A Contemporary Defense of Mackie\'s Error Theory

A Contemporary Defense of Mackie's Error Theory
Abstract: In this paper I defend Mackie's error theory against meta-ethical cultural relativism. I start by outlining the basic features of these two views, and then move along to point out the similarities that exist between them. Next I argue that Mackie's error theory is the more plausible of the two meta-ethical views to consider adopting. Finally I argue that the three main kinds of moral realism: natural, supernatural, and non-natural are unable to meet the error theorist's strict epistemic criteria for objective moral values.
Cultural relativism is the meta-ethical view that goodness and rightness mean "that which is understood to be good on the basis of one's culture". Simply put, all moral values are contingent upon the norms or standards of one's culture. Hence, there is no room for objective moral values. Error theory is the view that all moral statements are false. Thus, error theory denies that objective values exist. There are two main theses or aspects of error theory. One is the metaphysical thesis that there are no objective moral facts or rather, that objective moral facts do not exist in any metaphysical sense; the other is the epistemological thesis that we couldn't know these facts even if they did exist. J.L. Mackie in his essay "The Subjectivity of Values" (2007) appeals to two arguments in support of both of thesis. The first he calls "The Argument from Relativity" which cites the widespread disagreement of moral values from culture to culture. The other argument is "The Argument from Queerness" which states that the metaphysical existence of "goodness" would consist of properties "of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe" (Mackie 31). This argument also includes support for the epistemological thesis by describing that our knowledge of these objective moral values, if there were any, would require a special kind of intuition or sense which, like the metaphysical "goodness" would be different from anything that we have experience of (33).
Both meta-ethical views share a common ground in rejecting objective moral values. One of the things that both the cultural relativist and error theorist cite in order to demonstrate that there are no objective moral values is the widespread disagreement between cultures on what constitutes "the good" or "moral value". Mackie argues that we must understand the differences in moral values between cultures as not something that was merely coincidental: these cultures possess varying moral codes not because of any actual support for, say monogamy, but rather, that they practice monogamy because that is part of their culture. In other words, none of the moral norms between cultures exist because they were built upon enlightened insights into what is morally good. Mackie continues to note that we can understand moral reformers as basing their new moral views as being based off of their pre-existing moral values, rather than some purely independent process (30-31).
Mackie then considers the objection that it would be a leap in logic to dismiss the idea of objective moral values solely on the basis of this disagreement. He considers the objection that, since there is widespread disagreement about matters in history and biology, that we do not thereby discount any facts to be obtained through these sciences, we similarly cannot discount the existence of objective moral values solely on the basis of widespread cultural disagreement regarding moral values. Mackie notes that there exists an important difference between the two (30). For him, the matters of dispute in biology and history can be solved via the empirical sciences, whereas moral disagreement cannot be solved in like manner due to the nature of moral disagreement as being one between preferences (30). Mackie also answers the objection that such widespread disagreement arises not in regards to some sort of "basic" or "common sense" morality which consists of general maxims like "do not murder" but rather concerns more particular codes such as "do not use the higher brain death standard when determining if an organ donor is dead". For Mackie, this objection does not do as much damage to the argument as might appear. What weight this objection does carry, Mackie writes, is that it might answer the view that some of the basic moral codes are not objective. However, any extension of these cods would be the result of some contingent or external force, such as expressions of emotion or societal changes (31). Hence, Mackie argues, "The Argument from Relativity" stands.
The meta-ethical cultural relativist appeals to this same data. However, unlike Macke, the cultural relativist does not see this widespread disagreement as evidence of any human shortcomings. On the contrary, the relativist might offer reasons as to why so many different cultures have such diverse usage of the meaning of the words "good" and "morally acceptable". However, one thing that the cultural relativist cannot do, in principle, is offer an explanation for any possible rational disagreement that may arise within different cultures. In other words, there can be no rational disagreement within cultures as regards what it means to be morally good. So although the relativist might have some reason to offer for why there happens to be linguistic differences between cultures, and how these differences account for their different understandings of morality, the most that a relativist can do in the case of any moral reformers is to appeal to some socio-psychological defect responsible for the deviant's behavior.
It appears that, given this evidence of widespread disagreement, it is Mackie's error theory that is more plausible than cultural relativism. For Mackie, it is this lack of epistemic access to objective moral truths which explains the variations in moral understanding between cultures. This lack of any specialized intuition prevents us from reaching anything but a most basic consensus regarding what it means for something to be "good". The cultural relativist, on the other hand, is unable to account for why or how a particular culture could have such widely divergent views, whether basic or particular, aside from mere appeal to the sociological origins of these cultures. One might be tempted to argue that the origins of these attitudes are irrelevant, that mere epistemic differences are enough to establish either position. I think that this is missing an important feature.
