irresolvable
differences in responding to certain actions. His argument from relativity has force because
he claims that the diversity of moral claims is better explained by the moral error theory
than by the theory of moral realism. “In short, the argument from relativity has some force
simply because the actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the
hypothesis that they reflect ways of life, than by the hypothesis that they express
perceptions most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted of objective values.” 23
Mackie’s second argument, the argument from queerness is his most important
argument. This argument has two parts to it, a metaphysical part and an epistemological
one. The metaphysical argument expressed in Mackie’s own words, goes like this: “If there
were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange
23
Ibid, 37
20
sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” 24 It is not hard to recognize the
similarity between this argument and the one discussed in the previous chapter presented by
David Hume. If objective value existed, it would have to be identifiable by human
understanding as some sort of relation between, or quality of things in the universe. The
metaphysical implications of asserting the existence of objective moral values are indeed
strange. Mackie’s referring to objective moral values as “queer” is not simply justified by
the fact that ethical statements are “unverifiable”, there is much more to Mackie’s claim.
Mackie doesn’t only hold that ethical statements are meaningless as the positivists claim;
he holds that the claim that there are objective values or intrinsically prescriptive entities is
false altogether. 25 Someone who asserts the existence of objective moral values would
have to assert some form of Platonism, would have to consider the existence of some sort
of form of the Good that the intellect not only knows, but is also obliged to pursue due to
the built in “has to-be-pursuedness” that moral values possess.26 The only option would be
to consider something similar to what first Samuel Clarke proposed, namely, that there are
something like the necessary relations of fitness between situations and actions. Mackie
however considers this option to be too complicated to be taken seriously. Mackie’s
argument from queerness is of course rooted in Hume’s assertion that “reason” alone
cannot move to action; that reason has no influence over the will. To claim that knowledge
of values is different from knowledge of any other sort because their prescriptive quality
24
Ibid, 39
Ibid, 44
26
Ibid, 44
25
21
implies the postulation of “value-entities or value-features of quite a different order from
anything else with which we are acquainted.” 27
Mackie goes on to argue that if objective moral values existed, then there would
have to be a link between the objective moral quality and its natural features. To support
his argument he provides the example of the common claim that causing pain to another
person just for fun is considered cruelty. But what is the link between this action and the
moral fact that it is wrong? There is no semantic or logical necessity that links the action to
the conclusion that it is wrong. One would have to assert that there is some sort of natural
feature that constitutes cruelty. It could be said that the action is wrong because it is
deliberate cruelty, but what does the “because” refer to? Mackie acknowledges the
possibility of arguing that there is a higher order property that belongs to certain natural
properties. Such claims however become very complicated, “what is this belonging of
properties to other properties?”28 It would be much easier to simply say, “There is a
subjective response that is causally related to the detection of the natural features on which
the supposed quality is said to be consequential.”29 In the same way, Mackie is skeptical of
the suggestion that moral judgments could be derived from the perception of some sort of
(real) relation between actions or situations because these in turn would require some sort
of “demand for such-and-such and action” built into them. Once again, Mackie argues that
relations with inbuilt prescriptivity are too queer to consider their possible existence.30
27
Ibid, 46
Ibid, 46
29
Ibid, 46
30
Ibid, 45
28
22
Mackie’s argument from queerness leans heavily on the assertion that moral judgments are
intrinsically action guiding or motivational and that it would go against the principle of
simplicity (or Occam’s razor) to maintain that such “queer” properties or qualities actually
exist.
The second part of his argument from queerness is epistemological and makes the
claim that if objective moral values existed, not only would we have to affirm the existence
of some queer properties, we would also have to postulate a special faculty capable of
knowing these properties. In his own words, “Correspondingly, if we were 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 everything else.” 31 Intuitionists claim that
there is a ‘faculty of moral intuition,” but Mackie however argues that none of our usual
ways of coming to know correspond to the requirements of such a faculty:
“None of our ordinary accounts of sensory perception or introspection or the
framing and confirming of explanatory hypotheses or inference or logical
construction or conceptual analysis or any combination of these, will provide a
satisfactory answer; ‘a special sort of intuition’ is a lame answer’ but it is the one
to which the clear-headed objectivist is compelled to resort.” 32
He further declares that the suggestion that moral judgments are made by sitting down and
simply paying attention to our moral intuition completely misrepresents the process of
moral evaluation.
In his article, “Beyond the Error Theory,” Michael Smith underlines the force of
Mackie’s arguments by pointing out that if Mackie’s argument is true, the result would be
31
32
Ibid, 43
Ibid, 44
23
that since the “concept of an objective and prescriptive feature” is simply not instantiated,
not only is it the case that nothing has moral value, but also that nothing could have such a
value.33 There are, according to Mackie, no possible worlds in which objects have
objectively prescriptive features; it follows logically therefore that objective moral values
are non-existent.
In an article called “Mackie’s Realism: Queer Pigs and the web of Belief” Jamie
Drier provides another version of Mackie’s argument from queerness:
“Q1 Moral goodness would have to be a property, G, such that judging that something is G
entails having an overriding motivation to pursue it.
Q2 But for no property P does judging that something is P entail having a motivation to
pursue it. (What a queer sort of property that would be!)
Therefore:
Q3 There is no such property as moral goodness”34
Here Drier argues that Mackie subscribes to a realist style of explanation of the internalist
feature of moral judgment because of the necessary connection that he affirms between the
moral judgment and the motivation to act accordingly. Drier thinks that there is a mistake in
this argument, and that it should be the belief that is queer according to internalism, rather
than the property, so he suggests a better formulation of the argument:
E1 Judging that something is morally good entails having an overriding motivation to
pursue the thing.
33
R. Joyce, S. Kirchin (eds.), A World Without Values, Philosophical Studies Series 114,
119, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3339-0_8, C _ Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
34
Ibid, 82
24
E2 But there is no belief the having of which entails having any motivation. (What a queer
belief that would be!)
Therefore:
E3 Judging that something is morally good is not a belief.35
Drier thinks that this nuanced version of Mackie’s argument is a better defense of the
moral-error theory since it claims that it is the act of judging that is linked to the motivation
rather than contact or knowledge of the facts being judged. However, Mackie does not
argue in this way, so Drier qualifies him as a realist since he, like G.E. Moore, looks for the
explanation of the queer prescriptive nature of moral judgments in the subject matter and
not in the judgment itself. Drier is right to recognize that Mackie’s argument from
queerness is set up to refute realism, on realism’s terms, and that he does locate the
queerness of moral judgments in the facts themselves rather than in the judgment.
In his book, Mackie declares that he is not rejecting common sense belief in the
objectivity of moral values, but is arguing is that this belief is a false one. To complete his
argument, Mackie feels that he needs to explain how or why it is the case that although
objective moral values don’t exist, objective moral value-claims are an unchallenged
component of our ordinary language, and have come to form part of our common sense
knowledge. When we say that something is right or wrong – for example when we say that
it is wrong to torture another person just for the fun of it - we don’t mean to say that it is
wrong according to the conventions of our society, we mean to say that it is wrong
objectively speaking, that the action has in itself something about it that makes it
35
Joyce, Kirchin (eds.). A World Without Values, 82
25
recognizably wrong. Mackie offers an explanation from practical necessity in a theory that
he calls “objectification theory”. According to this theory, moral values are socially
established or constructed because they contribute to the flourishing of human society. For
moral value to have any authoritative force in society, one must make the claim that they
are objective:
“We need morality to regulate interpersonal relations, to control some of the ways
in which people behave towards one another, often in opposition to contrary
inclinations. We therefore want our moral judgements to be authoritative for other
agents as well as for ourselves: objective validity would give them the authority
required.” 36
So we reverse the order of dependence, making the desire for something depend on its
goodness, instead of its goodness proceeding from our desire for it. In this way we can
claim that moral values are intrinsically good and can hence enforce them universally.
“Another way of explaining the objectification of moral values is to say that ethics is a
system of law from which the legislator has been removed.”37 Even those who claim some
sort of divine command ethic often make the claim that moral values are objectively good
independent of the fact that God commands them; hence, what God commands is in itself
good, otherwise God himself could not be called good. God himself is conceptually also
subject to the moral code, so God could not act in discordance with the code without
contradicting himself.
“The apparent objectivity of moral value is a widespread phenomenon which has
more than once source: the persistence of a belief in something like divine law when
the belief in the divine legislator has faded out is only one factor among others.
36
37
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 43
Ibid, 45
26
There are several different patterns of objectification, all of which have left
characteristic traces in our actual moral concepts and moral language.”38
Kai Nielsen, who argues for the theory of reflective equilibrium, holds that religious belief
or reference to a divine law does not really grant objectivity to moral claims; in fact,
morality precedes religious belief. In other words, according to Nielsen, God’s willing
something is not what makes it good, the action is good and God might also will it. In
order to make the claim that “God is good” we are obliged to depend on our own criterion
of goodness. For these reasons, Nielsen claims that moral understanding comes prior to
religious belief. “But God or no God, religion or no religion, it is still wrong to inflict pain
on helpless infants when so inflicting pain on them is without any rational point.”39 Moral
judgment seems to depend on a deliberation about what we consider to be conducive to
human flourishing. Moral values, according to Nielsen, don’t really exist, however, when
we make moral claims, we treat them as though they were objective; so objective that even
God must answer to them. “What is good is determined by what answers to human
interests, what satisfies human needs, and what furthers human self-realization.” 40
Moral skepticism is about the denial of objective moral values on a meta-ethical
level (not on the first order or descriptive level). Since common sense or ordinary moral
thought usually makes reference to some sort of objectivity of values, moral skepticism
must take on the form of an error theory. There are arguments to defend moral skepticism:
relativity; the metaphysical queerness of such values if they were to exist; the problem of
38
Ibid, 82
Kai Nielsen, Ethics without God, Prometheus Books, Buffalo New York, revised edition,
1990, 82
40
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 206
39
27
the supervenience of these upon natural features; the need for a corresponding
epistemology to account for our knowledge of value entities and their links to features upon
which they are consequential; and the explanation of the objective moral values view by
way of patterns of objectification. So Mackie concludes that:
“Morality is not to be discovered but to be made: we have to decide what moral
views to adopt, what moral stands to take. No doubt the conclusions we reach will
reflect and reveal our sense of justice, our moral consciousness – that is, our moral
consciousness as it is at the end of the discussion, not necessarily as it was at the
beginning, but that is not the object of the exercise: the object is rather to decide
what to do, what to support and what to condemn, what principles of conduct to
accept and foster as guiding or controlling our own choices and perhaps those of the
other people as well.”41
Objective morals do not exist, but we need morality for human society to flourish,
therefore, the moral-error theory postulates the invention of moral values along with a false
belief in their objectivity for the benefit of humanity.
41
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 106
28
Chapter 3
Other defenders of the moral-error theory
Mackie’s version of the moral error theory isn’t the only one around, so it is worth
taking a look at how other moral anti-realists argue for the moral-error theory. In the
introduction to A World Without Values, Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin explain the
strategy that lies behind any argument for the moral error theory. Moral error theory
arguments typically have two parts: a conceptual one and an ontological one. The
conceptual part of the argument involves establishing that moral discourse necessarily
implies some particular thesis X, such that to deny X is to shut oneself off from what
qualifies as moral discourse.
“Imagine a phlogiston theorist who, upon hearing of the success of oxygen theory, claims
that his theory has been vindicated; he asserts that he has been talking about oxygen all
along but just by a different name.” 42
In this case there has been a transgression of the boundaries for what qualifies as discourse
about oxygen. The moral error theorist needs to establish the relevant boundaries for moral
discourse.
The ontological segment of the argument is to establish by means of a priori or of a
posteriori reasoning that X, whatever X was defined to be, is false.
