Omid Kashmiri's Article 'The Errors of John Mackie's Error Theory'

The Errors of John Mackie's Error Theory

Author: Omid Kashmiri - in collaboration with Dr. Mehdi Akhavan

Abstract

This article attempts to describe, analyze, and ultimately critically assess the metaethical views of the contemporary moral philosopher J. L. Mackie[1] (known as the error theory). Mackie's metaethical views and skeptical stance regarding moral judgments and propositions, like his views in the philosophy of religion, are largely influenced by and an elaboration of the ideas of the English philosopher David Hume; with the difference that his views, at least in the realm of ethics, are more complex than Hume's, and consequently, the critique against them is also more difficult. His opinion, while sharing commonalities with other skeptical readings in the field of ethics, also has differences from them, which means that some criticisms leveled against other versions of moral nihilism do not apply to his error theory; therefore, we are compelled to present separate arguments in defense of moral knowledge and also in critique of the error theory. The author believes that the arguments John Mackie puts forward in favor of his claim are, firstly, flawed, and secondly, even assuming their validity, they do not lead to his claim, which is moral nihilism[2].

Introduction

Addressing the issue of moral knowledge is one of the critical and fundamental topics in moral philosophy, and before adopting a clear and reasoned position on it, any commentary in other parts of metaethics, as well as in normative ethics and applied ethics, is rendered futile. Addressing the issue of knowledge in general, and knowledge in the realm of ethics in particular, has always been of interest to philosophers, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the history of inquiry and investigation into this issue is as long as the history of thought itself.

The present paper is organized into two main parts. The first part is an exposition of John Mackie's error theory[3] and attempts to uncover its explicit and implicit presuppositions and analyze its logical implications. The second part addresses some of the most important criticisms that can be leveled against this theory. It is worth noting that in this paper, we focus above all on the most important part of the error theory's claims—the metaphysical phase of his theory—and will examine other parts of his theory as appropriate and relevant to the discussion.

A. Mackie and the Argument of the Error Theory

In some writings about Mackie's views, his intent has been misunderstood. One of the reasons for the misunderstanding of Mackie's views is the ambiguity of his statements, and another is the compression of his challenging discussions into only four pages of the book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong[4] (Olson, 2014, p 79).

John Mackie, contrary to the opinion of the majority of moral skeptics, is a cognitivist[5] in the domain of moral language and considers the truth-aptness[6] of moral judgments and propositions to be justified; however, he makes truth conditional and dependent upon the existence of a property in the external world as the correspondent and referent of the proposition, and since he believes that no moral property[7] is to be found in the surrounding world; therefore, all these propositions in the realm of ethics are non-correspondent with reality and erroneous. Richard Joyce, who is a serious supporter and defender of the error theory, explains this approach as follows:

The moral error theorist[8] believes that although our moral judgments are truth-apt, they systematically fail to attain truth. The moral error theorist holds the same position toward morality that the atheist holds toward religion. From the perspective of theistic discourse, non-cognitivism is not very plausible or reasonable; rather, it seems that when a theist (for example) says "God exists," they are expressing something that is truth-apt. But according to the atheist, this claim is false; indeed, in their view, religious and theistic discourse is generally afflicted with error (Joyce, 2007, p 2-3).

In his famous book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Mackie explicitly calls his view in the realm of ethics a skeptical one (Mackie, p 38). In this book, he presents arguments against the existence of objective moral values and in favor of the subjectivity of values. The project Mackie pursues seeks the absolute negation of values, which also includes other normative sources, such as artistic and aesthetic, legal, religious values, and so on. He believes that when moral agents speak of moral judgments, it is as if they are recounting an objective description; whereas, in truth and in reality, there is no such fact (Miandari, 1393, p. 2). After his negative approach, which is the rejection and negation of the objectivity of values, he proposes and defends his positive model, which is moral subjectivism[9]. He also describes and explains the mechanism and process of objectification in human beings. Four fundamental axes and claims can be seen in his error theory, which can be considered the four pillars of the tent of Mackie's error theory.

• The dependence of truth on the existence of a moral property

The first and perhaps most important of his claims concerns the truth-value of moral judgments and propositions. The core of his claim is that moral values owe their truth to the objectivity/existence of external moral properties (Copp, 1375, p. 73). To explain, non-moral examples can be proposed for better understanding. In the propositions "Tehran is located in the north of Iran" and "The seven-headed dragon is green," what leads us to consider the first proposition true is that it reports a matter corresponding to reality, and since Mackie equates fact with existent thing[10], he considers the second proposition false; because there is no objective and external reality in the actual world by appealing to which we can discover the truth of the said proposition and provide an epistemological justification. In the same vein, he considers the proposition "Rape is an ugly (/ wrong) act" to be a proposition that does not correspond to reality and is false, due to the non-existence of moral properties.

