J.L .Mackie's Moral Error Theory

[Felix]

Hereandnow: Actuality is inherently bad or good, or entangled in various competing affairs so it's difficult to say.

That is true in the case of the reality known to our physical senses, but I don't believe that is the only reality, merely the grossest dimension of it. The farther one gets from actuality, the less actual it gets.

[Consul]

Value is very different, because it "says" something, namely, that something is good or bad,which is its nature.
…
Prescriptive statements are contingent upon this simply quality. When you talk about "actual conditions", for me, these are not that from which ethicality derives, or on which it is 'based", which makes no sense for reasons I gave, it is rather embedded in actuality. Actuality is inherently bad or good, or entangled in various competing affairs so it's difficult to say.

My side of this issue wins: it is patently true that what makes ethics even possible is the value in actuality. Without this, as I have said, ethics vanishes. Think about this. If something S ceases to be what it is upon the deleting of X, then X is an essential part of S. Trivially true.

And how does this talk about ethical prescriptions "based on" actual conditions make sense if actual conditions possess nothing of ethics? I know I raised this question before.

Factual conditions or consequences provide justifying reasons for moral prescriptions or principles, and we evaluate the former as positive or negative on the basis of our emotions and volitions, our desires, needs, interests, preferences, and attitudes.

It's definitely not the case that "ethics vanishes" if moral objectivism/realism is false, and there are no objective/real moral properties (valuableness, goodness/badness, rightness/wrongness) and no moral facts/truths.

I'm convinced that moral objectivism/realism is false: Nothing is objectively (inherently/intrinsically) morally valuable, and nothing is objectively (inherently/intrinsically) morally good/bad or morally right/wrong.


"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 our ordinary ways of knowing everything else."

(Mackie, J. L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. 1977. Reprint, London: Penguin, 1990. p. 38)

[Felix]

"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."

Some say that is exactly what empathy/compassion is, a very different mode of knowledge than sensory apprehension.

[Hereandnow]

Felix
"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."
Some say that is exactly what empathy/compassion is, a very different mode of knowledge than sensory apprehension.

Mackie's idea for what is ordinary and how it adjudicates it matters of philosophy does beg the question: are we really interested such norms when the very idea of philosophy is to discover the ground beneath them? What is utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing things are those very things under close inspection. That is, when you ask basic questions, like what is existence, what is knowledge, and the rest, you have already slipped the bonds of what is normal, or, you should have.

My thinking about analytic philosophy is that the way it is distinct from continental philosophy lies in the idea that the former tries to normalize, to stay within what Heidegger calls ontic modes of thinking (and Husserl called the naturalistic attitude) on the assumption that this is our "best guess" and the most clear and logically discernible.

This makes philosophy long on discipline and rigor, but short on enlightenment. More like difficult (just read Quine) puzzle solving than what I think philosophy should be: the probing into the mysterious places where thinking meets its threshold.

[Hereandnow]

Consul


It's definitely not the case that "ethics vanishes" if moral objectivism/realism is false, and there are no objective/real moral properties (valuableness, goodness/badness, rightness/wrongness) and no moral facts/truths.
I'm convinced that moral objectivism/realism is false: Nothing is objectively (inherently/intrinsically) morally valuable, and nothing is objectively (inherently/intrinsically) morally good/bad or morally right/wrong.

"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 our ordinary ways of knowing everything else."

I would agree, were it not for the incomprehensible idea of hedonics (connotatively not a very good term, but I get it) being in its nature amoral. The difference really comes down to, I believe, while acknowledging that suffering is factually there, it is what the world "does", wanting to not have the way we talk about it, our terms of right and wrong, good and bad, carry over into Being itself, thereby leaving the nature of ethics localized to the meanings of the words we use and how through the varying contexts something general might emerge that can identify its essence. In this sense, ethics, like eveything else, is, in its conceptualizing, a work in progress as we continue to reinvent our world with new generations of culture and meaning.

I grant you that things are like this in that no terms are stand alone, and all of our concepts are works in progress. The world is interpretatively open, and physics today will be, as it has been (see Kuhn) a very different thing a thousand years from now. I have admitted this more than once.

But ethics carries something on its sleeve that cannot be ignored. Those interpretative terms 'goods' and 'bad' are, like all things, not fixed in the understanding. But just observe that spear in your kidney: the event, the fact witnessed IS something extraordinary. Mackie complains that ethical realism constitutes some radical idea about what is and how we know it; but then, the vivid sensation of the speared kidney IS just this. It requires something extraoridinary to explain it. You can't just pretend empirical observation take care this as if there were no difference in that "fact" and the fact of tidal changes or lunar eclipses. There is a qualitative difference, period. I think I am safe in this claim.