If we are to decide which of the two theories is best supported by the evidence of disagreement, then we must understand both the origins of the disagreement and the epistemic criterion which, for Mackie, establishes the claim that objective morals do not exist. The cultural relativist cannot give an explanation as to why or how any of these cultures could be mistaken. That is, any supposed internal inconsistency can only be explained by some sociological factor, removed from any appeal to intuitions. Mackie, on the other hand, argues that it is this lack of epistemic access to moral truths which provides an understanding as to why and how any culture could be mistaken. For the relativist, supposing that some culture X had maintained the exact same social and moral norms since its inception, there could be no room for internal mistakes. But once again the epistemic problem arises. How, the error theorist asks, would any of the members of the society know that the moral code, what it means to follow it, was properly designed? Lacking any epistemic access to the truth of these codes, the member would be forced to simply accept them as they are prescribed. But this seems problematic. It seems more likely, on the error theorist's view that the original framers of these codes themselves lacked epistemic assess as to the truth of their codes. Lacking such access puts the original framers, along with all subsequent reformers, along with those founders of the moral codes of other cultures, into systematic error. Hence, it appears as though Mackie's error theory is the more plausible candidate given the available evidence.
We are still faced with the question of which view is, on the whole, the more accurate. I argue that it is Mackie's error theory which is the more plausible of the two. I came to this conclusion after considering the global epistemic difficulties all cultural relativists must face. This is composed of two parts: understanding the origins of their meta-ethical view, as well as their inability to find equilibrium between these standards and whatever judgments they make on an individual level. Although cultural relativism at the meta-ethical level leaves no room for moral reform, I assume that each individual will have at least some individual moral judgments that may differ, however slightly from the established standards. It is the relativist's inability to find harmony between these judgments and the standards that gives us reason to consider it the less plausible of these two views. For the relativist is faced with the problem of knowing whether or not their own judgments are true or rather, as Mackie points out (33-34), these judgments are the result of "objectifying" or "reading into" states of being, including well-being and pain, certain emotions. So the relativist needs some special intuition or the like, different from ordinary perception, that warrants belief that these judgments are not simply emotive in nature, but rather, that they do line up with the standard codes set down by the culture. Put another way, the relativist is unable to give an account, absent any special faculty, as to why he or she might believe that her individual judgments concerning things like "good" are able to match the accepted cultural definition of "good", rather than simply having such judgments be the result of emotional objectification.
The other problem that the relativist faces is the epistemic problem of knowing the foundations of the cultural definition of "good". The relativist must find a way to know that said foundations were not simply the result of purely emotivist tendencies on the part of the founders of the moral code but rather were done for some non-arbitrary reason. One of the reasons why this is such a problem for the relativist is because emotions cannot lead to rational moral decision making, let alone setting a decent definition of moral terms. This is because, absent any special faculty, any judgment based purely on emotion will leave room for a high potential of error and subsequent social disaster. This is because, when defining moral terms, if we simply resort to our emotions, we end up with something like the following: "good" and "bad" really translate into "yay" and "nay". There can be no real meaning to such terms. This is because sentences such as "boo murder" cannot be true or false. So if this is the basis of the origins of moral terms for the relativist, then his moral terminology is nonsensical. The relativist, as noted above, is unable, absent any special faculty of intuition, is unable to know whether or not this is what the moral terminology in his culture is reduced to.
The error theorist understands this epistemic failure to be evidence that objective moral facts do not exist. For Mackie, the cultural relativist is in no better an epistemic position to justify his or her beliefs than the non-relativist. It thus seems, on the basis of the evidence from relativist and the epistemic problems noted above, that the error theorist is in a better position than the relativist. What about the arguments for naturalist moral realism, supernaturalist realism, and non-naturalist realism? Do they pose a significant danger to Mackie's error theory? Let's consider each in turn.
A naturalist moral realist is somebody who admits that there are objective moral facts, but that such facts are contingent upon what people desire. For instance, if people desire pleasure and the absence of suffering, then pleasure is morally good and suffering is morally bad. I should note here that the naturalist moral realist emphasizes that in order for a desire to be good, the desire itself must be rational and be made by rational agents. So somebody who has been diagnosed with psychosis would not qualify as someone who could make rational judgments. Mackie might point out a quick worry that because we (presumably) do not have special access to other minds, or even, some error theorists might contend, to our own, we are unable to accept such a criterion since "rationality" is a rather sketchy term and applying it even more difficult to work out.