Proponents of error theory argue that specific moral claims, which often express the sincere beliefs of their speakers, are all erroneous; because these moral judgments and claims presuppose the existence of things that do not really exist. Different proponents of error theory pursue the error in various specific parts and claim that the error in question is an inseparable part of believing in a moral view. But what they all share is the rejection of the presupposition of the existence of something that does not exist [i.e., moral realities] (Sayre-McCord, 2010, p 467).

Mackie specifies that any analysis and examination of moral vocabulary and judgments that ignores this issue (/ the dependence of truth on objectivity) is an incomplete and unfinished analysis (Hosseini, 1391, p. 31). A supplementary point is that the reason for the falsity of the second proposition is not the non-cognitivist nature of language, but the absence of an objective property; for truth and falsity are predicated on the meaningfulness and cognitivist nature of language. Paying attention to this issue paves the way for understanding Mackie's second claim, which follows below.

• The separation of the method of investigating objective analyses from conceptual analyses in ontological claims

He initially draws a sharp boundary between phenomenological analyses[11] and conceptual analyses[12] on the one hand, and objective analyses[13] on the other. In his view, by analyzing the characteristics of moral style[14] we can by no means arrive at an ontological conclusion or analysis. To elaborate, in linguistic analyses, philosophers of language have no choice but to refer to linguistic assumptions and intuitions, and these philosophical analyses cannot be analyzed except through a phenomenological analysis of language (and in the realm of ethics, through a phenomenological analysis of the experiences and assumptions of moral language). According to Mackie's view, one cannot draw a conclusion in the field of moral metaphysics merely from linguistic analyses. Mackie's opinion seems to be contrary to the view of figures like George Edward Moore, who believed in a necessary relation between moral concepts and the external world. For example, in the famous naturalistic fallacy[15] registered in his name, Moore drew metaphysical conclusions from the analysis of moral vocabulary.

In Mackie's view, the perspective and opinion of intuitionists such as Moore, Ross, and Prichard are correct and acceptable in the linguistic domain of moral judgments; however, the metaphysical and epistemological requirements of their views are indefensible (Olson, 2014, p 80). In other words, discovering the characteristics of moral style that play a predicative role in moral propositions, such as good and bad, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, right and wrong, morally praiseworthy and blameworthy, etc., is by no means sufficient by merely relying on phenomenological linguistic analyses. As he himself says: "Recent philosophy, whose attention has been excessively focused on various kinds of linguistic research, has neglected this matter. [...] The question of what perception is, or what event occurs when individuals perceive objects, is not a question that can be adequately answered by discovering the meaning of words like 'seeing' and 'hearing'" (Mackie, 1379, p. 197).

In line with his claim, John Mackie distinguishes between descriptivism[16] and objectivism[17]. According to his belief, objectivism deals primarily with epistemological issues and then with ontological issues; whereas descriptivism focuses its attention solely on the conceptual analysis of moral vocabulary[18] and how they combine with one another (Hosseini, 1391, p. 31). To elaborate, merely through descriptive linguistic analyses of the specificities of moral style, such as ought and ought not, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, right and wrong, praiseworthy and blameworthy, and the morally ugly and beautiful, one cannot address issues related to the ontology of ethics. Questions such as: "Do moral properties ; because these pertain to the ontological phase of these judgments.

In his view, ontological analyses and their next-door neighbor, moral epistemology, must be kept separate from discussions of linguistic analysis. He understands the element of truth in moral knowledge in connection with the objective description of truth, and his chosen theory in moral epistemology is the correspondence theory. For this reason, he understands ontological analyses in a tight and inseparable connection with moral ontology. But in his opinion, analyses in these two domains (i.e., moral epistemology and moral ontology) must be separated from semantic analyses of morality, because our linguistic analyses, which seek the meaningfulness, function, and manner in which concepts relate to one another, have no bearing on or connection to the ontological and epistemological issues of moral facts (Mackie, p 19). Hence, he does not consider his approach a non-cognitivist one; for the cognitivist or non-cognitivist nature of moral judgments pertains to the level of conceptual analysis, or what is called the "descriptivism" phase, whereas his skeptical view is derived from epistemological and ontological investigation. Therefore, as was also indicated in Mackie's previous claim, he holds that in the realm of moral language, although no objective description exists in the external world to which we can refer as a criterion for determining the truth value of moral propositions, our linguistic conventions nevertheless rule in favor of the cognitivist nature of moral language[20], not its non-cognitivist nature. The conclusion is that, for Mackie, cognitivism is compatible with anti-realism[21] as well as skepticism about the existence of moral properties.