42
“Sometimes the moral
Richard Joyce, A World Without Values; Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory,
edited by Richard Joyce § Simon Kirchin, Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New
York Library of Congress, Control Number: 2009939617© Springer Science+Business
Media B.V. 2010, xvi
29
error theorist will hold that there is something impossible or incoherent about moral
properties, such that the error theory is necessarily true. But it suffices for being an error
theorist to hold that the non-instantiation of moral properties is a merely contingent
affair.”43
Joyce develops his version of a moral error theory in Myth of Morality. Like
Mackie, Joyce thinks that moral discourse is typically used in “an assertoric manner” but
that the assertions made fail to state truths.44 Since Joyce does regard moral discourse as
assertoric, despite his claim that the assertions made fail to express truth, he cannot be
considered to be a non-cognitivist about moral discourse. 45 Joyce claims that Mackie’s
argument for the moral error theory is “too blunt” and he proposes an adaptation to improve
the strength of the argument for the theory they both defend. He begins by discussing
various interpretations of “objective prescriptivity” and proposing an interpretation that he
thinks strengthens the argument for the moral error theory considerably.
According to Joyce, Mackie argues that non-moral uses of “good” are subjectively
prescriptive (in virtue of our desires, intentions and beliefs etc.); on the other hand, moral
uses of the word “good” are objectively prescriptive. The universe, however, does not
provide for such prescriptions, hence “objective prescriptions” are never true. “Thus
judgments of the form “φ is morally good” are never true (when φ takes an actual
43
Joyce, A World Without Values, xvi-xvii
Richard Joyce, Myth of Morality, Cambridge University Press, Port Chester, NY, USA,
03/2002, 9
45
Joyce, Myth of Morality, 9
44
30
value).”46 The question is: but what is meant by “objectively prescriptive”? There are
many possible interpretations of these terms, and Joyce examines several options. He
begins by presenting the claim that internalism about motivation is thought (i) to be a nonnegotiable commitment of moral discourse, and (ii) to be false. Joyce construes the
argument for the falsity of motivation internalism47 as follows:
M1: It is necessary and a priori that any agent who judges that one of his available actions
is morally obligatory will have some (defeasible) motivation to perform that action.48
M1, according to Joyce, is a non-negotiable aspect of our moral discourse, and at the same
time holds that assertions of the form “φ is morally good” are untrue. Joyce argues that the
counter example of the possibility of an evil agent demonstrates that M1 is in fact false.
Nevertheless, Joyce thinks that it is not incoherent to be committed to M1 because of its
strong appeal to intuition and for M1 to be false. M1, in Joyce’s view, is a modal thesis,
meaning that if it is false, then it is false at every possible world. If the truth of M1 is a
precondition for the truth of a basic moral sentence – say, “φ is obligatory” – then the
predicate “… is obligatory” will have an empty extension not just in the actual world, but
across all possible worlds. This argument, made from the falsity of motivation internalism,
is not Joyce’s main argument; he feels that this argument is incomplete since it is based on
46
Ibid, 16
Internalism about motivation holds that “a necessary connection exists between sincere
moral judgment and either justifying reasons or motives: necessarily, if an individual
sincerely judges that she ought to φ, then she has a reason or motive to φ.” Rosati, Connie
S., "Moral Motivation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
48
Ibid, 18
47
31
the claim that moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, and this is obviously not the
case. The fact that something is obligatory does not imply automatic motivation to act
accordingly. Joyce is of the opinion that the queerness of moral judgment does not lie in its
motivational power, but along with Garner, he believes that the argument from queerness
has much more force when “objective prescriptivity” is understood as moral
inescapability.49 Joyce rightly points out that “Morality is not just a list of Dos and Don’ts
enforced by punishment for wrongdoing. We think that a person is bound by those rules
whether he accepts them or not – that the rules are, in some sense, his rules whether he
accepts them or not.”50 These rules are inescapable, whether the agent wants them or not,
whether they satisfy her desires or not. The agent may chose to reject or ignore such rules,
but this does not change the fact that they continue to demand. Here Joyce is referring
specifically to the categorical imperative, and not the hypothetical imperative. He
questions what that “extra ingredient” might be that characterizes the strong categorical
imperative.
Joyce argues that - predicate uses of the word “ought” put aside - what we mean by
“ought” is “has a reason” to. 51 This claim is more clearly stated in what Joyce calls
“Mackie’s Platitude”: “It is necessary and a priori for any agent x, if x ought to 0, then x
has a reason to φ.” 52 In other words he sees moral inescapability to be necessarily linked to
the objective prescriptivity that characterizes moral discourse. When we use the term
49
Ibid, 31
Ibid, 34
51
Ibid, 38
52
Ibid, 38
50
32
“ought”, there is a “has a reason for doing so” implied in the statement. He further argues
that predicative “oughts” don’t have reason-giving qualities, but “oughts” that involve the
actions of agents are imperatives and do at least conceptually have reason-giving qualities.
Joyce makes a distinction between those “oughts” that are spoken from “within” a
normative system and those that are spoken from “outside” of it.
In his book, after considering the position of Smith and of non-humean
instrumentalism, he proceeds to present a final version of his argument that goes like this:
1. If x morally ought to φ, then x ought to φ regardless of what his desires and
interests are.
2. If x morally ought to φ, then x has a reason for φing
3. Therefore, if x morally ought to φ, then x can have a reason for φing regardless of
what his desires and interests are.
4. But there is no sense to be made of such reasons.
5. Therefore, x is never under a moral obligation.53
He claims that premise (1) has already been defended with his argument from moral
discourse, namely, the claim that we use categorical imperatives constantly. When we, for
example, condemn a criminal, we do not first ascertain what his desires were and ask if in
order to achieve these desires he performed the act that he ought to have performed, thus
making the action morally acceptable.
53
Ibid, 77-78
33
Premise (2) makes reference to Mackie’s platitude. “So when premise (2) links ‘having a
reason’ with a moral “ought” it is intended to be something other than an institutional
reason; it is what I have been calling up until now (rather deplorably) a ‘real’ reason. The
most precise understanding we have thus far gained of ‘real’ reasons is that they are reasons
that cannot be legitimately ignored.”54 Premise 2 refers to non-institutional reasons, to the
strong version of the categorical imperative. In moral discourse, it appears that these
reasons exist, reasons that transcend the agent’s own interests and desires.
With premise 3, what Joyce means is that practical reasoning on an institutional level
implies that when we say that X ought to do something, it is because there are reasons for
which X ought to perform that action. So an “ought” implies reasons for φing in a
relativistic sense: in order to achieve Y, X ought to φ, but if X were to want to achieve Z,
then X ought not to φ. The reasons are relative to the purpose or desire of X. However,
according to Joyce and according to Mackie, the claim that is made in moral discourse is
that X ought to φ independent of any desires or purposes. Hence moral judgments are
imperatives for no reasons, (although conceptually the “ought” implies there are reasons for
φing, none can be detected), and this does not make any sense. Hence moral requirements
cannot be rational requirements. Joyce thinks that his arguments show that moral
obligation that goes beyond the agent’s desires and interests cannot be true, and this defeats
54
Ibid, 44
34
non-instrumental practical rationality so that an appeal to practical rationality does not
function as an explanation for moral inescapability.55
In another article that Joyce wrote to defend his theory from Finlay’s critique; Joyce
provides the following explanation of his argument:
“(J1) Morality conceptually involves non-institutional categorical imperatives.
I then ask what sense can be made of such imperatives, and whether they might be
defensible. As a hypothesis, one might entertain:
(H) Moral non-institutional categorical imperatives are rational requirements.
I then develop an account of practical rationality, following closely but critically in Michael
Smith’s footsteps, coming to the conclusion:
i)
Rational requirements are relativistic (in a certain way)
I then argue:
ii)
But moral requirements are non-relativistic (in that way), hence
iii)
Moral requirements cannot be rational requirements
At this point I reject hypothesis (H), and in the absence of any other plausible candidate for
defending non-institutional categorical imperatives, feel justified in declaring
(J2) In fact, non-institutional categorical imperatives are indefensible
Therefore, the moral error theory is established.” 56
55
Joyce, Myth of Morality, 133
Richard Joyce, “The Error in ‘The Error in the Error Theory’, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 519–534; September 2011,
56
35
According to this view, morality would not be problematic if we could restrict
moral claims to the institutional level (hypothetical imperatives); however, in real life this
is not the case: “We invest the moral judgment with an extra authority, and it is this fugitive
thought that we must try to nail down” 57 Joyce argues that conceptually, moral judgments
are categorical imperatives, but such imperatives cannot be true since there is never a
reason for an “ought” to hold true that transcends whether or not φing serves one’s desires
or interests. Nonetheless, a system of morality based exclusively on hypothetical
imperatives is in Joyce’s opinion unacceptable because when we make a moral judgment,
we do make the claim that “X ought to φ independently of X’s desires or interests.”
“Bear in mind that the crucial question is not the substantive one – of whether there
are any categorical imperatives, of whether morality does bind everyone regardless
of their ends – but the conceptual one – of whether it is part of our moral conceptual
framework that everyone is so bound. And I am confident that the answer to the
latter is “Yes” 58
Having established that objective moral claims are not true, Joyce still maintains that
practical rationality cannot be rejected altogether, since by definition practical reasons are
indispensable as guides for our actions. “The observation that practical rationality is not
available for legitimate questioning is of central importance to our project”59 The question
is do we ever have “real” reasons for the “oughts” that we proclaim, that is to say, is there
ever a reason for an ought that holds firm whether or not 0ing serves one’s desires or
interests?
57
Joyce, Myth of Morality, 45
Joyce, Myth of Morality, 62
59
Ibid, 51
58
36
“Moral judgments are untrue not just because they sometimes ascribe reasons for
(say) honesty to people who have no such reasons. They are untrue even when they
ascribe reasons for honesty to people who do have reasons for being honest, in that
they imply that those reasons would remain in place across counterfactual situations
when in fact they would not. The distinctive authoritativeness which characterizes
our moral discourse turns out to be well-entrenched bluff.”60
So how does Joyce resolve the conflict between what we mean when we make
moral claims and the fact that there are no objective moral values to sustain these claims?
He proposes to approach morality from the fictionalist perspective. He rightfully points
out that if we eliminate the categorical imperative from moral discourse, any system of
ethics and values would lack the authority that we expect of morality, that is to say, moral
discourse would be deprived of its ability to convince agents to act accordingly. “Ought”
statements would all depend on a cost/benefit analysis, something that would make it
difficult for any society to sustain a moral code. Aware of the benefits of moral discourse
for a society, Joyce offers the fictionalist fix for the problem. Once we have realized that
moral discourse is erroneous, we can adopt the fictionalist attitude towards it since we
acknowledge that although false, moral discourse is beneficial to human society. To make
fiction of a thesis T means to be disposed to assent to T in certain circumstances without
believing T. According to Joyce’s version of fictionalism, moral discourse ceases to be
assertoric. To say φ is morally good” would therefore be interpreted not as an expression of
a belief but an expression of a thought. “Far from encouraging shabby or deleterious
doxastic habits, fictionalism grows naturally from a particular sensitivity to, and abhorrence
60
Ibid, 134
37
of false beliefs.” 61 Morality, according to Joyce, is a useful thing, but its usefulness does
not depend upon its being believed.
