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J. L. Mackie: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

question 24

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J. L. Mackie: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
Mackie's position, which he calls "moral skepticism" but has come to be more commonly known as "the error theory," involves two central claims. First, Mackie claims that ordinary moral discourse contains a "claim to objectivity." When someone makes a moral claim-e.g., that abortion is immoral-they do not mean to merely express their feelings or issue a command. Rather, they are seeking to describe an intrinsic feature of the action in question-in this case, that abortion is objectively the sort of thing that ought not to be done. Second, Mackie claims that objective moral values do not exist. It follows from these two theses that all moral claims are false.
Mackie gives two main arguments for his claim that objective values do not exist. The Argument from Relativity maintains that variation in moral judgments, both between individuals and between societies, is best explained by the hypothesis that moral judgments reflect ways of life rather than objective moral facts. If so, Mackie claims, there is good reason to believe that moral facts do not exist. The second argument, the Argument from Queerness, has two parts, one metaphysical and one epistemological. Metaphysically, if objective values did exist, they would be completely unlike anything else in the universe, in that they would give us reasons for action independently of what we happen to desire or aim at. Epistemologically, if such values existed, they would have to be known by some special faculty of intuition, completely different from our other ways of knowing about the world. Because it is implausible that such strange facts or faculties exist, Mackie claims, we should accept that no objective values exist. Mackie concludes with a brief discussion of how people could come to believe in objective values, despite their non-existence.
-According to Mackie, non-cognitivism and naturalism can account for the fact that:

Definitions:

Data Collection

The process of gathering and measuring information on variables of interest in a systematic fashion, enabling one to answer stated research questions, test hypotheses, and evaluate outcomes.

Null Hypothesis

A statement or hypothesis set up to be nullified or refuted in order to support an alternative hypothesis in statistical testing.

Significance Tests

Statistical tests used to determine whether the observed data deviates significantly from the null hypothesis or not.

Significance Test

A statistical test used to determine if there is enough evidence in a sample of data to infer that a condition holds true for the entire population.