• The non-existence of objective moral values in the furniture of the world

Mackie's third claim concerns the ontological[22] status of moral realities. This claim is that absolutely no values, including objective and genuine moral values, exist in the world. Mackie invokes two arguments to justify his claim regarding the absence of moral facts, which are as follows:

3-1- The arguments from queerness[23],

3-2- The argument based on inference to the best explanation[24], or the argument from moral disagreement[25].

The first argument, i.e., the arguments from queerness (hereafter "the queerness of values"), itself comprises four distinct arguments. These four arguments are: the argument from the queerness of objective moral values[26], the argument from the queerness of our knowledge[27] of objective moral values, the argument from the queerness of the supervenience[28] of moral properties upon non-moral ones, and finally, the argument from the queerness of the motivational role[29] of moral judgments and propositions.

First, we will address the arguments from queerness, which constitute Mackie's most important argument and include the following four aspects and branches.

3-1-1- The argument from the queerness of objective moral values

The core of Mackie's claim is that because moral values differ from what we generally experience and feel in our surrounding environment, these entities are mysterious and queer (Olson, 2014, p 85). Positing the existence of moral values is unlike our other experiences, and anything whose existence is distinct from the existence of all objects in the world and differs from all scientific facts of the world does not exist in the world. (Hosseini, 1391, p. 33) Although Mackie's argument from queerness apparently presupposes a naturalistic ontology, one need not necessarily be a naturalist to believe in the error theory. In other words, there is no entailment between adhering to the error theory and holding a naturalistic ontology (Olson, 2014, p 86); for Mackie's most important critique of the existence of values can be formulated and understood in a way that does not require presupposing an empiricist outlook.

The gist of the matter is that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. Adding entities to the world, according to the objection based on Occam's Razor—whether sensory or non-sensory entities, and also the connection and relation between moral and non-moral properties or the supervenience of moral properties upon non-moral ones—is a strange and queer occurrence, and rationality demands that we fundamentally deny the existence of such properties; whether they be material properties or abstract ones (Ibid, p. 86); although the positivist presupposition of the error theory intensifies and sharpens this denialist view.

3-1-2- The Argument from the Queerness of Moral Knowledge

The core claim of this argument is that in our knowledge of other phenomena in the world, we proceed via a uniform path; but for recognizing moral judgments and values, we are forced to take an abnormal and unusual path (Fanaei, 2003, p. 22), and this awareness and cognition is a method made possible by a special faculty concerning moral perception[30] or intuition[31]; thus, this special way of acquiring moral knowledge is a method completely distinct and different from other normal and usual ways of acquiring knowledge about the world's phenomena. Here, as with the previous argument, since the method of acquiring moral knowledge is a method distinct from the usual and common ways of acquiring knowledge, it is better to say that, due to the queerness and mysteriousness of these values, there is no way to access them at all.

It is crucial to note that Mackie and his like do not claim that a person cannot have a justified[32] moral belief; rather, in their view, our beliefs, whether justified or unjustified, are "false" (Sayre-McCord, 2010, pp. 467-468); because the relation between a belief[33] being justified and its being true[34] is, logically, one of generality and specificity in some respects. It is entirely conceivable that someone is "justified" in their commitment to a belief/set of beliefs[35], yet that belief or set of beliefs is false (or turns out to be false). In other words, one of the constituents of knowledge[36] is truth; whereas "truth" is not an essential property of a "justified belief." Thus, if moral beliefs cannot be true, they can never be considered true; although they might still be "justified" in a way independent of "truth." Consequently, under such conditions, skeptical considerations regarding moral knowledge[37] hold true; while skepticism about justified moral belief[38] does not (Armstrong, 2011, p. 3). Therefore, serious attention to this issue becomes necessary: Mackie is not a full-fledged moral skeptic. He himself makes no such claim.

Apart from the aforementioned domains and those to come, he holds a nihilistic position; but he does not deny the justifiability of ethical belief or a set of ethical convictions in general. In this section, too, he only denies epistemological justification in ethics; but the issue is that, among the various theories of justification, epistemological justification is only one type of justification. One can still, while denying epistemological justification, believe in the practical justification[39] of ethical beliefs and at the same time speak of both ethical rationality and the justifiability of ethical beliefs; for justification is distinct from truth, and justification is not limited to epistemological justification. Mackie introduces two broad and narrow meanings of morality and believes that we can, and indeed should, adhere to morality in its general sense; but this does not mean accepting morality in its specific and narrow sense. To explain, morality, in its general sense, refers to the set of considerations that a person tries to make govern and oversee their actions, deeds, and behaviors, and morality, in its narrow sense, is a set of specific principles and rules that are not necessarily things the person themselves has any choice in selecting and following, or that are to their liking. Mackie believes that we can, in the general sense of morality, speak of morality, the moral life, and moral commitment; that is, rules that we ourselves lay down to achieve a set of practical goals and purposes based on utility and benefit (Mackie, 1977, p 106).