“Certain authors have presented an account of self-deception which stops short of
describing the agent as believing p and believing not-p; instead the subject of selfdeception believes that not-p but “thinks” and acts as if p. This is similar to the
account of the fictive judgment that I favor.”62
Another defender of the moral error theory, Richard T Garner, argues that moral
discourse displays yet another source of queerness. According to Garner, the queerness of
morality hinges on two characteristics that all moral judgments demonstrate: “It is the
peculiar combination of objectivity and prescriptivity rather than any intrinsic motivational
power, that makes moral facts and properties queer.” 63 Garner draws Mackie’s argument
from queerness away from the motivating power of moral judgments and focuses more on
their “demanding” nature. “Moral facts are not just unusual, in the way that facts about
quarks and black holes are unusual, they are unusual in an unusual way – they demand.”64
Garner claims that Mackie made a mistake when he focused on the motivational power of
morality; he should have stressed the queerness of moral authority. In this way he would
have established the queerness of morality even in the case of the abandonment of
motivational internalism. Garner argues that no matter how we look at it, even in the case
of postulating moral properties that supervene on natural properties in the same way that we
61
Ibid, 205
Ibid, 196
63
Richard T. Garner, “On the genuine queerness of moral properties and facts”, The Ohio
State University, Published online: 02 Jun 2006, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 68:2,
137-146, DOI:10.1080/0004840901234416,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048409012344161, 138
64
Garner, “On the genuine queerness of moral properties and facts”, 143
62
38
say that psychological or social properties supervene, the alleged moral properties would
still be queer. “Projected or not, redness is inert, but wrongness forbids”65
Garner’s arguments are formulated as a response to ethical naturalism’s claim that
moral properties are natural and hence not queer. If moral properties can be identified with
natural properties, the naturalist argues, then there will be no queerness, since natural
properties are (by definition) not queer. Garner argues that by identifying moral properties
with natural properties, the naturalist is forced either to embrace natural facts with intrinsic
prescriptivity, or moral facts without it. But natural facts with intrinsic prescriptivity are at
least as queer as moral facts with intrinsic prescriptivity, and for the same reason. On the
other hand moral facts without intrinsic prescriptivity are just as queer since they cannot
explain the motivational character of moral judgment.
“The question is not whether there are intrinsically motivating moral facts, it is
whether there are objectively obligating ones. When we separate obligation from
motivation, and focus on the genuine queerness of moral facts and properties, then
externalist moral realism looks no more plausible than internalist moral realism.”66
Both Garner and Joyce make similar contributions to the argument from queerness
by re-interpreting Mackie’s understanding of “objective prescriptivity” as a reference to the
commanding nature of moral judgments rather than intrinsic motivation. This change of
focus places the argument for the moral error theory in a different ball -park since it applies
to both intrinsic as well as external motivation. Both Garner and Joyce put emphasis on the
claim that moral discourse does necessarily entail obligation on a conceptual level, in other
words, non-institutional moral judgments are conceptually categorical imperatives. Both
65
66
Ibid, 145
Garner, “On the genuine queerness of moral properties and facts”, 146
39
of them maintain that the authority that moral facts seem to possess, the bindingness of
moral discourse, is a queer thing, so queer that indeed we must acknowledge that moral
facts cannot be true. There is nothing in the fabric of this world that has the property of
prescriptivity; we must therefore conclude that moral discourse is erroneous.
40
Chapter 4
Moral Realism and Other Responses to the Moral Error Theory
Having explored the arguments of those who defend the moral error theory, it seems
appropriate to represent objections to the theory. What follows is not an exhaustive account
of those who oppose moral antirealism. I have focused my attention on arguments
developed by moral realists, who stand directly opposed to the theory developed by Mackie
and his fellow antirealists.
The position that stands in greatest contrast to Mackie’s is that of G.E. Moore who
relates his theory in his book, Principia Ethica. Moore concerns himself with the definition
of the word “Good”. He, like Mackie, makes a distinction between “good” understood as a
means to an end, and “Good” understood as an intrinsic value; and he is concerned with the
later term since he considers ethics to be about intrinsic value and not about descriptive
normativity. After much consideration, G.E. Moore comes to the conclusion that “Good” is
a simple notion, one that cannot be further analyzed. He compares “Good” to “yellow”,
claiming that just like “yellow”, it is impossible to define “good” to someone who does not
already know it by experience. “Good” like “yellow”, is not composed of any parts that one
could describe in order to define the term, hence in Moore’s own words, “Good… denotes
a simple and indefinable quality”.67 Moore supports this claim by applying his open
67
G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge at the University Press, 1968, 10
41
question test to the way the word “good” is used in ordinary language. He argues that no
matter what definition one might give to the word “good”, it always makes sense to ask if
that very thing that is supposed to mean “good” is itself good. For example, one could
define “good” as “pleasure”, but then it still makes sense to ask if “pleasure” is good thus
implying that “good” is something other than pleasure. This test, according to Moore,
proves that “good” is an undefinable property of things and must, therefore, also be a nonnatural property somewhat similar to the platonic forms. This non-natural property of
things called good, can be known intuitively: “it is by adhering to our intuition then that
morality gets off the ground- that we know its nature and become moral people.”68
Moore’s belief that actions and things have a non-natural property of value that human
intuition is capable of knowing makes him a realist about morality. Mackie’s argument
from queerness targets this kind of realism - the kind that asserts the existence of “queer”
ontological properties with built in “to-be-pursuedness.” As far as Mackie is concerned,
prescriptive properties are not and could not be “part of the furniture of this world.”69 To
be fair, it must, however, be noted that to argue that prescriptive non-natural properties are
“queer” things does not necessarily imply that they do not exist. Mackie’s argument from
“queerness” is an inductive and not a deductive one.
Moral antirealists, however, are not the only ones to oppose the realist’s claim that
“Good” is an ontologically relevant property of actions or perhaps people. R.M. Hare
68
The Fact/Value Problem: Metaethics in the Twentieth Century, in Ethical Theory, edited
by Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, 6th edition, 2011, Wadsworth, Cenegage Learning,
Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United
States., 561
69
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 15
42
argues in his book Language of Morals that the descriptive meaning of the word “good” is
secondary to the evaluative meaning, and the evaluative meaning is based on a set of
principles or standards that are being taken into account.70 The term “good” therefore is a
term of commendation, of evaluation and at most only secondarily describes some property.
Value-judgments, according to Hare, are action-guiding and therefore entail imperatives.
The rule of logic, however, states that no imperative conclusion can be drawn from a set of
premises that does not include at least one imperative; therefore no moral judgment can be
the conclusion of pure indicative statements. Since moral judgments have the function of
regulating conduct, and hence must be considered to have imperative or prescriptive force,
they cannot be considered to be loose statements of fact. With this argument from the
peculiar prescriptivity of moral judgments, Hare establishes that naturalism must be false.
Moore’s non-natural property of “good” has a kind of “magnetism”, an intimate connection
to motivation.71 It is a peculiar kind of fact, a non-natural one that does have motivational
power and since it is non-natural, it is not subject to Hare’s critique of naturalism. Mackie,
however, insists that it is not very plausible that such odd and mysterious properties exist;
they certainly have not yet been discovered through scientific enquiry.
Robert Audi defends moral realism in the form of intuitionism. His claim is that we
possess intuitive knowledge of what is intrinsically good and this is what guides our
desires. Audi makes a distinction between intrinsic good and instrumental good. Intrinsic
70
R.M. Hare, Language of Morals, Oxford at the Clarendon press 1961, 118
Ridge, Michael, "Moral Non-Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
.
71
43
good is good in and for itself; instrumental good is desirable because it brings about
something else.72 Instrumental good is relative, it is only good insofar as it serves as a
means to an end, and does not necessarily provide us with a reason for pursuing it outside
of obtaining the intended end. Intrinsic good, on the other hand is valued in itself, and
therefore, provides us with a reason to pursue it for its own sake.73 Audi makes a further
distinction between “valuable” and “valuing.” “Valuing” is psychological, it is descriptive
and not prescriptive. “Valuable” (intrinsically), belongs to ethics, it is normative and
prescriptive since it provides standards according to which moral codes are established. 74
Audi suggests that valuing is to intrinsic value what believing is to truth. He argues that our
human experience leads us to discover intrinsic values. We discover what is of “organic
value” (what is really good or bad) through the rational indications that we receive from our
experience of pleasure and pain. Moral values are pleasurable not just because they are
desirable, sadistic pleasure for example is not good because it is not an “overall good,”
fulfilling a promise however, even if it is not desirable, is morally pleasurable, it is the
“overall good” and thus an “organic value.” Audi admits that value as a property is
inaccessible to ordinary scientific investigation.75 Morality is not quantifiable like science
is, but he argues that quantification is not necessary for objectivity (social sciences
72
Robert Audi, Moral Value and Human Diversity, Print publication date: 2007, Print
ISBN-13: 9780195312942, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011, DOI:
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195312942.001.000, 36
73
Audi, Moral Value and Human Diversity, 37
Ibid, 38
75
Ibid, 52
74
44
demonstrate this, even pure logic which is considered to be objective is not quantitative, it
is formal but not quantitative)76 Moral value is grounded in what is perceived or in
“objective” facts. The act of “promising,” for example, is observable and makes an action
morally good in virtue of being the fulfillment of a promise. “A deed is morally obligatory
in virtue of being, say, the fulfillment of a promise, where an act of promising is observable
in a quite ordinary sense that makes ‘promise’ a term appropriate for descriptive social
science.”77 Values, nonetheless, are not reducible to a fact or property of the natural world.
Audi argues that there is no such thing as a “fact value gap,” there are simply different
kinds of facts.78 Intrinsic moral values are facts that are action-guiding; and in this they
differ from facts of the natural world. This argument however, does not demonstrate that
“action-guiding” facts are not “queer” mysterious entities. The moral-error theorist would
dispute the claim that facts can ever be “action-guiding,” there is no evidence for the
existence of a fact that has “to be pursuedness” built into it. We come to an impasse
between the moral-realist intuitionist and the moral-error theorist. The crux of the
disagreement clearly involves the peculiar prescriptive nature of morality.
Ethical naturalist, Peter Railton, admits in his article “Moral Realism” that the
fact/value gap presents a challenge for anyone who wants to defend moral naturalism. He
acknowledges that Hume considered morality to be essentially practical. Hume argued that
if moral facts existed, they would necessarily provide a reason (although perhaps not an
76
Ibid, 41
Ibid, 53
78
Ibid, 53
77
45
overriding one) for moral action for all agents regardless of their particular desires.
According to Hume, the existence of logical and scientific facts is compatible with the
instrumental character of reason, whereas the existence of moral facts is not since they have
categorical force. Railton thinks that Hume is right in claiming that there must be an
“intrinsic connection between valuing something and having some sort of positive attitude
toward it that provides one with an instrumental reason for action.” 79 He, however, denies
Hume’s thesis of the practicality of moral judgments, hence removing the contrast between
facts and values. This does not imply denying that morality has an action-guiding
character. Reason, according to Railton, does not “compel us to adopt particular beliefs or
practices apart from our contingent, and variable, ends,”80 Although instrumental rationality
is relative, epistemology is at liberty to warrant an individual’s belief since epistemic
warrant can be tied to an external criterion (just like reliabilist theories of knowledge
suggest).
Railton believes that this line of argumentation forces the defender of the fact/value
distinction to shift to ontological ground to defend her stance. He admits nonetheless that:
“Still the idea of reliable causal mechanisms for moral learning, and of moral facts “in the
world” upon which they operate, is arguably so bizarre that I may have done no more than
79
Peter Railton, “Moral Realism”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr., 1986),
pp. 163-207, Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review, Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185589, 168
80
Peter Railton, “Moral Realism”, 170
46
increase my difficulties”81 This, of course, is precisely what Mackie means when he argues
that objective moral values are “queer.”
The strategy of Railton’s argument for moral realism is to establish that moral facts
have an explanatory function: they explain a part of human experience. Railton thinks that
this strategy only works if the reality postulated (the moral facts) have the characteristic of
being mind-independent, and if they provide feedback such that there can be a relevant sort
of interaction with these facts that influences and controls our perceptions, thought, and
action. If the moral realist can establish that moral facts have these characteristics then the
only way to explain our experience of them is to posit their real objective existence in the
natural world.
The argument that Railton develops is to show that there are certain interests that we
have that are essential or intrinsically good (he first speaks in non-moral terms). “X is
intrinsically non-morally good for A just in case X is in A’s objective interest without
reference to any other objective interest of A.”82 An agent will adapt her desires to her
belief with respect to whether or not X is actually good for her. Railton claims that this
adjustment of the desire to belief is psychological, and he bases his naturalistic theory on
this phenomenon. Railton hence argues that there is an objective intrinsic interest that
accounts for any other objective interests. Railton thinks that objective interests play an
explanatory role in the evolution of one’s desires; there is a wants/interests mechanism that
81
82
Ibid, 171
Ibid, 178
47
permits agents to learn about their objective interests through experience (trial and error).
