Mackie On Moral Anti Realism

However, Pojman and Feiser claims that while this may be true, Moderate Objectivism can still be justified. Moral principles, in the view of Pojman and Feiser, are constructed artifacts with a characteristic function, and such function possesses 2 distinct traits:

The second chapter of the book covers three moral views – objectivism, relativism, and emotivism. Objectivism is the view that some moral principles are valid for everyone. For example, according to an objectivist moral view torturing people is not acceptable universally. The second moral view is relativism. There are two types of relativism: cultural relativism, which approves an action if it is morally right to one’s culture; and subjective relativism – the view that an action is right if one approves of it (Vaughan 20). For example, some cultures support the sex-selective apportion, because female babies are not encouraged (Sex-Selection). If a group of people believe it is right, then

Louis Vaughn states that the purpose of morality is not to describe how things are, but to “prescribe how things should be” (2). In Philosophy, moral relativism and moral objectivism are two conflicting but somewhat overlapping school of thought. These beliefs govern the way an individual acts; they also decide the ethical guidelines from which the law is written. In this essay we will delineate the differences between the two sects of belief.

In this paper, I am going to explain what two moral theories I mainly use to make a moral decision. In this paper, I used the textbook to help me figure out what moral theories are and it helped me decide which moral theories to use that best fit me when I make moral decisions. The two moral theories that I chose to highlight in this paper are utilitarianism and cultural relativism because I believe that they are the two that best fit me when I make a moral decision. The definition of morals is “a person’s standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is or is not acceptable for them to do”. Morals are an important thing to have because it is good to know what is and isn’t

But instead it places opinions about morality behind an ideal logical version of ourselves or our cultures while in reality that ideal observer is subject to the same bias’ as a construct of human beings and doesn’t cement a standard

In his essay "Some Moral Minima," Lenn Goodman (2010) attempts to challenge moral relativism by arguing that certain acts contain "natural meanings," and subsequently that certain acts are inherently right or wrong, due to their natural moral meaning (p. 92). Goodman discusses a number of acts that he views as inherently wrong, including genocide, germ warfare, and rape, and purports to offer reasoned explanations for why these acts are wrong. However, upon examining Goodman's claims in detail, it becomes clear that he cannot offer any evidence for the existence of objective morality, and instead is reduced to mere assertions and the conflation of cultural evolutionary tendencies with existence of natural, objective meaning. In reality, objective moral meaning does not exist, quite simply because objective meaning in general does not exist; there is no meaning but what human beings have created as a result of biological and cultural evolution, and thus no act is inherently right or wrong. Instead, there are certain acts that have been defined as such through centuries of social conditioning and the gradual homogenization of subjective moral standards, or else utilitarian principles that prove effective for achieving a specific moral goal (that is itself subjective, and thus ultimately arbitrary).

The argument of relativity starts off with an empirical observation that there is a large amount of variation in moral views (Steinberg). The argument also continues to say that “moral disagreements are often characterized by an unusual degree of intractability” ("Mackie's Arguments for the Moral Error Theory"). The argument of relativity (or often referred as argument of disagreement) was proposed by John Mackie. John Mackie argues that moral judgments “reflect adherence to and participation in different ways of life” ("Mackie's Arguments for the Moral Error Theory”). The example that Mackie uses in support of anti-realist beliefs is the divergent moral rules in the subject of monogamy.

J. L. Mackie makes his position explicit by opening his article "The Subjectivity of Values" with this terse statement: "There are no objective values." Mackie had found recent dialogue in moral philosophy to be fraught with misunderstandings and conflations of various moral positions, so he felt it necessary to rigorously define his position as well as the boundaries of his concerns. Thus his article has two major parts: First, Mackie defines the nature of his moral skepticism, and, second, he defends his position by showing the implausibility of moral realism with a series of arguments.

John Mackie’s “The Subjectivity of Values” from his 1977 book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong presents the case for an error theory about certain sorts of evaluative judgment. In particular, Mackie’s error theory claims that common moral judgments are such that they make a “claim to objectivity,” that if objective values were to exist then they would have to be of a categorical, prescriptive nature, that there are no objects which correspond to such conditions, and that, as such, moral claims are systematically false. Mackie, when writing of objective values, refers to prescriptive, categorical elements present in our common moral judgments. He has in mind only those values which are “action-directing absolutely” (15), including rightness,

“There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and his say” (James). This quote from William James uproots the concept of ethics in society entirely. James begins to explain that every man will have his own experience in life, which will end up leading to different opinions. These different ideas can be influenced by “the psychological question, the metaphysical question, and the casuistic question. The psychological question asks after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments” (James).

As human beings, we all have our own values, beliefs, and attitudes. These things develop over the course of our lifetime and at any point can change based on an experience that we may have. Our family, friends, community and the experiences we have had all contribute to our sense of who we are and how we view the world.

As Badaracco describes, a moral code must supersede personal convictions and adapt to the convictions and needs of the community. The opposition between Badaracco’s moral flexibility and Kouzes and Posner’s integrity of values is the primary determinant of moral values. The idea of moral flexibility is based on the external environment. In this situation, the determinant of a person’s values is the environment and community a person finds him or herself in. The source of a moral code, according to moral flexibility, is not a set of unchanging principles, but harmony with the ever-changing environment and the universal values of human dignity, love, and goodwill. On the other hand, the integrity of values is based on an internalized foundation of values. The determinant of these values is the individual’s personal convictions based on unchanging

Some objectivity is indeed possible. Adopting other points of view is part of our daily life, but this

In his influential book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, J.L Mackie begins with the bold claim that “[t]here are no objective values.” Mackie holds that moral judgements are beliefs and that moral statements are propositions, meaning that they are capable of being true or false. However, for Mackie, all such propositions are false, and thus one is in error about what they are actually claiming. In this paper I will summarize two of Mackie’s arguments for why we should accept error theory: the argument from relativity and the argument from queerness. I will then explain two possible positions error theory leaves us with respect to morality —abolitionism and fictionalism —followed by some objections to both. While these positions have certain benefits, their strict forms, I will argue, are ultimately unsatisfying with the addendum that fictionalism seems the more tenable.

ABSTRACT: The realist dispute in ethics has wide implications for moral ontology, epistemology, and semantics. Common opinion holds that this debate goes to the heart of the phenomenology of moral values and affects the way in which we understand the nature of moral value, moral disagreement, and moral reflection. But it has not been clearly demonstrated what is involved in moral realist theory. I provide a framework which distinguishes three different versions of the theory while at the same time showing the interrelations between them. I also demonstrate how issues such as objectivity, cognitivism, and truth can be related into the discussion by means of this framework.