3-1-3- The Argument from the Queerness of the Supervenience of Moral Properties upon Non-Moral Natural Properties

The discussion here concerns whether moral facts supervene upon natural facts or not. Therefore, it is necessary first to specify what natural facts are. The naturalness of a property means that we consider that property to be of the kind that can "be accommodated within a naturalistic worldview scientifically" (Olson, 2014, p 88). According to Mackie, the existence of moral properties is contrary to the existence of other conventional entities. Rationality requires us not to believe in unconventional and mysterious matters that lack clarity and perspicuity (both metaphysically and epistemologically); furthermore, the manner of the relation and connection of moral properties with facts outside the realm of morality is also a strange affair. In other words, the way in which moral properties of a thin style, which have a predicative role in moral propositions, relate to the properties that have a subject role in these propositions is queer.

To explain, the relation of moral properties to non-moral natural features is, in John Mackie's view, a mysterious and queer phenomenon (Fanaei, 2003, p 12).

Olson, in the book Moral Error Theory[40], formulates the deductive form of this argument in a logical-deductive manner as follows:

(P1) Moral properties and natural properties (whether natural or supernatural) are distinct properties.

(p2) Moral properties necessarily supervene upon natural properties.

(p3) Relations that posit a kind of necessary co-variance between distinct properties are queer.

(c1) Therefore, the supervenience relation between moral and natural properties is queer.

(p4) If the supervenience relation between moral and natural properties is queer, then moral properties are queer.

(c2) Therefore, moral properties are queer (Olson, 2014, p 92).

According to Mackie, this manner of the relation of moral properties to natural non-moral facts and the way in which these moral facts are consequent upon and arise from natural non-moral facts—that is, supervenience and dependence—is intrinsically different and unique. Following the previous arguments, since such a relation differs from other types of relations among phenomena in the world, moral properties therefore do not exist; because the other side of the relation, namely natural facts, do exist and are not mysterious. For example, in the proposition “the chair has been painted red” or “the wood turned to ash after burning,” the relation between “the color red” and “the chair,” as well as between “the wood” and “the ash,” is an understandable phenomenon (/ relation) due to the non-mysterious nature of both sides of the relation, and it is not alien to ordinary ways of acquiring knowledge. But in “the wrongful act of killing is an ugly deed,” the connection of “ugliness” to the act of “killing” is a mysterious connection, different from other types of relations and abstractions; because one side of this relation, namely the moral property of ugliness, is a mysterious and strange property.

3-1-4- The Argument from the Strangeness and Mysteriousness of the Motivating Aspect of Moral Judgments and Propositions

According to Mackie, moral propositions, which proponents of moral realism consider descriptive, contain—unlike other descriptive propositions—a motivating aspect that drives the speakers or audiences of such propositions toward performing or refraining from an act, and this is contrary to the usual method and procedure of other descriptive propositions. For example, the proposition “the earth revolves around the sun,” which is a descriptive proposition, has no motivating aspect or dimension whatsoever; whereas the proposition “torturing an orphan child for amusement and pleasure is a morally wrongful act” contains a kind of deterrence and motivation (to refrain from the act) that is absent in other descriptive propositions. Mackie also explains that if there is a necessary relation between knowledge of moral truths and motivation, as Plato believed, then mere knowledge of the Forms of the Good would cause the knower to incline toward more correct and moral action and also possess the necessary motivation to carry out that action. The goodness of something both indicates that the person aware of that action has an inclination toward it and compels them to have that inclination and not act contrary to it.

Mackie says that if objective principles of right and wrong exist, every wrong action must somehow have its not-being-done built into it (Mackie, 1977, p 40). In fact, Mackie believes in the moral internalism[41] that exists within moral judgments. He firmly believes that “objective values would have a power to affect the will as soon as they are known” (Ibid, p 40). In his view, Plato explains very well the persuasive or deterrent characteristic of moral judgments. Indeed, it is the very motivating feature for performing or refraining from an act that is inherent within the judgment itself. Now, Mackie’s fundamental question and objection is whether ordinary and conventional empirical facts possess such a characteristic. Does informing or being informed that “water boils at one hundred degrees” persuade us to boil or not boil water? It is quite clear that the answer is negative; whereas in moral propositions, the story is different. Is it not the case that when we learn or inform about child abuse and its wrongness, we convey a kind of psychological deterrence with it to ourselves or the audience? Or when we learn or inform about self-sacrifice to defend justice and fight oppression, is it not the case that we convey a kind of psychological persuasion to ourselves or the audience? Mackie’s answer to these questions is affirmative.