He argues that humans are primarily motivated by their desires rather than their instincts.
“If such creatures were unable through experience to conform their wants at all
closely to their essential interests – perhaps because they were no more likely to
experience positive internal states when their essential interests are met than when
they are not – we could not expect long or fruitful futures for them”83
He believes that this want/interest mechanism is not at all infallible as its success is
exclusively functional, allowing human agents to advance modestly in an inhospitable
world. Railton goes on to argue that if this wants/interest mechanism can be postulated for
discerning non-moral good, one can postulate the same mechanism pertaining to value
judgments. He defends a relational rather than an absolute notion of goodness, nevertheless
the “relevant facts about humans and their world are objective in the same sense that such
non-relational entities as stones are: they do not depend for their existence or nature merely
upon our conception of them.” 84 Intrinsic value, like intrinsic good is discovered through
the human experience of the wants/interest mechanism. The relational notion of goodness
allows for the evolution of moral codes. Nevertheless, it’s limitation is that it does not
account for categorical imperatives: “Yet the present account is limited in another way,
which may be of greater concern from the standpoint of contemporary moral theory: it does
not yield moral imperatives that are categorical in the sense of providing a reason for action
to all rational agents regardless of their contingent desires.” 85 It is commonly held that
morality can only maintain its authority in face of agents with “knavish desires” if it has a
83
Ibid, 181
Ibid, 183
85
Ibid, 201
84
48
categorical force. Railton disagrees and argues that if we give up the idea of the
applicability of morality to the individual and assume the view that moral conduct is
rational from an impartial point of view, morality maintains its authoritative voice. Hence,
Railton thinks that although his argument is limited by the fact that it does not allow for
categorical imperatives, morality does, according to his account, continue to maintain its
authority. Categorical imperatives, according to Railton, would be very strange if they
existed, for, “ how many among us can convince ourselves that reason is other than
hypothetical?”86 The moral error theorist would agree emphatically, differing from Railton
in that they maintain that categorical imperatives are in fact very much a part of our
ordinary moral discourse, and indeed if it were not so, morality in general would lose its
authority.
Having explored a few general positions that stand in opposition to moral
antirealism, I would like to discuss some of the arguments that address particular aspects of
the argument for the moral error theory. I begin with arguments that have been brought
forth in rebuttal of the argument from relativity.
Stephen Finlay argues in his article “The Error in the Error Theory” that the real
error in the error theory is the assumption of the absolute authority of moral value, evidence
for which can only be found in disagreement between people with transparently different
moral standards, ends or concerns. Finlay argues that even in the case that we were to
accept that absolute authority is ubiquitous in moral thought this would only result in the
86
Peter Railton, “Moral Realism”, 203
49
systematic falsity of moral claims if it were to contaminate their semantic content, which it
does not do.87
Against the argument from relativity, Finlay also claims that most moral discourse
takes place between people with similar fundamental moral values. It isn’t common to get
into a discourse about morality with someone like Charles Manson or a neo-Nazi.88 People
usually engage in moral discourse with the belief that the other person holds the same
moral values at some level. So it can’t be said that any moral discourse involves
fundamental disagreement. Thirdly, even if a fundamental moral discourse did occur
between two persons who diverge radically on their value systems, this would not be
enough evidence to demonstrate that morality assumes absolutely authoritative value
properties. Supposing that it is the case that some moral discourse involves making a claim
of greater authoritative force, this does not necessarily mean that the semantics of the moral
claim involve absolute authoritativeness. Finlay claims that evaluative speech uses claims
of absolutism as a rhetorical device to oblige others to conform to them: “By asserting
evaluative judgments that are relational and non-contradictory as if they were nonrelational and contradictory, we use moral language as (in Anscombe’s phrase) a ‘mere
word of mesmeric force’”89 This, according to Finlay, serves to demonstrate that moral
language, when used with authoritative force does not exercise absolute authority as the
moral error theorists have claimed. Finlay concludes that we should entertain doubt about
87
Stephen Finlay, “The Error in the Error Theory”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
Vol. 86, No. 3, pp. 347–369; September 2008, 351
88
Finlay, “The Error in the Error Theory”, 356
89
Ibid, 357-358
50
Joyce’s claim that moral discourse necessarily implies categorical imperatives. In response
to these objections brought forth by Finlay, Joyce clarifies what he thinks Finlay is
misconstruing about his claim that moral discourse implies non-institutional categorical
imperatives. He argues that when Mackie claims that morality presupposes “objective
values” and “objective prescriptions’, he is not claiming that morality presupposes
“absolute values” and “absolute prescriptions”. When Mackie says that the objective
values that he is denying would be action-directing absolutely, he should be interpreted as
saying that morality has an authority similar to that of a monarch, that of making demands
that are non-negotiable and incontestable.90 With this clarification, Joyce is talking about
semantics; he is arguing that when there is a moral dispute among people with
fundamentally different values, their moral claims are claims that, though not absolutist; are
non-relativistic, they are non-institutional claims. Hence the argument that such moral
disputes are not resolvable.
Robert Ehman joins Finlay in opposing the argument from relativity in his article,
“Moral Objectivity.” Ehman claims that moral disagreement is due to error, ignorance or
prejudice, and that it can be resolved by way of inquiry and further discussion. He claims
that there is legitimate reason to doubt that the conditions necessary to establish genuine
conflict in moral experience are ever fulfilled. He makes a distinction between
disagreement in moral evaluation and disagreement in practice and aim.91 Both Mackie and
90
Richard Joyce, “The Error in “The Error in the Error Theory”, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 519–534; September 2011, 520
91
Robert Ehman, Moral objectivity, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 28,
No. 2 (Dec., 1967), pp. 175-187, Published by: International Phenomenological Society
51
Joyce would most likely be glad to grant this distinction. The disagreements in practice and
aim might actually arise from common ground on which both parties share fundamental
values, they just do not see eye to eye about how to put those values into practice. Ehman
however seems to deny that there is discord when it comes to moral evaluation or the
principle values that guide aims and practices. Hence, since moral realism according to
Ehman is true, discord in moral discourse is due to a mistaken perception of moral
obligation and through discussion, further analysis etc., this discord can be resolved.
Mackie would respond that Ehman does not appear to acknowledge cases of moral dispute
in which those involved are in total opposition to each other, the agent who claims that he
or she has a right to enslave others, or the agent who claims that he or she has the duty to
take his or her own life in the case of having suffered disgrace in opposition to those who
hold that suicide is always intrinsically evil. Whenever the moral discord is on the
categorical level, (non-institutional) there does not seem to be much ground for meaningful
discussion nor hope that the dispute shall ever be resolved.
The anti-realist argument from relativity considers moral dispute to be evidence that
objective moral evaluations do not exist. The position of the moral-error theorist is that
there can be objective evaluation on the hypothetical level: one can objectively evaluate an
action according to a specific moral code established by an institution, for example
enslaving other human beings is objectively wrong because it goes against the charter of
human rights. A dispute about matters involving hypothetical or institutional moral claims
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105279, 183
52
can therefore be resolved. However, non-institutional moral judgments have no referent
(there are no objective moral facts out there to make them true or false); they therefore
cannot be objective and cannot be true or false. This, according to Mackie explains why
moral disputes that involve non-institutional moral claims can never be resolved. The
argument from relativity is not particularly strong since there is in fact quite widespread
international agreement on certain moral principles as is evidenced by the signing of the
“International Charter of Human Rights.”
Although far from being exhaustive, the opposition to the argument from relativity
has, I think, been represented. The argument from relativity is based on the assumption that
that moral discourse involves categorical imperatives, and many of those who oppose his
argument do so by denying that moral discourse involves categorical imperatives.
Objections to the argument from queerness also focus on accounting for the imperative
nature of morality to defend the objectivity of moral evaluations.
David Copp argues that although Mackie is correct to think that moral facts would
be normative, he is mistaken in thinking that normative facts would be “intrinsically
prescriptive.”92 According to Copp’s analysis of Mackie’s argument from queerness,
Mackie makes three errors. The first error is his claim that moral facts would be
intrinsically normative if they existed. Copp points out that even if there were such a fact
that torturing is wrong, for example, it does not follow that the normativity of this fact is
92
David Copp, “Normativity, Deliberation and Queerness”, in A World Without Values;
Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory, Editors: Richard Joyce § Simon Kirchin,
Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York:Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010,
146
53
intrinsic to it. Copp argues that Mackie is also wrong to think that normative facts would
be “prescriptive” if by this he means that a fact p is prescriptive just in case any person who
believed that p would necessarily be suitably motivated. Mackie confuses the motivational
import of a basic moral belief with the normativity of a moral fact. The third mistake that
Mackie makes is to suppose that ordinary moral judgments entail facts that would motivate
anyone who was aware of them (prescriptivity). Copp argues that instead, it is plausible for
an agent who is deliberating rationally to take into account any relevant normative fact of
which she was aware, normativity thus, would be tied to the motivation of rational agents.93
Mackie however doesn’t concede such a scenario, instead he thinks that normativity can be
reduced to facts about actual motivation. Copp thinks that Mackie’s account of normativity
is implausible, so he provides an alternative “genuine normativity thesis”: “A reason to do
something is “authoritative” or “genuinely normative” just in case a person who believed
she had this reason would be irrational not to take it appropriately into account in deciding
what to do.”94
After analyzing types of reasons and their impact on decision-making, Copp
declares that moral reasons are “morally authoritative” but that they do not qualify as
“genuinely” normative. If this is the case then the normativity of moral reasons is not
problematic since there is no excessively rationalistic claim that it would be “irrational” to
ignore them in decision-making. Joyce would agree to some extent with Copp’s critique
of Mackie’s argument from queerness. Copp also indulges in a critique of Joyce’s defense
93
94
Copp, “Normativity, Deliberation and Queerness”, 146
Ibid, 147
54
of the moral error theory. Copp interprets Joyce to be arguing that if there is moral
obligation, there must be reasons that are both non-instrumental and authoritative, but that
there are only instrumental reasons and these are authoritative.95 Copp objects by arguing
that the authoritative reasons are implausible when combined with an instrumental theory
of practical reason. He is also inclined to believe that the authoritative reasons proposal is
false altogether. Copp proposes an optimal moral code according to which any agent who
accepts this code has reason to act morally. He assumes that facts about moral reasons are
facts about the choices that are called for by the optimal moral system. Copp argues that
this moral code provides moral reasons for action even if the agent is unaware of these
reasons:
“But she might not realize that the fact that the optimal moral code calls for her to φ
is the fact that there is a moral reason for her to φ … On the society-centered
theory, her failure would be due to a failure to understand the key point that,
necessarily, if the optimal moral code calls for her to φ then she has a reason to φ”
96
On this theory, the content of the world of moral reasons is determined by the optimal
moral code. The agent, however, is only rational if she believes that she has a moral reason
to act in a particular way and she takes this moral reason into account in her practical
deliberation. By redefining moral authoritativeness in this way, authoritative reasons are
compatible with moral realism. 97 Copp thus accounts for moral motivation while rejecting
Mackie’s claim that objective morality has an inbuilt “to-be-pursuedness.” His argument
95
Ibid, 159
Ibid, 161
97
Ibid, 162
96
55
however does not seem to offer a satisfactory response to the problem of categorical
imperatives that are in opposition to the reasonable personal interests of the agent in
question. I think that Joyce would still insist that moral judgments in real practice are
authoritative beyond a simple “taking into account moral reasons derived from a code,” and
that such authoritative reasons do not exist. When one agent declares that abortion is
wrong, she means that it is wrong with an authority that appeals to a moral code that is noninstitutional. And when another agent declares that every woman has the right to abort, she
also means that this right corresponds to an optimal moral code. Which of the moral codes
is the optimal and can we rationally deduce the optimal moral code? What reasons does the
agent have for complying with any moral code whatsoever? Furthermore, and more
importantly, how do ‘reasons’ become imperatives?
