07/16 Mackie, from Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong The meaning of moral terms/concepts One reason for

r looking at these when figuring out whether there are objective values: If we were aware of [objective moral values], we would say something about them (91) Responses to Moore on the nature of our normative concepts: -Noncognitivism: Moral language merely expresses our attitudes or proscriptions. So Petting kittens is good means something like Yay petting kittens! or Hey, go pet some kittens! -Naturalism: Moral language describes genuine features of the world, which could also be described in non-normative language. So Petting kittens is good might mean something like Petting kittens increases the amount of happiness in the world. Mackie claims that neither of these fully capture the meaning of our moral terms: The ordinary user of moral language means to say something about whaetever it is that he characterizes morally as it is in itself But the something he wants to say is not purely descriptive something that involves a call for action or for the refraining from action, and one that is absolute, not contingent upon any desire or preference or policy or choice (93). Hence our emotional reaction to the denial of objective values, and the prevalence of this view through the history of ethics. Because of this, the denial of objective values amounts to an error theory (94). The argument from relativity the actual variations in 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 (95) A response: objective validity is claimed only for very basic principles which are recognized at least implicitly to some extent in all society (95) Mackie thinks this faces the problem that most moral judgments come not from recognition of how things satisfy some general principle, but because something about those things arouses certain responses immediately in them, though they would arouse radically and irresolvably different responses in others (95).

The argument from queerness If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from out ordinary ways of knowing everything else (95-96) An objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that the desires this end, but just because the end has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it. Similarly, if there were objective principles of right and wrong, and wrong (possible) course of actions would have not-to-be-doneness somehow built into it (96-97) A further aspect of the queerness: the link between moral qualities and natural qualities. The link is one of supervenience, but not explained by logical or semantic necessity. How much simpler and more comprehensible the situation would be if we could replace the moral quality with some sort of subjective response which could be causally related to the detection of the natural features (97) Why have we objectified values JM thinks he owes us this. There are several different patterns of objectification, all of which have left characteristic traces in our actual moral concepts and moral language (100) 1. The pathetic fallacy: the tendency to read our feelings into their objects. E.g. attributing a non-natural qualify of foulness to fungus. (98) 2. We want our moral judgments to be authoritative for other agents as well as for ourselves: objective validity would give them the authority required (98). 3. We get the notion of somethings being objectively good, or having intrinsic value, by reversing the direction of dependence here, by making the desire depend upon the goodness, instead of the goodness on the desire (98) 4. The moral categorical imperative can be seen as resulting from the suppression of the conditional clause in a hypothetical imperative without its being replaced by any such reference to the speakers wants (99) 5. ethics is a system of law from which the legislator has been removed (99)