Now the fundamental question is whether this aspect of moral judgments, which carries a psychological characteristic, is intelligible within moral realism or anti-realism (/ skepticism about the existence of moral values). It seems that Mackie's account of the relationship between beliefs, desires, and moral realities is based on a strong internalism and lacks nuance in this regard. His formulation is that moral judgments are inherently action-guiding, while natural empirical judgments are inherently neutral and psychologically impartial; and because this is so, moral judgments, which necessarily carry psychological characteristics, are unlike non-moral natural judgments. Therefore, moral facts, assuming they existed, would be astonishing and queer by virtue of possessing this motivational property. How is it that these properties have such features, while other natural facts do not? Since they do not, they are queer, and since they are queer, it is better to say they do not exist. According to Mackie, if we hold that moral values are real and descriptive, we must consequently also have an explanation for this aspect of moral judgments. Realists are incapable of providing such an explanation; whereas the satisfactory explanation is to fundamentally deny the existence of objective values and to believe in the subjectivity of values.

These four arguments pertained to Mackie's first argument, known as the argument from queerness / the argument from the queerness of values. We will now proceed to Mackie's other argument concerning the non-existence of moral properties.

3-2- The Argument from Inference to the Best Explanation

Although the argument from inference to the best explanation has been and continues to be more commonly used in the moral domain by proponents of ethical naturalism[42], Mackie employs such an argument to reject the existence of moral properties; with the explanation that ethical naturalists offered an account of phenomena arising from the sensory experiences of moral agents in which moral properties were considered natural and perceptible properties. He generally deploys his arguments against the existence of moral properties in opposition to naturalists (who believed in the existence of perceptible moral properties) and, of course, intuitionists (who believed in the supernatural existence of moral properties).

Drawing on sociological and psychological evidence and data, Mackie attempts to demonstrate that the existence of widespread moral disagreements is a clear fact. In his view, the fact that there are deep disagreements on various moral issues is itself evidence that there is fundamentally no moral property by reference to which the disputing parties could provide a satisfactory answer to their questions. For example, in the realm of empirical sciences, to agree that "water boils at one hundred degrees," it is sufficient to ascertain the fact through sensory experiment; but regarding the proposition "abortion is an immoral act," the furnace of dispute between the pro and con camps remains hot, and this itself is evidence supporting the absence of moral properties to resolve moral disagreements. To understand this phenomenon (/ moral disagreements), we are compelled to choose an explanation that is more coherent (internally and externally) and simpler (/ with minimal metaphysical presuppositions) and so on than other rival explanations. In other words, error theorists can here appeal to Occam's razor and say that the best explanation is the one that possesses a set of conditions, including parsimony and economy[43] (Olson, 2014, p. 88).

• Appeal to the principle of projection in explaining people's belief in moral realism

Mackie’s fourth claim is one that pertains more to the process of conferring validity upon moral perceptions than to the perceptions themselves. Although he believes in the non-objectivity of values, he accepts the fact that, in truth and in reality, most people tend toward and believe in moral realism, and he tries to explain both the cause and the reason for this belief and tendency. After critically examining the positions of intuitionists and naturalists regarding the existence of moral properties, Mackie says: “Such considerations suggest that it is in the end less paradoxical to reject the ordinary beliefs about the objectivity of values than to retain them, provided that we can explain how these beliefs, if they are erroneous, have become widespread and have persisted in the face of criticisms.” (Mackie, 1977, p 42.) Thus, after setting aside the explanation that affirmed the objectivity of moral values, Mackie puts forward his own causal explanation as a suitable replacement.

Mackie’s fourth claim is the objectification by human beings, which, by resorting to psychological and sociological analyses, seeks to justify and causally explain them. In Mackie’s view: “[…] there are motives that support objectification. We need morality to regulate and moderate interpersonal relations, to control some of the ways people behave toward one another…. We therefore need our moral judgments to have a similar authority over us and over others. Giving these judgments objective validity will provide the required authority.” (Ibid, p 42-43). Therefore, there are external motives, such as the desire to regulate interpersonal relations, the anxiety arising from the world being/becoming empty of values, and so on, that cause human beings to project their own desires and inclinations onto the external world. Of course, Mackie considers this type of projection to possess rationality. In any case, instrumental rationality[44] requires us to engage in projections in line with our goals and purposes. In fact, the cause of this projection can be divided into the reasonable and the unreasonable. Thus, Mackie himself is not merely seeking a purely causal description and explanation. He believes that the act of objectification, if it is in line with our desiderata, can be valid, and we can be justified in defending this position; that is, if practical necessities and needs (especially social ones) require us to construct moralities and regard them as objective, we can, and indeed should, do so.

