J.L. Mackie's Moral Skepticism

"Inventing Right and Wrong” – J.L. Mackie

• Mackie argues that objective values don't exist, including both moral and aesthetic values
• His position is described as moral skepticism and explains what it entails
• First-order moral skepticism rejects specific moral values, while second-order moral skepticism denies the existence of any objective moral values
• Mackie supports second-order moral skepticism
• Moral skepticism acknowledges differences between kindness and cruelty, bravery and cowardice, but questions the objective moral values attributed to them
• Moral skepticism doesn't make claims about what exists, only what doesn't
• It doesn't concern itself with the meanings of sentences containing moral terms
• Moral skepticism is a primarily negative thesis
• The common belief in objective moral values requires justification as well as reasons for thinking it is unsubstantiated
• The belief is entrenched in traditional ethical theories and people's outlook

The Argument from Relativity

• Moral codes differ from society to society and are best explained by culture's moral code reflecting common lifestyles
• Cultures support ways of life already common, without arguing with other cultures about objective values
• A rival explanation for the cultural disagreement is the consensus is the application of universal objective principles, which are accepted by all cultures, to particular circumstances that differ from culture to culture
• Reason alone cannot adjudicate between conflicting responses

The Argument from Queerness

• Metaphysical and epistemological, concerning the types of entities objective values are and the possibility of knowing them
• Objective values would be bizarre and different from everything else
• It would be strange to learn about them using the same methods to learn and know everything else
• Moral goodness would compel people aware of it to pursue that course of action
• It's unclear what fact about the world corresponds to the wrongness of a cruel action and the connection between that wrongness and cruelty
• Rejecting objective values and replacing them with subjective responses to the natural features of behaviors could avoid difficulty

Commentary on the Argument from Relativity and the Argument from Queerness

• Cultural relativism is internally inconsistent because of the emphasis on moral disagreement between cultures
• Substantial disagreement presupposes some objective fact, but cultural relativism does not allow any objective moral facts to exist
• The defender of CR claims taht "X is immoral” is true in culture A but false in culture B if one assumes the absence of a universal objective moral code
• There can be a difference in meaning between the former sentence and the latter sentence if and only if one assumes that there is an objective fact about the morality of X that is not dependent upon what cultures A and B claim – but that assumption would contradict CR!
• The only kind of moral disagreement that could possibly exist in CR is the mere descriptive fact that people in one culture believe something about X and people in another culture believe the opposite about X
• Cultural Relativism (CR) uses moral disagreement between cultures to justify itself, yet CR makes genuine moral disagreement between cultures impossible
• Proponents of CR claim that what a culture says about the morality of X is true for that culture, but may or may not be true of any other culture
• "For any person, P, the morally correct thing for P to do is whatever P's culture claims is the morally correct thing to do.”
• If each culture advocates moral values already expressed in the ways of life, then the correct way for any person in any culture is to live according to commonly practiced culture
• Mackie asserts that explaining how people can acquire knowledge of properties and concepts in a strictly empirical way is the only way to defeat an argument of objective values

“God and Morality” – Plato

• Plato wrote primarily in dialogue form, with Socrates as a primary figure
• Socrates asks Euthyphro to define "pious” and “impious.”
• Euthyphro: “the pious is what all the gods love, and the opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious”
• Socrates poses the question: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?"

Socrates and Euthyphro

• Whatever is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious: Pious compels the gods to love it which implies an objective standard of piety
• Whatever is pious is pious because it is being loved by the gods: Gods make something pious and implies that piety is arbitrary and subjective
• "Do you love your favorite album because it is good, or is your favorite album good because you love it?"
• Divine command theory interprets right and wrong in terms of God's commands
• A dilemma constructed out of a slight revision of Socrates' original question is a powerful and common objection to divine command theory

Euthyphro Dilemma

• If God commands X because X is good, then there is a standard of moral goodness separate from God.
• If X is good because God commands it, morality is completely arbitrary and the most depraved actions should become good
• There is a third option: that God's commands derive from his nature and commands conform to his nature
• Divine command theorists can escape both horns of the Euthyphro dilemma
• Being good is a necessary condition for being God

“Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” – Harry Frankfurt

• A person is only morally responsible for an action if they could have done otherwise in that situation
• Circumstances may preclude a person from acting otherwise but may not cause their behavior
• Doing the same thing even if the circumstances were not there means you're still responsible for your behavior
• If Jones is already planning on doing what Black wants, it will not causally affect Jones in any way, and Jones would still be responsible for his behavior.
• A set of circumstances can make it impossible to avoid acting a way, and yet not exert causal influence
• Defenders of PAP are wrong to assume that the circumstances that prevent a person from acting, also cause the person's behavior
• People are not morally responsible for an action if they did it only because they could not do otherwise
• It must be the case that the set of circumstances making it impossible for the person to act otherwise is the only thing causally influencing the person's behavior