Lee Shepski, in “The vanishing argument from queerness” also argues that Mackie
is mistaken in presenting moral values as objectively prescriptive in the motivating sense.
He clarifies that Mackie’s argument is against the existence of ‘objective moral values’, and
that values are to be understood as ‘entities, properties, relations, and facts’. Mackie,
according to Shepski, asserts that the defining characteristic of objective values is intrinsic,
objective prescriptivity. 98 He thinks that for Mackie, something qualifies as non-queer only
if it is susceptible to empirical investigation, and since moral facts are not empirically
available, it can be concluded that they do not exist. Shepski argues that there are many
other elements of human life that are not susceptible to empirical investigation and yet we
98
Lee Shepski, “The vanishing argument from queerness”, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 86:3, 371-387: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048400802000568, 372
56
do not doubt of their existence. Certain phenomena characteristic of human life are
mysterious to us and do not appear to have empirical explanations, but this does not mean
that they do not exist or that they will not be explained in the future as new discoveries are
being made: “In some cases we must come to accept mystery. If we do, the argument from
queerness may lose much of its intuitive appeal – as indeed it should, if my analysis of it is
correct”99 In other words, just because something appears to be ‘queer’ to us now, we
cannot conclude that it doesn’t exist. It could be that in the future evidence is found to
support the existence of objective moral facts.
David Brink argues in his article called “Moral Realism and the Skeptical
Arguments from Disagreement and Queerness” that Mackie’s arguments from
disagreement and from queerness do not pose a real threat to moral objectivity. He points
out that part of the force of Mackie’s argument is derived from the fact that he supposes
that moral realism implies a belief in internalism. Brink is a defender of moral realism but
rejects internalism claiming that, “determination of the motivational and reason-giving
power of moral facts will have to await specifications of the moral facts and of the desires
and interests of agents.”100 He supports a functionalist account of morality, which implies
that moral facts will “as a matter of fact at least typically provide agents with reasons to do
the morally correct thing.”101
99
Shepski, “The vanishing argument from queerness”, 386
David O. Brink,“Moral realism and the sceptical arguments from disagreement and
queerness”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62:2, 111-125,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408412341311, 115
101
Brink,“Moral realism and the sceptical arguments from disagreement and queerness”,
115
100
57
According to Brink, the moral realist is not committed necessarily to ontological
pluralism. Defending a materialist account of the world, Brink claims that moral properties
supervene upon other natural properties, and that these properties although not identical
with physical properties, are realized materially. He declares that Mackie fails to provide
good reason for disbelieving moral realism: “The moral realist has various resources with
which to account for moral disputes, and neither his account of the supervenience of moral
facts nor his account of the theory-dependence of moral knowledge is queer or
uncommon.” 102 In Brink’s view, moral facts are facts about human well-being and
flourishing (functionalism).
Robert Ehman also offers objections to the argument from queerness in his article,
“Moral Objectivity.” Ehman claims that it is an error to identify objective moral judgments
necessarily with the motivation to act according to those judgments: “Morality is a final
end only for a man who makes it his end. This is free, not logically necessary. The relation
of morality to an agent depends on his attitude or will.” 103 According to Ehman this defeats
the anti-realist claim that objective moral values are strange, since they imply a motivation
necessarily attached to a rational judgment.
In Jonathan Harrison’s critique of Mackie’s error theory he argues that Mackie is
inconsistent in claiming that all moral judgments are false, since later on he asserts certain
moral judgments. He compares hypothetical “oughts” to categorical “oughts” and argues
that according to Mackie, the hypothetical “ought” can be objectively right or wrong - yet
102
103
Ibid, 125
Ehman, Moral objectivity, 186
58
we cannot find anything out there in the world that can be identified as wrongness or
rightness. Does not the same apply to categorical imperatives?
Harrison further argues that if Mackie thinks that when we say that something is
objectively wrong, we are attributing to it an objective property of wrongness (Harrison
agrees that this is in fact the case), and if Mackie also maintains that no actions can possess
such objective properties, then he must for consistency’s sake argue that all such
attributions of objective properties are false. Mackie should therefore be arguing that
whenever we state that an action is wrong, that statement is false on both the hypothetical
and categorical level: “In any case, it ought to be Mackie’s view that moral judgments are
erroneous, not that moral sentences are meaningless, and so do not express moral
judgments at all.”104 Harrison also thinks that Mackie is inconsistent in another way:
Mackie claims that all moral judgments are false but at the same time makes the claim in
his book that capital punishment is wrong. He describes Mackie’s position to be that moral
judgments are no more than a delusive projection of human sentiment. For Mackie, this is a
good thing since it allows us to, “describe as right (or wrong) anything we like, and among
the things to which we attribute being right (or wrong) there will be some things which no
one has regarded as being right (or wrong) before.”105 Harrison argues that moral sceptic
104
Jonathan Harrison, A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory, in Ethical Theory, edited by
Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, 6th edition, 2011, Wadsworth, Cenegage Learning,
Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States,
561
105
Harrison, A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory, 564
59
‘ought’ not to assess something as ‘good’ since doing so amounts to self-contradiction and
he is no doubt correct in isolating inconsistencies in Mackie’s argumentation.
Harrison’s most relevant objection to Mackie’s moral-error theory is his claim that
if Mackie asserts that moral properties don’t exist, it is inconsistent for him to assert that
hypothetical imperatives can be true or false while maintaining that categorical imperatives
are simply not true because there is nothing out there to make them true or false. The
objection does seem to place the theory in dilemma. Joyce and Garner, however, argue that
the “prescriptivity” that characterizes the objectivity moral judgments actually means that
X has reason to O. On the institutional level, the agent can objectively evaluate actions
based on her desires or interests. Categorical imperatives, on the other hand, make
demands that do not take into account the interests and desires of the agent; there are no
reasons for taking them into account. Hence, categorical imperatives cannot be true,
because there is never a reason for action outside of the interests or desires of the agent.
This argument avoids the problem of the moral error theory being dependent on the truth of
internalism, and avoids the problem of the contradiction that Harrison has identified in
Mackie’s version of the moral-error theory. For, institutional moral judgments involve
reasons for acting in a certain way, compelling reasons relevant to the interests or desires of
the agent. Categorical or non-institutional imperatives, on the other hand, make judgments
that transcend the interest of the agent. Though categorical imperatives appear to appeal
conceptually to some sort of reason for complying, no sense can be made out of those
60
reasons; or in other words, such reasons do not exist. We can therefore conclude that an
error is committed, and non-institutional moral judgments are simply not valid.
Having explored the positions that oppose the moral-error theory, I believe it can be
concluded that most of the objections focus on the imperative nature of morality. Some
argue that moral facts are prescriptive by their very nature, and that there is nothing queer
about such facts. Others argue that moral prescriptivity is part of practical rationality, and
that in virtue of the desires of interests of the agent in question, ethical valuations endorse
or disapprove of the action in question. Moral realists who do not uphold ontological
plurality, however, are forced to deny the categorical imperative. Mackie, Joyce, Garner,
and Harrison all agree that categorical moral judgments are a part of ordinary moral
discourse. Moral claims are ordinarily asserted on the assumption that they are true
independent of the desires and interests of the agent. The categorical authority of moral
judgment is essential to the functionality of human society. Without the categorical
imperative of “you ‘ought’ to keep your promises,” for example, the framework of our
society collapses. The categorical imperative does indeed appear to be a “queer” thing,
since it is authoritative and commands from outside of the interests and desires of the agent.
Nevertheless, categorical imperatives are undeniably part of ordinary moral discourse. It
would seem that one is either obliged to assert the existence of “queer” moral properties
that have a commanding nature, or to accept the moral error theory. Is there a way out of
this dilemma? Can one plausibly defend the objectivity and prescriptivity of moral
evaluations without “queer” properties?
61
Chapter 5
Objectivity without objects: Hilary Putnam’s ethics without ontology and Levinas’
imperative of the “face of the other”
The previous chapter ended with a question that I would like to address in the
following lines. For clarity’s sake, I shall explore possible responses in two parts. One part
deals with the theme of objectivity, in which I shall present the position of Hilary Putnam
who introduces the notion of “objectivity without objects”. The second part takes a look at
the prescriptive nature of moral judgments through the eyes of Emmanuel Levinas, and his
ethics of “presence.” I shall then attempt to demonstrate how the two elements discussed
can be brought together to offer a more complete explanation for the phenomenon of moral
evaluation. Deliberation about how one “ought” to act takes place in what Thomas Nagel
refers to as the “subtle but profound gap between desire and action;”106 a space where
objective practical reasoning about morality is exercised in the presence of the “other.”
There are many ways of interpreting the term “objectivity,” which of course makes
it difficult to present an argument about whether or not something is objective. Wiggins
defines objectivity as: “a subject matter is objective or relates to an objective reality if and
only if there are questions about it that admit of answers that are substantially true.”107
106
Thomas Nagel, The Last Word, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, 109
David Wiggins, Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality, Harvard
University Press, 2006, 359
107
62
Pojman identifies naturalists, nonnaturalists and supernaturalists as moral realists108 and
describes the moral realist as one who believes that there are moral facts that “exist
independently of whether we believe them.”109 Moral objectivity for the realist is the belief
that moral evaluations possess truth-value because there is a reality existing independently
of the mind that makes them true or false.110
Hilary Putnam opposes this understanding of objectivity, presenting the notion of
“objectivity without objects.” In the introduction of his book “Ethics Without Ontology”,
Putnam explains that he conceives of ethics to be similar to a table with many legs,
representing the many aspects that come into play in ethical evaluations; although such a
table may wobble a lot when set on an uneven floor, it is very difficult to overturn. Ethics
for Putnam, is concerned with the solution of practical problems, guided by many mutually
supporting but not fully reconcilable principles. He argues that despite this plurality of
elements that come into play, ethical valuings can be objective. Ethical evaluations can be
objectively true or false and, contra Mackie; their objectivity does not imply the existence
of “queer” properties. Putnam would agree with Wiggins that objectivity means that the
subject matter is truth-apt but that this does not mean that there are mind-independent
properties that make the evaluation true or false. Instead he argues that there is a
108
Ethical Theory, edited by Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser, 6th edition, 2011,
Wadsworth, Cenegage Learning, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore,
Spain, United Kingdom, United States, 546
109
Ibid
110
There are moral naturalists that Pojman identifies as realists but also as subjectivists
because for them moral evaluation is subject to the beliefs of the society.
63
conceptual framework according to which an ethical evaluation can qualify as either true or
false.
In defense of “objectivity without objects”, Putnam proposes a theory of conceptual
relativity, employing as part of his argument a comparison between the number of
ontological entities that would exist in the world according to Carnap and the number of
entities in the world according to Lezniewski. Carnap leaves mereological sums out of his
world and Lezniewski includes them, resulting in an apparent contradiction between the
two worlds. Carnap’s world and Lezniewski’s world differ in numbers of ontological
entities. Putnam declares, however, that the contradiction is only apparent since what
makes them incompatible is simply conventional; each one has chosen to use a different
‘optional language’. They “… are not in fact contradictory, if we understand each of them
as belonging to a different optional language, and recognize that the two optional languages
involve choices of incompatible conventions. What are incompatible are not the statements
themselves, which cannot simply be conjoined, but the conventions.” 111 Putnam goes on
to show that the same occurs with identity statements as with existence statements. Some
identity statements have ambiguous meaning, allowing several choices as to how the
meaning could be fixed. The meaning that is chosen depends on convention, so that
according to one convention X=Y where X refers to a certain point in space and Y to a set
of regions. However, if a different convention is adopted X=Y would not be true. In other
words, what Putnam is trying to show is that there are different extensions of our notions of
111
Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, London, England, 2004, 46
64
object and existence, and if this is true, we need to do some serious revision of our
ontological assertions.112 Putnam suggests that both conceptual relativity and conceptual
plurality pose serious problems for ontologists; furthermore, there is the problem that
ontology implies that every “instance of objectivity must be supported by objects”113
The point that Putnam wants to make is that instances of objectivity do not
necessarily need to be supported by corresponding objects. There are two traditional
philosophical ideas that he is up against in making this assertion; the first is the claim that if
an idea is objectively true, then “there have to be objects to which the claim “corresponds”
– an idea which is built into the very etymology of the word ‘objective.’”114 The second
traditional philosophical idea that Putnam wants to put into question is the “corollary idea
that if there are no obvious natural objects whose properties would make the claim true,
then there must be some non-natural objects to play the role of “truth-maker”.115 There is a
third idea that follows from these two premises: “if a claim is true, then the claim is a
description of whatever objects and properties make it true.” 116 When Mackie argues that
if non-institutional moral judgments were true, they would imply the existence of queer
ontological properties, he is assuming these three correlated notions in his understanding of
objectivity, and Putnam would agree with him that if this were the case, then indeed
objective moral facts would be very queer entities. But what if the above-mentioned
112
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 49
Ibid, 51
114
Ibid, 52
115
Ibid, 52
116
Ibid, 52
113
65
traditional philosophical assumptions were not true? What if there were another way of
accounting for the objective truth or falsity of a proposition or statement?