“… the demand actually has features that make us want it; that is, it has features that enable it to arouse a desire or to shape it so as to satisfy some existing desires. We are entitled to confuse the desirability of something that is in fact objective with our feeling of its objective value. The fact that ‘good’ is recognized as one of our main moral terms is an indication of this pattern of objectification” (Ibid, p 43-44).

Therefore, according to Mackie, “we are entitled to confuse the desirability of something that is in fact objective with our feelings of its objective value.” This important point contains at least two main points: first, that in our moral beliefs, we are justified as long as they fulfill our desiderata, and the justification offered in favor of this validity is precisely practical justification; second, that here we have detached ‘goodness’ from its original place, which is our desirability and liking, and applied it where it ‘really’ does not belong, and we are justified in this act and process. He considers the requirements of social life to be an important part of this process. (Ibid, p 43)

B. The Errors of the Error Theory

As we have seen, the backbone of the error theory lies in the arguments from the queerness of values, which are directed at the domain of moral ontology. Therefore, in this section, we will address the objections to the arguments from queerness—which constitute the essence of his arguments and claims in metaethics—more than other incidental aspects of his theories. According to his approach, if his arguments succeed, the major part of his metaethical project, namely skepticism about the existence of values, will bear fruit. For ease of understanding, we will bring together the two arguments based on the queerness of moral values and the mysteriousness of the supervenience of moral properties upon non-moral natural properties under the general heading of "the metaphysical queerness of moral judgments." We will also examine his two other arguments—the oddness of moral knowledge and the motivational power of moral judgments—under the heading of "the queerness of the epistemic and motivational status of moral judgments."

• A Critical Analysis of the Metaphysical Queerness of Moral Judgments

It seems that Mackie's view and conception of moral realism is a narrow and incomplete one; for, in his view, the only type of moral realism is the kind that posits the existence of tangible moral facts. As noted, he ties truth to the existence of moral realities and explicitly denies the existence of objective values (Ibid, p 15). On the other hand, due to his strong positivist stance, he believes that if a moral property were to exist, it must be a natural and material property, and any other concept—such as space, time, place, substance, number, unity, plurality, etc., which lie outside the realm of morality—must also be given a material and positivist explanation; otherwise, they too, like moral properties, are queer and must be denied (Ibid, p 40-41).

Moral realists, in a broad classification, are divided into two groups: reductionists[45] and non-reductionists[46]. Those who believe in the reduction of moral properties to non-moral natural properties hold that moral properties exist as unique and independent features in the surrounding world (such as pleasure). Non-reductionists, while believing in the reality of moral properties, do not consider these realities to be natural and physical properties.

In this part, we are not concerned with non-reductionists and deal more with ethical naturalists; because fairness demands that we depict and frame Mackie's argument in its strongest form. As we also noted earlier, Mackie's arguments against naturalists can, in a way, be extended to other moral realists who are not naturalists, and it can be said that the existence of a set of independent and unique moral facts in the external world, which are also not found in a natural form, are a fortiori mysterious. Since this mode of existence also does not come to us through the usual, tangible, and familiar ways of life, therefore, following the previous line of reasoning, the assumption of its existence must also be set aside. In other words, Mackie considers his critique to apply both to reductionists and non-reductionists, and to anyone who claims some kind of moral reality.

One such ethical naturalist is John McDowell. He distinguishes between primary qualities and secondary qualities and considers the nature and kind of moral judgments to be like secondary qualities; just as in the perception of secondary qualities, such as color, sound, taste, etc., the existence and presence of the perceiving subject is necessary; but in reality, these qualities and properties do not arise in a vacuum and all of them originate from the natural world; that is, for the perception of these properties, the presence of the subject, although a necessary condition, is not sufficient alone; rather, a natural and external source is required. According to this approach, belief in moral realities and their existence in the external world is not like the existence of other things that can be seen. In fact, Mackie, wittingly or unwittingly, has fallen into the straw man fallacy in rejecting realism; that is, he has criticized and rejected it by presenting a radical and weak version of realism.

Another realist philosopher who offers a different interpretation of realism and objectivism is Thomas Nagel[47]. Nagel proposes a theoretical conception of moral realism that does not presuppose the existence of moral values as “additional entities, qualities, or relations, such as Platonic Forms or Moorean non-natural qualities.” He distinguishes between normative/value realism and scientific realism, as well as between value objectivity and scientific objectivity, and claims that realism about value differs from realism about empirical facts. In Nagel’s view, value realism is an approach in which propositions that give us reasons for action can be true or false independently of how they appear to us, and that we can hope to discover the truth by going beyond appearances and subjecting them to criticism (Ibid, p 11).