The term 'hedonics' is simply reductive to normal empirical science, dismissing the qualitative difference. There is something disingenuous about this, I think. Or perhaps just a lack of empathy, sympathy, compassion; the kinds of things that inform us about what it is. But then, even if one is not endowed with these, there is still Backburn's "It hurts; It hurts, and I know it."

[Consul]

Some say that is exactly what empathy/compassion is, a very different mode of knowledge than sensory apprehension.

What can I know through empathy/compassion? How others feel? Well, it enables me to imagine how others feels, but that's not knowledge, is it?

[Felix]

What can I know through empathy/compassion? How others feel? Well, it enables me to imagine how others feels, but that's not knowledge, is it?

I have met people who can do more than imagine how others feel, they actually sense it. They do seem to be a dying breed in our modern intellectual age. You find them mostly in societies that live close to nature, whose intuition is active and not over-shadowed by their intellect. It's a natural ability, animals have it, e.g., they can sense fear in other animals.

[Consul]

I would agree, were it not for the incomprehensible idea of hedonics (connotatively not a very good term, but I get it) being in its nature amoral. The difference really comes down to, I believe, while acknowledging that suffering is factually there, it is what the world "does", wanting to not have the way we talk about it, our terms of right and wrong, good and bad, carry over into Being itself, thereby leaving the nature of ethics localized to the meanings of the words we use and how through the varying contexts something general might emerge that can identify its essence. In this sense, ethics, like eveything else, is, in its conceptualizing, a work in progress as we continue to reinvent our world with new generations of culture and meaning.

I grant you that things are like this in that no terms are stand alone, and all of our concepts are works in progress. The world is interpretatively open, and physics today will be, as it has been (see Kuhn) a very different thing a thousand years from now. I have admitted this more than once.

But ethics carries something on its sleeve that cannot be ignored. Those interpretative terms 'goods' and 'bad' are, like all things, not fixed in the understanding. But just observe that spear in your kidney: the event, the fact witnessed IS something extraordinary. Mackie complains that ethical realism constitutes some radical idea about what is and how we know it; but then, the vivid sensation of the speared kidney IS just this. It requires something extraoridinary to explain it. You can't just pretend empirical observation take care this as if there were no difference in that "fact" and the fact of tidal changes or lunar eclipses. There is a qualitative difference, period. I think I am safe in this claim.

The term 'hedonics' is simply reductive to normal empirical science, dismissing the qualitative difference. There is something disingenuous about this, I think. Or perhaps just a lack of empathy, sympathy, compassion; the kinds of things that inform us about what it is. But then, even if one is not endowed with these, there is still Backburn's "It hurts; It hurts, and I know it."

My basic objection is that although moral judgements/statements are (ethically) justifiable in terms of non-moral, natural properties or states of affairs, moral concepts or predicates are not (semantically) definable in non-moral, natural terms.
An action may be morally bad or wrong because it makes innocent people suffer, but "is morally bad/wrong" is not synonymous with "causes suffering"—for the reason that moral concepts or predicates aren't purely descriptive but also prescriptive. That is, a moral judgement/statement such as "Torture is morally bad/wrong" isn't just a description of the (non-moral, natural) fact that torture causes suffering, because it is also and essentially a prescription: "Don't torture anybody!" / "You ought not to torture anybody!". The non-descriptive, prescriptive or imperative aspect of a moral judgement/statement is precisely what makes it a moral one rather than a non-moral one.

[Consul]

…That is, a moral judgement/statement such as "Torture is morally bad/wrong" isn't just a description of the (non-moral, natural) fact that torture causes suffering, because it is also and essentially a prescription: "Don't torture anybody!" / "You ought not to torture anybody!".

That what is morally bad/wrong ought not to be done is an analytic truth following from the prescriptive meaning of "morally bad/wrong".

[Consul]

My basic objection is that although moral judgements/statements are (ethically) justifiable in terms of non-moral, natural properties or states of affairs, moral concepts or predicates are not (semantically) definable in non-moral, natural terms.
An action may be morally bad or wrong because it makes innocent people suffer, but "is morally bad/wrong" is not synonymous with "causes suffering"—for the reason that moral concepts or predicates aren't purely descriptive but also prescriptive.

…and also evaluative. That is, by calling an action or behavior morally bad/wrong we evaluate it negatively as non-valuable and non-commendable (condemnable), and (implicitly) tell people not to act or behave in that way or to stop acting or behaving in that way.
The genuinely ethical level of discourse is the transdescriptional level of evaluation and prescription.

Moral evaluations cannot be made on the basis of objective or intrinsic moral values, because there aren't any such things. Values are intersubjective at most; that is, they can be shared by many, most, or even all subjects or persons.