Putnam argues that there are in fact many instances in which we assert that a
statement is un-controversially true even though it does not function as a description of an
object. Logical connections exemplify such assertions very well. For example:
“If all platypuses are egg-laying mammals, then it follows that anything that is not
an egg-laying mammal is not a platypus”117
Of course, if one wanted to one could argue that this is a description, it is a
description of the logical connection between the two statements. Putnam however
maintains that the idea of the existence of a realm of invisible objects that makes a
statement true or false is absurd. Putnam argues that logic is not a description of the natural
world, since we know that the above-mentioned statement about platypuses is true whether
or not such egg-laying platypuses exist118. Hence, according to Putnam, “Logic is neither a
description of non-natural relations between transcendent “objects” nor a description of
ordinary empirical properties of empirical objects.” 119 If this assertion of Putnam’s is
“true”, then what is it that makes a tautology true? How can we be so absolutely certain
that statements such as “All bachelors are unmarried men” are true statements, whether or
not there is a fact out there in the mind-independent world that makes them true?
117
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 56
Putnam clearly rejects Quine’s repudiation of the analytic-synthetic distinction but the
purpose of presenting Putnam’s arguments in this dissertation is however only to
demonstrate that there could be a way of conceiving objectivity within a conceptual
framework which would allow for an account of objectivity without “queer” ontological
properties. It is not my intent to awaken a discussion of the analytic-synthetic distinction.
119
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 59
118
66
Putnam’s concept of conceptual truth asserts that: “What makes a truth a conceptual truth,
as I am using the term, is that it is impossible to make (relevant) sense of the assertion of
its negation.” 120 He believes that we are constrained to abide within the boundaries of an
accepted body of beliefs and concepts and conceptual connections.
There are however instances when this boundary is overstepped or redefined. A
scientific revolution can lead us to recognize that something that previously made no sense
could actually be true. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry presents an example of
such a scenario, whereby the proposition that “the sum of the angles in any triangle is
always greater than two right angles”121 is true. Putnam maintains that his understanding
of conceptual truth incorporates an interpenetration of conceptual relations and facts, and
that it grants the possibility of the corrigibility of knowledge of conceptual truth.
Logical
justification is not something that is simply recognized by intuition, “…one learns what
logical truth is by learning the procedures and standards of logic. But nothing in those
procedures and standards involves comparing the statements that one is trying to evaluate
for logical truth (or logical consistency, or implication etc.) with non-natural entities… to
see whether they do or do not describe this mysterious part of reality.”122 Having argued his
case for conceptual truth in the realm of logic, Putnam proceeds to apply the same
deliberation to the realm of mathematics. Mathematical truths, according to Putnam are
methodological value-judgments. Putnam rightly points out that, “So much about the
identity relations between different categories of mathematical objects is conventional, that
120
Ibid, 61
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 62
122
Ibid, 65
121
67
the picture of ourselves as describing a bunch of objects that are there “anyway” is in
trouble from the start.”123 He argues that statements about the “existence” of mathematical
entities don’t assert the actual existence of mathematical objects; instead they assert
mathematical possibility of certain structures.124 Contemporary science is completely
dependent on mathematics, and the success of mathematics counts as evidence to warrant
the claim that mathematical theorems are objective truths, but offers no support for the
fruitless claim that mathematical theorems are “descriptions of a special realm of “abstract
entities.”125 Thus Putnam makes his point clear that when we say that mathematical
theorems are true, we are not making a statement about the existence of mathematical
objects but about the objectivity of mathematics.126
Putnam goes on to assert that the notion of conceptual truth that he has used to
explain the objectivity of logic and mathematics can also be applied to non-moral value
judgments. Value judgments are not only made in the realm of morality, we make value
judgments when we assess scientific hypotheses. We compare two hypotheses and assess
which one is more plausible based on certain criteria that we have for such evaluations.
When we make these evaluations, we are not describing some non-natural property that
each of the hypotheses has. When, during the Olympics, the judges evaluate a figure
skating routine, it is not that they perceive non-natural properties of goodness or badness
that define the objective value of the routine. In the same way, Putnam argues that when
123
Ibid, 66
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 67
125
Ibid, 67
126
Ibid, 67
124
68
we say that a particular scientific theory is simple or coherent, what we are doing is
evaluating, not describing some non-natural property that the theory supposedly possesses.
The evaluations made are of course fallible, but good scientists learn through experience
with the exercise of reason, to reach a considerable degree of accuracy in making these
evaluations. In the same way the judges of Olympic figure skating, in an effort to avoid
bias, evaluate according to certain conventional criteria enabling them to be considerably
objective in their evaluations. The ‘platonic’ approach, on the other hand, would imply
falling into the temptation of asserting that there are some mysterious entities that guarantee
or stand behind “correct judgments of the reasonable and the unreasonable”127 By applying
the same reasoning to moral judgments, it can be said that they can be objective, in the
sense that they can be the result of good reasoning without being descriptions of any sort of
non-natural properties. Since ethical statements are equally forms of cognitive activity,
they are subject to norms of truth and validity. This understanding of objectivity also
allows for improvement and correction when it comes to moral assessments, so that what
was once considered to be morally acceptable, can now be evaluated as unacceptable, and
vice versa. Ethical statements are, however, not equivalent to logical statements in all
senses. Putnam refers to ethical statements as valuings of two different kinds. There are
statements that are descriptive such as, “anyone who tortures children is cruel”; and others
that are not such as: “it is wrong to torture children”. Mackie of course, would agree with
Putnam that descriptive moral statements can be true or false. Putnam, however, also
argues that non-descriptive ethical statements, including categorical imperatives, can be
127
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 70
69
objective since, just like mathematical and logical claims, they are the result of proper
reasoning. Putnam argues that “To recognize that there can be “objectivity without
objects” and that a bona fide statement is not necessarily a description is essential to clear
thinking about these issues.”128
There is of course the objection that if moral judgments can be objective, then why
is there so much disagreement with respect to ethical issues? - otherwise known as
Mackie’s argument from relativity. To this objection, Putnam responds that the fact that
there are disagreements does not imply that there cannot be objectivity in ethical reasoning.
There are ethical issues about which people who stand within the ethical life all do agree.
Disagreement arises because real ethical questions are practical, “real ethical questions are
a species of practical question, and practical questions don’t only involve valuings, they
involve a complex mixture of philosophical beliefs, religious beliefs and factual beliefs.”129
According to Putnam, therefore, it can be argued that ethical judgments, despite
their complexity, are objective. An ethical evaluation is true or false as a descriptive
statement, or in the case of it not being a descriptive statement, it is conceptually either true
or false. One can therefore assert moral objectivity without making reference to any sort of
non-natural or otherwise natural property. But, how do we know if we have made a correct
moral evaluation? By taking Putnam’s approach, one could say that we come to know it
through experience, by applying human reasoning within a body of previously accepted
beliefs. Descriptive ethical statements can be verified through experience; they are
128
129
Ibid, 77-78
Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 75
70
empirically verifiable. Statements that are not descriptive, on the other hand, according to
Putnam, are true or false in the same way that we say that a logical connection is true or a
mathematical equation is true. They can be true or false independent of the desire or
interest of the agent. By approaching moral objectivity from this perspective of conceptual
truth, it is possible to assert that “slavery is wrong” with objectivity, despite the fact that it
could actually be convenient for a particular society to enslave a certain group of their
society. We can also say that we know now that slavery is wrong, even though a few
centuries back some societies considered it to be permissible; indeed a God-given right.
We can say that it was just as wrong then as it is now, even if the people of the given
society were not aware that it was wrong. I believe that these arguments brought forth by
Putnam make it plausible to assert that it is not only wrong because of the negative
consequences, it is wrong because it is unreasonable to think that certain people are
superior to other people, and that they thus have the right to impose forced labor on the
supposedly inferior group. To say that one has the right to enslave other human beings is
logically incoherent, inconsistent with one’s understanding of who one is as a human
person: by recognizing oneself as a person with rights, it would be inconsistent to deny that
the other person does not have the same rights. This deliberation is a purely rational one
and it demonstrates that when there is dispute about moral judgments, human logic is the
main tool employed to support or argue for the truth of a particular assessment.
Although Putnam’s account might appear to be convincing, as well as appealing as
it avoids the problem of “queer ontological properties”, it must be acknowledged that there
is still a characteristic of moral judgment that has not been addressed. Mackie claimed that
71
part of the “queerness” of non-institutional moral judgments is their commanding nature, in
other words, the imperative.130 Simon Kirchin, in his article, “A Tension in the Moral Error
Theory”, asserts that Mackie’s notion of an objective prescription linked to moral
evaluation is strange and challenging for anyone who would want to oppose his theory:
“How could there be demands without a demander? How can the idea of a reason be
something that exists response-independently? How can we account for the existence of
values (which might generate or ground reasons) whilst ignoring humans, the valuing
creatures?”131 Objectivity and prescriptivity are, according to Kirchin, crucial issues in the
debate surrounding the moral-error theory. Putnam, however, does not address the problem
of prescriptivity. The question, hence, remains unresolved: how does it happen that the
rational evaluation of an action or an event however objective it might be, is accompanied
by an imperative? Hume’s critique seems to come back to haunt us because we are forced
to acknowledge that an “ought” cannot be derived from a purely rational statement unless
the statement is accompanied by a desire or interest. In the case of hypothetical
imperatives, or institutional moral judgments, personal interest does provide a motivation,
and even then the force of the “imperative” and its “rationality” would be a matter for
130
J.L Mackie argues: “In this way the justice or injustice of decisions relative to standards
can be a thoroughly objective matter, though there may still be a subjective element of
interpretation or application of standards. But the statement that a certain decision is thus
just or unjust will not be objectively prescriptive: in so far as it can be simply true it leaves
open the question whether there is any objective requirement to do what is just and to
refrain from what is unjust and equally leaves open the practical decision to act in either
way” Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 28
131
Simon Kirchin, “A Tension in the Moral Error Theory”, in A World Without Values;
Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory, Editors: Richard Joyce § Simon Kirchin,
Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York:Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010,
176
72
dispute. How do we explain that moral judgments that go against our desires or interests
have a commanding nature? Where does the imperative come from? I think that a plausible
response to this question can be found in the writing of Emmanuel Levinas. In the words
of Richard A. Cohen, for Levinas, “The appearance of the alterity of the other is not an
appearance at all, but the enigma of a command that bursts through all appearance: “Thou
shalt not murder.” The other “is” unique, not a function of a context, just as the moral self,
responsible for this other, “is” also unique.132 For Levinas (contra Heidegger), ethics
precedes ontology; it precedes being and is therefore also the first philosophy. The
presence of the “other” precedes being itself so that selfhood is altered radically by the
alterity of the other. It is the strangeness of the “Other” who cannot be reduced to the “I”
that calls into question my spontaneity.133
Emmanuel Levinas grapples with the notion of “beyond being,” referring to that
which precedes ontology. Levinas’s insight is, I think fascinating, since he approaches
ethics from an original perspective. Like Putnam, and like Heidegger, Levinas rejects
traditional philosophical metaphysics, which Heidegger dubbed onto-theo-logy, arguing
that it is an “ontic’ theology in the guise of ontology.134 According to Cohen, Levinas
“discerns that with the critique of the philosophy of presence we can now recognize that all
along ontology, whether onto-theo-logical or not, has been the wrong standard for ethics,
that it is an inferior standard. Ethics not only survives the so-called “end of metaphysics,”
132
Richard. A Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2001,
149
133
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and infinity, an Essay on Exteriority, Translated by
Alphonso Lingis, The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979, 43
134
Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, 123
73
it finally (and perhaps first) comes into its own with that end.”135 With metaphysics out of
the picture, the true precedence of ethics is revealed. Ethics precedes ontology and
philosophy begins with ethics. Levinas argues that the question of “What is ethics?” is the
wrong question to ask because it distorts ethics, forcing it into the corset of the “what is” of
ontology. Ethics is the question “What ought to be?” Ethics, according to Levinas, doesn’t
have an essence, instead it “unsettles essences.”136 The question of “to be or not to be” is
preceded by the question of one’s “right to be,” for if one does not have the right to be, then
there is no possibility of being at all. “Here the question is not a reflective one, in one’s
own being or in the being of beings, but rather a matter of being put-into-question by the
other person.”137 This is perhaps an over-simplified interpretation of what Levinas means
when he speaks ethically; it is however not my purpose to provide a thorough analysis of
his thought. What I would like to focus on is the notion of the “Other”. For Levinas, ethics
is the naked “face” of the other intruding, disturbing and commanding, a “face” that
“pierces the face that can be objectified”, a “face” that one cannot kill, or rather “whose
meaning consists in saying ‘thou shalt not kill’.”138 This does not mean that it is impossible
to kill the “other.” “Ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity”,139 but is an imperative
that renders killing evil. The presence of the “Other” amounts to a command; it is a call to
responsibility that disturbs our egoistical assessment of that which is in our own interest.