David Brink[48] is also among the realists who believe in the supervenience and consequentiality of moral properties upon non-moral ones. He holds that moral properties are obtained through supervening on natural properties (Hosseini, 1383, p. 98). The point that renders Mackie’s criticisms ineffective against his theory is that he does not consider these moral properties to supervene in a mysterious way, to use Mackie’s phrase. To clarify his meaning, Brink uses an analogical argument to show that, although he believes in supervenience, he remains a physicalist. He explains that these supervening moral properties are like the concept of inflation. The concept of inflation is a thoroughly familiar concept that is obtained by supervening on a set of facts (in this case, economic ones). Here, neither those facts are mysterious, nor is the concept arising from them, which is “inflation.”

Therefore, it is not the case that if we are moral realists, we must only defend the type and approach that considers moral facts inaccessible and transcendent. In our view, as we noted in the preceding lines with reference to some prominent realist philosophers, one can believe in a form of realism without emphasizing the existence of moral facts. The common denominator among all these examples is that the mere existence of moral facts is by no means a necessary condition for moral realism. Nevertheless, like Brink, who himself, like Mackie, holds a naturalistic and empirical position, we can, while accepting the existence of moral realities, also provide an adequate response to the manner of the supervenience and the mediated consequentiality of these moral realities, in which such an explanation is no longer mysterious; because it follows the very method that is not unusual for human beings.

Another criticism that can be leveled against Mackie’s approach is that he conflates the world of the real/the fact with the world of existence/the existent. The truth and objectivity of a concept does not entail that the concept itself must have an objective counterpart in our concrete world and that its referent must exist outside the mind (Fanā’ī, 1384, pp. 218-219); whereas reducing the world of realities to the world of existence is itself a self-defeating argument; for one can pose the same question regarding this argument: which fact exists by which we can measure this argument as a criterion? The problem lies in the failure to consider that the world of the real is broader than the world of existence and the existent. For example, all propositions in the mathematical world (according to the consensus of philosophers of mathematics) and also some logical propositions (true negative propositions) are all true and real, yet they do not exist. So, if this is the case, what philosophical and logical problem arises if we also consider moral propositions to be real but non-existent? According to this approach, the theory of Occam’s razor would also no longer apply as a criticism of our theory; for Occam’s razor targets explanations based on existent entities and a world full of useless entities, not the real, which requires neither creation nor existence.

• A Critique of the Argument from Inference to the Best Explanation in Favor of Moral Skepticism

As we explained in the relevant section of this argument, Mackie, by drawing on this mode of reasoning, attempts to show that the best possible explanation for widespread, irresolvable moral disagreements is to say that these properties fundamentally have no share in existence. According to this argument, the hypothesis that moral facts do not exist provides us with the best explanation for the existence of widespread moral disagreements, compared to rival explanations.

One can first reflect on the issue of disagreement itself. It seems that moral disagreements are not, in reality, as widespread as Mackie claims. Although there are disputes and disagreements regarding specific topics and the application of principles to instances, there is more or less a consensus concerning fundamental moral principles and tenets. Although moral theories each proceed with somewhat diverse methods and criteria, the outcome of their pronouncements on fundamental moral principles and tenets is more or less the same. For example, regarding the wrongness of harming others, deontology, rule-utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and contractarianism, despite the diversity of their interpretations, deliver more or less identical judgments.

Another criticism is that the mere existence of widespread disagreements in the moral realm (even granting their extensiveness) is by no means sufficient on its own to reject the existence of moral properties. Proving this requires separate reasons; because this type of disagreement also prevails in other branches of knowledge, from the natural empirical sciences to the human empirical sciences, and despite these disagreements, a verdict of the non-existence of facts within these domains of knowledge is never issued.

Regarding another objection to this view, it can be said that, on the contrary, the best possible explanation for the existence of widespread moral disagreements is moral objectivism, not the subjectivity of values. To elaborate, by reflecting on the concept and phenomenon of disagreement, we realize that disagreement is predicated upon commonality; meaning that without an objective commonality and agreement, the concept and phenomenon of disagreement become groundless and meaningless. For example, in the two statements "Mina likes Abgoosht" and "Saeed likes pizza," although there is a difference, there is no "disagreement." Conversely, in the two statements "The Copernican system says the Earth revolves around the Sun" and "The Ptolemaic system believes the Sun revolves around the Earth," the disagreement is meaningful and realized; because they hold a set of theoretical commonalities regarding a single subject and differ only in one or some aspects.