[CIN]

That is, by calling an action or behavior morally bad/wrong we evaluate it negatively as non-valuable and non-commendable (condemnable), and (implicitly) tell people not to act or behave in that way or to stop acting or behaving in that way.
The genuinely ethical level of discourse is the transdescriptional level of evaluation and prescription.

Moral evaluations cannot be made on the basis of objective or intrinsic moral values, because there aren't any such things. Values are intersubjective at most; that is, they can be shared by many, most, or even all subjects or persons.

You ignore the possibility that there may be things (such as suffering) that are self-condemning. I suggest the following train of thought:
1. 'Bad' means 'merits a negative response'.
2. Suffering, because of what it is like (which equates to 'by its very nature'), merits a negative response.
3. Anything that merits a negative response is self-condemning.
4. We ought not to do what is self-condemning.
Step 2 makes clear that 'meriting a negative response' is a natural property of suffering. Hence, ethical naturalism.
It doesn't of course follow that all moral evaluations are derivable from natural properties, but at least some are. For example, if I beat my dog and cause him pain, the pain is self-condemning (it is absurd to deny that pain is bad, i.e. merits a negative response), and it follows that I ought not to do it.

[Consul]

You ignore the possibility that there may be things (such as suffering) that are self-condemning. I suggest the following train of thought:
1. 'Bad' means 'merits a negative response'.
2. Suffering, because of what it is like (which equates to 'by its very nature'), merits a negative response.
3. Anything that merits a negative response is self-condemning.
4. We ought not to do what is self-condemning.
Step 2 makes clear that 'meriting a negative response' is a natural property of suffering. Hence, ethical naturalism.
It doesn't of course follow that all moral evaluations are derivable from natural properties, but at least some are. For example, if I beat my dog and cause him pain, the pain is self-condemning (it is absurd to deny that pain is bad, i.e. merits a negative response), and it follows that I ought not to do it.

We (the non-masochists among us at least) always experience pain as something hedonically bad (unpleasant, unenjoyable); but, as I already said, hedonic badness isn't the same as and doesn't entail moral badness.

Your argument is unsound, because there is no logical or semantical connection between suffering or pain and moral badness/wrongness.
For example, when a dog attacks a child and you beat it in order to prevent it from killing the child, then there is nothing morally bad/wrong or "self-condemning" about causing it to feel pain, is there? On the contrary, if there's no non-violent way of preventing the dog from killing the child, then hurting it is morally good/right and commendable. One can even say that in such a situation one is morally obliged to inflict pain on the dog, because the child's health and life have a higher value than the dog's.

Another example: Prisoners in solitary confinement do suffer, mentally at least. But it doesn't logically or semantically follow from this fact that it's morally bad/wrong to put prisoners in solitary confinement. A defender of retributive justice can argue that criminals deserve to suffer, so that making them suffer in some way or other, and to some degree or other is the morally right thing to do.

Whether suffering is morally bad and condemnable in principle is a substantive ethical question that cannot be answered by means of logic and semantics. Nobody thinks suffering is morally good or commendable in principle, but one can draw a distinction between deserved suffering that is morally okay, and undeserved suffering (the suffering of innocent people) that is not morally okay.

[Consul]

You ignore the possibility that there may be things (such as suffering) that are self-condemning. I suggest the following train of thought:
1. 'Bad' means 'merits a negative response'.
2. Suffering, because of what it is like (which equates to 'by its very nature'), merits a negative response.
3. Anything that merits a negative response is self-condemning.
4. We ought not to do what is self-condemning.

It's certainly true that what is morally bad or condemnable ought not to be done; but no non-moral, natural state of affairs is "self-condemning", because condemning is what morally thinking people do. So if the moral condemnability or badness of something is a property of it at all, it's always an extrinsic property depending on our moral evaluation of the thing in question.

[Consul]

Step 2 makes clear that 'meriting a negative response' is a natural property of suffering. Hence, ethical naturalism. It doesn't of course follow that all moral evaluations are derivable from natural properties, but at least some are.

I think none are. It is not the case that "meriting a negative response is a natural property of suffering", because there may be and arguably are certain cases or circumstances in which suffering (or pain) does not merit a negative response or condemnation.

[Consul]

I have met people who can do more than imagine how others feel, they actually sense it. They do seem to be a dying breed in our modern intellectual age. You find them mostly in societies that live close to nature, whose intuition is active and not over-shadowed by their intellect. It's a natural ability, animals have it, e.g., they can sense fear in other animals.

I'm sorry, I don't believe in magic. It's impossible for human or nonhuman animals to directly perceive emotions in other subjects. What you can perceive directly is only the behavior of others, including their facial expressions—or, if you're a neuroscientist equipped with brain-scan technology, neural processes in others. But your assumptions about the emotions (or any other mental states) of others are always based on indirect evidence and hence inferential.