135
Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, 127
Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, 136
137
Ibid, 136
138
Ibid, 137
139
Ibid, 137
136
74
The imperative proceeds from the presence of the “Other;” it is a presence that utters a
command and not a fact that is accompanied by an “ought”.
Although the ethical imperative that Levinas defends could be considered to be
“objective” in the sense that it commands independently of the interests or desires of the
subject, Levinas would not qualify as a realist in the way that the realist position has been
defined in previous chapters. In fact, I think he would agree with Mackie that objective
moral facts do not exist, because for Levinas, ethics precedes “being”, and precedes
ontology. There are no facts that make ethical evaluations true or false. It is the presence
of the “face” of the other that disrupts the reasoning of the self, and that commands, that
calls for a response; that calls for responsibility. According to Levinas, signs and language
only have meaning in the presence of the “Other”; I alienate myself from them as I employ
them to designate a thing to the other. Language makes objectivity possible through the
thematization of objects in relation to the “other”, in other words, things become objective
through communication.140 “This objectivity is correlative, not of some trait in an isolated
subject but of his relation with the Other.”141 Objectivity, therefore, for Levinas, is not
about the objects, but about thematizing them in relation to the “other.” According to
Levinas, ethics is the placing into question of my spontaneity by the face of the other and it
precedes everything: language, discourse, being etc. It evokes an objective categorical
imperative that is not one of ontological necessity, it is an imperative that precedes being
140
141
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 209
Ibid, 209
75
itself; it unsettles being in the “surplus of the other’s non-encompassable alterity.” 142 The
presence of the “other” is in Levinasian thought, not an ontological presence, it is not an
essence, it is a presence that unsettles from ‘beyond being’, a presence that is not
thematized, it is not ontological. This unsettling of the spontaneity of the self also imposes
responsibility, meaning an obligation for the self to respond for the other. “The
responsibility for the other can not have begun in my commitment, in my decision. The
unlimited responsibility in which I find myself comes from the hither side of my freedom,
from a “prior to every memory,” an “ulterior to every accomplishment,” from the nonpresent par excellence, the non-original, the anarchical, prior to or beyond essence. The
responsibility for the other is the locus in which is situated the null-site of subjectivity,
where the privilege of the question “Where?” no longer holds.”143 This null-site of
subjectivity is a locus that is not really a locus because it stands in a place prior to essence,
it is the flip-side of my freedom, a non-place where responsibility is located, which calls
out to the self in the form of a command. Ethics, then, is about being “for-the-other before
oneself.”144 Is this a sort of intuitionist approach then? Is it the intuition that recognizes
the presence of the other? I think that Levinas would disagree. No, ethics is not an “is”
that the intuition would recognize. That would be looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Ethics is about a command that the very presence of the other utters, that precedes being; it
is an “ought” that cannot be described by using terms that belong to “is.”
142
Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, 137
Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, Duquesne University Press, 1998, 10
144
Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy, 145
143
76
At this point I would like to return to the case scenario with which I opened this
dissertation. When that bleeding woman stands at your doorstep, you find yourself in a
peculiar circumstance; you are obliged to make a decision about how to act. As Thomas
Nagel puts it: freedom forces you to make a choice about the action that you are going to
take. The moment of deliberation about what to do forms part of the human experience of
moral evaluation, but what exactly happens in the space that is located between the fact or
event and the action? Thomas Nagel describes this space as a “subtle but profound gap
between desire and action into which the free exercise of reason enters.”145 It is at this
point that the agent takes a step back, a step away from the background of personal interests
and desires to consider what she “ought” to do. The agent finds herself in the position of an
“ideal observer” who contemplates human action from a perspective that transcends her
own desires and interests. Nagel calls this perspective the “centerless point of view.” He
argues that an objective point of view can be obtained by imagining a world that includes
oneself as just another one of its contents, in other words, to conceive of oneself from
outside of oneself.146 Moral objectivity, can therefore be achieved by adopting a perspective
from outside “all the points of view and experiences of that person and others of his
species, and considering the world as a place in which these phenomena are produced by
interaction between these beings and other beings”147 Nagel believes that the connection
between objectivity and intersubjectivity is obtained from this centerless point of view.148
145
Thomas Nagel, The Last Word, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, 109
Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 76
147
Ibid, 77
148
Ibid, 77
146
77
He further asserts that: “Morality is possible only for beings capable of seeing themselves
as one individual among others…”149 Morality implies that the individual does not consider
herself in any unique status with respect to anyone else. The centerless point of view is
hence also a “familiar point of view” that we share with all other human beings present
both in the memory and in the expectation of one’s own experience. We can use our
imaginative powers and our capacity to form universal concepts to think about possibilities
that we ourselves have not experienced.150 This allows us to go beyond our own
experiences to get a feel for the experiences of others. The centerless point of view is, thus,
a perspective that enables one to step away from one’s own personal interest, and is – I
argue – therefore, also one that enables us to, in the words of Levinas, ‘be-for-the-other
before oneself.” Although Nagel represents this point of view as an impersonal one, I
believe that it is actually profoundly interpersonal. The scenario of the wounded woman at
the door inspires a heartfelt, painful and immanently inter-personal deliberation about what
one “ought” to do and not only a distanced impersonal assessment of what anyone “ought”
to do under those circumstances. Although Nagel, like Putnam does successfully provide an
explanation for the objectivity of moral evaluation that excludes what Mackie would call
“queer ontological properties”, he is challenged by the Humean claim that reason cannot
provide non-instrumental reasons for human conduct. To contest to this challenge, he
argues that human freedom forces upon us the choice of whether or not to act according to
149
150
Nagel, The Last Word, 120
Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 33
78
our own interests.151 In the gap between desire and action, one is forced to make a decision,
the agent thus reasons about what she “should” do. This deliberation is not orchestrated
from the perspective of a lone individual, instead according to Nagel, it takes on a
generality; it becomes “what any person ought to do in these same circumstances.” This
gap, places me before a universal standard “within myself that enables me to get outside of
myself,” and – I argue - when I step out of myself I stand in the presence of the ‘other’. I
believe that Nagel’s centerless point of view is not an impersonal perspective but a
perspective that we adopt because we are aware of the presence of the “other.” It is this
presence that questions my spontaneity in that gap between action and desire. Nagel rightly
points out that freedom forces it upon me to choose an action, and when I deliberate about
what that action “should” be, I step out of myself into the presence of the “other” who sets
a universal standard. When I open the door and find a dying woman at my doorstep, in that
gap between the desire to ignore her and return to my pastime and my action of reaching
out to her, I experience an imperative that comes from the presence of an “other” who
places my egoism into question. I argue that it is not rational deliberation alone that moves
me to decide to open my door wider and let her in; I am first confronted with an imperative
that I cannot give to myself, but that comes from outside of myself when I take on the
centerless point of view. An imperative cannot be uttered by a thing or by an idea, an
imperative is spoken by an-other. This premise entails an implicit premise: that the “other”
is a subject and not an object. According to Martin Buber, the I-It relationship is one that is
151
Nagel, The Last Word, 118
79
established between the subject and a passive object. The I-Thou relationship, however, is
radically distinct since it is one of reciprocity between two subjects.152 For Levinas, this IThou relation is one in which the “other” obligates me.153 It is the “Other” who takes
precedence calling for responsibility - to respond to the other. I believe that by
understanding the ‘centerless point of view’ as one that allows me to be objective in my
moral deliberation not only because it takes me out of the realm of my personal interests
but also because it places me in the presence of the ‘other’, we can satisfactorily respond to
the question of how in our moral deliberation we experience both an imperative as well as a
reason or motive to act independent of personal motives or interests? In that gap between
desire and action, we cannot help but find ourselves confronted by an imperative that places
into question my spontaneity that precedes my rational objective deliberation about what I
“ought” to do.
In this chapter, I have attempted to address the “queerness” of the objectivity and
prescriptivity of moral evaluation. I have presented Hilary Putnam’s arguments for
“objectivity without objects” to demonstrate that it is possible to conceive of objective
moral evaluations without taking recourse in non-natural properties to explain how such
statements can be true or false. Since the problem of the prescriptive nature of noninstitutional moral evaluations remained unresolved, I have explored the thought of
Emmanuel Levinas to show that it is the presence of the “face” of the “other” that offers an
acceptable explanation for the prescriptivity nature of moral judgments. I have then gone on
152
153
The Levinas Reader, Edited by Seán Hand, Basil Blackwell, 1989, 59
The Levinas Reader, Edited by Seán Hand, Basil Blackwell, 1989, 59
80
to investigate the moment of moral deliberation that takes place in the space between desire
and action through the lens of the “centerless point of view” proposed by Thomas Nagel. I
believe that by showing how the “centerles point of view” is one that not only enables us to
obtain objectivity in our practical reasoning, but is also one that first situates us in the
presence of the “other” who “places into question my spontaneity,” I have demonstrated
that morality might not be such a “queer” thing after all. In other words, I believe that these
suggestions indicate that one could reasonably defend the objectivity of moral judgments
without assuming the existence any queer ontological entities. The question is whether or
not these explanations of the nature of moral evaluation are more plausible and more
reasonable to accept than Mackie’s moral-error theory.