• A Critical Analysis of the Queerness of the Epistemic and Motivational Character of Moral Judgments and Propositions

Regarding the epistemic dimension of moral judgments, Mackie believes the path to knowing these values is mysterious; because he attributes to realists the assumption that they posit a special faculty, such as intuition, for perceiving moral truths.

Firstly, it is unclear how and from where such a general judgment has been made about all moral realists—that they all arrive at an understanding of moral truths through an element called intuition or moral perception and experience. Secondly, and importantly, many of those who defend the element of intuition for perceiving moral truths by no means believe in the existence of a special, unique faculty as the source of moral knowledge. In fact, they consider intuition to be one of the functions of the rational faculty, which is responsible for the non-inferential and direct understanding of moral values and judgments (McNaughton, 1387, p. 139). More importantly, rational intuition (of which moral intuition is one type), alongside other primary and secondary sources of knowledge such as sense perception, testimony, memory, introspection, etc., has been recognized by the majority of epistemologists. Therefore, it is not the case that if we believe in intuition and direct perception, we are necessarily compelled to ontologically posit a special faculty alongside the cognitive faculties.

Concerning the motivational aspect of moral judgments, it seems that at least one of the premises of his argument is correct, namely that: moral judgments and propositions possess a directive and guiding character. Of course, this is a correct statement from which an incorrect conclusion has been drawn. Mackie says that because other descriptive propositions lack this character, and because moral realists are incapable of explaining this aspect of moral judgments, believing these propositions to be descriptive is therefore queer; since they are not like other descriptive propositions.

In criticizing this part of his views, it must be said that belief in the existence of a motivational dimension to moral judgments is in no way incompatible with their being descriptive. According to Austin's view, in speech act theory, in the course of expressing a sentence (which can also be descriptive), at least five acts occur simultaneously. According to this theory, in the proposition "Fulfilling a promise is a good thing," it is true that we have apparently only expressed a descriptive proposition, but in actual fact, by expressing this descriptive proposition, we have simultaneously shown our own inclination and desire for its content, recommended it to our audience, shown our opposition to recommending "breach of promise," and so on. The truth is that such a one-dimensional view of language is far removed from our linguistic conventions and intuitions (Searle, 1387, pp. 29-32). If our chosen theory is defensible, John Mackie's objection in this part is also incomplete.

Conclusion

According to what has been presented in this article, firstly, the theory of error theory rests on flawed premises, and secondly, even assuming the correctness of these premises, such a skeptical conclusion in moral knowledge does not follow. Furthermore, the supporting arguments for error theory, including the argument from the best explanation and the argument based on moral disagreement, suffer from fundamental and basic problems. If our arguments and criticisms in this article are successful, the theory of error theory suffers from serious problems in the field of metaethics, and it is difficult to speak of its theoretical preference in comparison to other realist theories.

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Bibliography

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Miandari, Hassan, (1390), "A Refutation of the Error Theory in Moral Philosophy Based on Biological Evolution", Hekmat va Falsafeh, Year Seven, No. One.

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Mackie, J. L, (1977), Ethics: inventing write and wrong, England, Penguin Books

Olson, Jonas, (2014), Moral Error Theory : History, Critique, Defence, United Kingdom, Oxford University press, first edition

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[1] - J. L. Mackie

[2]- moral nihilism

[3] - Error Theory

[4] - Ethics: inventing right and wrong

[5] - cognitivist

[6] - truth-aptness

[7] - moral property

[8] - moral Error Theorist

[9] - moral subjectivism

[10] - For further explanation of the difference between the fact and the existent, refer to Chapter Six of the book Religion in the Scales of Ethics, pp. 218-219

[11] - phenomenological analysis

[12] - conceptual analysis

[13] - objective analysis

[14] - Thin moral properties

[15] - naturalistic fallacy

[16] - descriptivism

[17] - objectivism

[18] - moral terms

[19] - moral properties

[20] - moral language

[21] - non realism

[22] - ontology

[23] - The Queerness arguments

[24] - The argument from the best explanation

[25] - The argument from moral disagreement

[26] - The argument from Queerness

[27] - The argument from Queerness of knowledge

[28] - The argument from Queerness of supervenience

[29] - The argument from motivational force

[30] - moral perception

[31] - intuition

[32] - justified

[33] - belief

[34] - true

[35] - set of beliefs

[36] - knowledge

[37] - moral knowledge

[38] - justified moral belief

[39] - practical justification

[40] - Moral Error Theory

[41] - internalism

[42] - moral naturalism

[43] - parsimony

[44] -instrumental rationalism

[45] - Reductionist

[46] - Non reductionist

[47] - Thomas Nagel

[48] - David O. Brink

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PDF file of the article The Errors of John Mackie's Error Theory

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