81
Chapter 6
Conclusion
I believe that our modern society is faced with a dilemma when it comes to
morality. We make statements that involve moral judgments with the firm belief that they
are objectively true: “Slavery is wrong,” or “Genocide is evil,” for example. In ordinary
moral discourse they are intended to be categorical imperatives. The problem is that we are
unable to identify a property or a reason outside of common interest that makes slavery or
genocide evil. If someone were to demonstrate, for example, that genocide is in fact
favorable to human flourishing because it purifies human genetics from weaker genetic
codes, we would have no reason to argue that genocide is still wrong. Nonetheless, we are
convinced that it is wrong, and that the Holocaust was an evil event. Without the reference
point of a supreme being who has established a moral code, there doesn’t seem to be
anything to account for the authoritative nature of categorical imperatives. According to
Robert Audi, modern society suffers from “moral fragmentation.” He points out that the
naturalistic worldview commonly held by modern society “seems to leave no place for
value: for what is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad.”154 Science is “valueless;” it does
not make judgments of value beyond those “warranted by its own standards of evidence
used to assess claims to truth in terms of scientific acceptability.”155 According to Audi, the
challenges to ethics in modern society are intensified by rapidly advancing technology, the
154
155
Audi, Moral Value and Human Diversity, 3-4
Ibid, 4
82
extension of human life beyond the years of vitality, the selfish preoccupation with one’s
own pursuits at the expense of the environment or the future of humanity, religion and
citizenship and globalization.156 Mackie’s moral-error theory is, I believe, a perfect
exemplification of the dilemma, he must deny that objective moral values exist since they
are “queer” entities that are not accessible to scientific investigation, and yet he is not ready
to sacrifice morality. “Rather, the point of morality, and particularily of that branch of it
which I have called morality in the narrow sense, is that it is necessary for the well-being of
people in general that they should act to some extent in ways that they cannot see to be
(egoistically) prudential.”157 The moral-error theory, however, fails to offer an appropriate
response to the question “Why be moral?” Both Mackie and Joyce argue that a society with
moral principles is more conducive to human flourishing than a society without them.
Since objective moral values do not exist, they suggest that we “ought” to live as though
they did. Just like some parents think it beneficial to our children to tell them that Santa
Claus exists and if they behave well, they will receive gifts at Christmas, but if they are
bold, they will receive a lump of coal, Mackie and Joyce think that maintaining the illusion
of objective moral values even though they do not exist is advantageous. They are of course
themselves making an evaluation that seems to incorporate a claim to objectivity: it is the
claim that morality is good for humanity so we “ought” to continue to live according to
moral principles even if they do not exist. 158 Furthermore, Harrison, as we have previously
mentioned, points out that Mackie himself makes moral claims in his book Ethics:
156
Ibid, 35
Mackie, Ethics: Inventing right and wrong, 234
158
Ibid, 233-234
157
83
Inventing Right and Wrong, such as the assertion that capital punishment would in all
circumstances be wrong.159 These claims in my opinion amount to a blatant selfcontradiction. Some would defend Mackie’s moral judgments by arguing that they are
hypothetical imperatives; that is, they are true in the case that morality is conducive to
human flourishing. This is of course true of morality, but there is a categorical imperative
embedded in this claim, the categorical imperative that human flourishing is a good thing
and we “ought” to do whatever is conducive to human flourishing. If moral values do not
exist, why in the world “ought” we to consider human flourishing “good”? And if someone
were to argue that I “ought” to consider it good because it is in my personal interest, I
would ask: Why “ought” I act according to whatever is beneficial to my personal interest?
Why is that “good”? Why be ethical at all? Mackie’s response to this question ends up in
self-contradiction: there are no objective moral values, but we “ought” to maintain a moral
code. To be consistent, Mackie must either admit that something -“human flourishing” for
example- has intrinsic value, or he cannot make evaluative claims at all.
Up to this point it has been argued that moral judgment is a phenomenon that is
characteristic of humanity in general. Human beings evaluate, and when they make an
evaluation, they also consider their evaluation to be objective, that is, they consider it to be
true. It is also generally accepted that evaluations that are contained within an institution
(hypothetical imperatives); can in fact be considered to be objective, they are the result of
proper reasoning about the goodness or badness of an action in relation to the desire or goal
we intend to satisfy or obtain. Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives because they
159
Harrison, “A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory”, 563
84
incorporate a desire or goal, in other words, a motive or reason for acting in a certain way.
If I want to live peacefully without worrying about having to protect my private property, I
must obey the rules of a society that endorses and protects the right to private property.
The want, desire, or personal interest provides the motive for me to act in a certain way.
There is little dispute on this matter, and it is generally accepted that such evaluations are
objective. The difference between the realist and the anti-realist, however, is that the realist
might, and to be consistent “should,” hold that for such assessments to be objective, there
must be some sort of property or quality that these evaluations have by way of which we
are able to evaluate the goodness or badness of the action; the anti-realist holds that such
properties do not exist, and that the evaluation is objective only on the conceptual level.
We can nevertheless hold that no one is really disputing that the hypothetical imperative
can be true or false. It is when we come to the categorical imperative (Mackie’s
understanding of the term) that we are faced with the great divide. Moral judgment that
makes a categorical claim is problematic. Some argue, as I have shown in chapter four,
that we never actually make such claims, and that all morality remains on the hypothetical
level. However, Mackie disagrees, and I would argue that he is right on this matter. When
we make moral claims, we often mean that they are true independent of the interest of the
agent. So when Lupita Nyong’o receives her award at the Oscars in 2014 for best
supporting actress in the movie “Twelve Years a Slave”, and says that she hopes that this
award will “remind me and every little child that, no matter where you’re from, your
dreams are valid,”160 what she is trying to say is that we are all born equal; that every
160
National Post: Oscars 2014: Watch newcomer Lupita Nyong’o tearfully accept her best
85
human person has dreams. These dreams are precisely an expression of human personhood
and therefore no person can consider it to be their right to sever the dreams of another
person; no one has the right to hinder the possibilities of another person by forcing them
into slavery. Lupita is stating that slavery is wrong - was always wrong - even if certain
civilizations considered it to be justified, and even if some people would happily submit
themselves to enslavement. When she makes this statement, not only do we all assent
wholeheartedly, but we feel a few tears well up as we remember that many have suffered
because this principle has been violated in the past. When we say that to discriminate
against someone because of race, religion or gender is wrong, we mean that it is wrong
outside and beyond the realm of the institution. We mean that it was just as wrong in Nazi
Germany as it is wrong right now. Such claims are assertions that appeal to an authority
that goes beyond the institutional interest of the common good. I believe that to deny that
we make such categorical moral evaluations is to turn a blind eye to the evidence at hand.
If we are to affirm together with the moral-error theorist, that categorical
imperatives (on the level of meaning) are part of the phenomenon of human morality, then
disagreement arises because the anti-realist argues that these categorical or non-institutional
imperatives are untrue, since they have no referent (quality or property of goodness that is
unidentifiable), and the realist argues that they are true since they do have a referent (nonnatural or natural property of goodness). It seems that one must either assert the existence
of “queer” moral properties, or deny that they exist and adopt the moral-error theory. But
supporting actress award for 12 Years a Slave, Rebecca Tucker | March 2, 2014 | Last
Updated: Mar 3 11:41 AM E
86
the moral-error theory ends up being self-contradictory, and moral properties that have a
commanding nature do indeed seem to be quite odd things.
I suggest that there is another approach to morality that upholds the truth of moral
judgments without ontological pluralism, and offers a plausible explanation for the
prescriptive nature of moral judgments. My proposal is that ethical evaluations are
objective; that is that they are true or false on the conceptual level. The moral claim that
“discrimination is wrong,” for example, is true based on the reasoning that it would be
inconsistent for us to say that a person with a certain skin pigmentation has more “right to
be” than a person with a different skin pigmentation. The deliberation that leads to this
conclusion is located in the gap between desire and action; a space that first places us in the
presence of the “face of the other.” The resulting moral judgment is therefore preceded by
an imperative, one that surges from the mere presence of the “other.” It is a “you ought not
to discriminate against another person on the basis of race, color or sexual orientation.” The
“ought” is not derived from the “is”, it is uttered by the presence of “an-other,” a subject
who has just as much “right-to-be” as the agent. Awareness of the presence of the “other”
is pre-rational, and could therefore be understood to be somewhat intuitive. I believe that
this explanation of human morality corresponds to the experience of moral evaluation that
we make in our everyday life. It is also an approach that allows for “evolution” in moral
evaluation. Conceptual truth as explained in the previous chapter, allows for corrigibility.
Evolution of moral evaluation is not uncommon, in the Christian Bible for example, Paul
writes: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye
87
is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.”161
There are other similar passages in the Bible that would indicate that slavery was an
accepted practice, and yet Christians today firmly agree that slavery is wrong. Rational
deliberation upon principles of Christianity, such as “do unto others as you would have
done unto you”, has led them to draw the logical conclusion that slavery is inconsistent
with most moral principles predicated by Christianity. Such examples and many more
indicate that moral evaluation is highly influenced by rational deliberation, and at the same
time is not purely rational. The presence of the “face of the other” looms before us and
questions our spontaneity even before we begin to rationalize; it is a presence that calls to
responsibility. When I look straight at the “face of the other” and see injustice, I am
moved, appalled, disgusted, and I am called to action. If however, I refuse to acknowledge
the “face of the other”, I remain unethical, and in doing so, I refuse to acknowledge my
own “face” because I refuse to acknowledge that which precedes being itself.
The question of whether or not it is plausible to argue for objective moral evaluation
without asserting the existence of queer ontological properties has been the interrogation
guiding and stringing together this dissertation. I have delved deeply into the anti-realist
position represented by the moral error theorists, especially J.L. Mackie, and have explored
many responses to his arguments. Since I find his assertion that the ontological implications
of the realist position are “queer” to be compelling, and yet cannot agree that the moral
error-theory is the best explanation for the fact that we human beings do make moral
161
Col 3:22, New International version: http://biblehub.com/colossians/3-22.htm, accessed
march 3, 2014
88
evaluations believing them to be objectively true, I have sought and discovered other
possible explanations. By exploring Hilary Putnam’s position that there can be “objectivity
without objects,” I believe I have successfully defeated the false dilemma created by
Mackie and the moral error-theorist. Accounting for the imperative nature of moral
evaluation remained however problematic on Putnam’s position. The “queerness” of moral
evaluation persisted due to the problem of motivation when dealing with categorical
imperatives (Mackie’s understanding of the term). I therefore considered it convenient to
explore other approaches to the question of human morality arriving at the ethics of
Emmanuel Levinas. The ethics of presence of the “other” provides in my opinion a
captivating and innovative approach to the phenomenon of human moral evaluation. I have
limited my analysis of Levinas to interrogating the notion of the imperative of the presence
of the “face of the other” since this is the issue that concerns this dissertation. The
“presence of the ‘face of the other’ that places into question my spontaneity” is, I believe,
precisely the imperative that characterizes moral evaluations. In Levinas’ view, it is a
presence that precedes ontology: that precedes being and is therefore a truly ethical “ought”
that cannot be interpreted in terms of an ontological “is.” By combining both Hilary
Putnam’s “objectivity without objects” and Levinas’ “presence of the “face of the other,’” I
believe that I have been able to assemble a plausible third option to explain the
phenomenon of human moral evaluation that is neither “queer” nor far-fetched. In so
doing, I believe that it is not absurd to claim that: yes it is possible to assert that there can
be objective moral evaluation without affirming the existence of queer ontological
properties. Indeed, the explanation proposed appears to be a more adequate explanation of
89
human morality than the first two options: that of the realist and that of the moral-error
theorist. I believe that the moral principles that we hold to be true in our society shall
continue to undergo adaptations and corrections as we continue to deliberate with
objectivity on the coherence of our body of beliefs. It is however the presence of the “face
of the other” that impels us, commands us to move us towards the ethical point of view:
that of “being for the other before oneself”. J.L. Mackie, Richard Joyce and many other
moral-error theorists acknowledge that morality is a “good” thing for human society, in fact
we need morality to flourish as human beings. Hidden in their anti-realist approach is a
moral evaluation that cannot ignore the imperative of the “face of the other”, that calls to
responsibility, not only for one’s personal interest, but that echoes below the surface of
being itself: “being for the other before oneself.” Hence, when in the movie “Twelve Years
a Slave,” the character who was played by Brad Pitt states that slavery is wrong, he means
that it was wrong then, it is wrong now and will be wrong in the future, and his claim is not
only objectively true, it is also an imperative.
90
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