A naturalist realist might rebut this by saying that, typically, the majority of us human agents can understand rationality in at least a sense in which there would be little room for mistakes in our moral judgment, if we have as our main goal the maximization of well being over suffering. Since this realist recognizes that the social sciences can determine which actions increase or decrease somebody's well-being, there is no epistemic worry to deter us in acting in accordance with "goodness". Mackie can make several rebuttals to this point. One of them has its basis in evolutionary socio-psychology. Because the least arbitrary standard for the naturalist realist in determining what increases well-being is what satisfies the preferences of rational people, Mackie claims, it follows that the naturalist realist would keep having to redefine goodness in accordance with these preferences as humans evolve and become more rational. To this the realist would respond "we don't need to redefine 'goodness" just because of this change of preference ordering." But Mackie would point out that people's preferences may be self-effacing. That is, they might select their preference ordering such that their immediate preferences might demand a decrease (or increase) in fishing in order to feed or preserve the population. In other words, what might be best for their well-being might be a decrease in well-being for either the present or the future. Mackie would point out that the realist must balance these two conflicted sets of preferences to promote well-being. Assuming that both levels of well-being are equal, Mackie would contend, the naturalist would be unable to find a non-arbitrary solution to what economists have called "the tragedy of the commons". For this reason, Mackie would contend, any judgment made would run a high probability of causing immense suffering for the population. Therefore, such a judgment would result in a moral error regarding either the present or future population. Therefore, naturalist realism is inadequate to solve such moral dilemmas. Therefore, naturalist realism is false. Can supernaturalist realism fare any better? Let's now consider this position.
One of the most well known examples of supernaturalist moral realism is that advanced by William Lane Craig (2007). Craig's argument for realism can be summarized in a syllogism: 1.If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. 2. Objective moral values do exist. C. Therefore God exists. Mackie would grant that this is a valid argument; however, it doesn't prove that moral values are contingent upon the existence of God but rather, it merely purports to show that God and moral values exist concurrently. To this Craig can respond that God is the only being which could give rational agents epistemic access to moral values. Mackie might respond that this seems wrong. Why not, Mackie would argue, have some abstract entities like a Platonic form or even a number (say, the square root of seven) as the power through which we perceive objective moral values? To this Craig would respond that numbers do not have any causal powers whereby to channel moral values. But, Mackie would insist, Craig has not demonstrated that God is capable of such powers himself. Craig, Mackie would say, would need to demonstrably prove that the God that is purportedly responsible for both the existence of "goodness" and our supposed knowledge of goodness must be a being such that he can channel knowledge of moral values to us. In other words, Craig would have to demonstrate that God is a transcendent inter-personal being who can enter time-space and communicate with rational agents (humans) through such things as commandments etc.
Given the amount of suffering in the world, Mackie would argue, there is no reason to believe that such a God exists. Mackie would contend that the existence of evil and an all-powerful God are logically incompatible. I think that Mackie's skepticism regarding theism is justified in this regard. It seems that supernaturalist realism fails to satisfy the error theorist's objections. Craig may have one final line of defense and say that "it would seem as though it would require some outlandish or rather, more strange premises to reach the conclusion that moral skepticism is true rather than simply accept the existence of objective moral values". I think Craig is somewhat right here. Sure, Mackie would say, it does seem like objective moral values exist, but therein lays the problem. Unlike skepticism regarding physical objects such as tables or chairs, our sensory experience cannot justify us making moral value claims on the basis of what our physical senses see as something unpleasant. It does certainly seem to us that beating a child over the head with a baseball bat is unpleasant, due to the amount of suffering it causes, however, as Mackie notes (33), what is so peculiar about this physical unpleasantness that leads us to the inference "such an action is morally wrong"? It seems as though Craig's point misfires. He mistakenly treats moral skepticism as if it were skepticism about physical objects, all the while ignoring the error theorists point that such "self-evident" or "intuitive" moral values could, and indeed, for Mackie, do seem to be more like the result of social conditioning and emotional reactions. With that said I conclude that supernaturalist realism is inadequate to account for the existence of objective moral values.
Does the non-naturalist realist fare any better than the types of realism mentioned above? Let us find out. For non-naturalist realists, moral facts are simply non-natural properties. They thus require a special sort of intuition to impart their existence to rational agents, albeit a different sort that the supernaturalist requires. A common example of this might be Plato's forms. However, since hardly any contemporary realists believe in such things, I will not spend any time discussing them. Rather, I will discuss what I think to be the most plausible interpretation of this view before discussing some objections to it.
What exactly these non-natural properties would be, I assume, could only be known via a special moral intuition. As Mackie points out (30-32) such properties, as well as the intuition, must be of a sort not found in nature and therefore, beyond the scope of scientific investigation. So what exactly these properties would look like is an open question. They may be a formless void. Or they may be metaphysical states than allow us to intuit them after much rational deliberation. This would be a secular form of the supernaturalist intuition laid out above. Mackie again would place the evidential burden on the realist: he would demand an example of some such phenomena occurring to where he could objectively validate the person's experience. However, Mackie would contend, such a thing would be either impossible or, more charitably, highly improbable given what we know of the laws of nature. So, he would conclude, non-naturalist realism is implausible. One way in which the non-naturalist could respond is by finding evidence for man's moral evolution within a Darwinian framework. Since Darwinian evolution does not care about moral progress absent any advantage to increased fitness, it seems highly improbable that humans evolved from violent ancestry to a more non-violent culture, for the most part.
Notice how the supernaturalist could very well make the same appeal. However, unlike the supernaturalist, the non-naturalist does not need to explain some nuances in the theory which the supernaturalist has (such as why God would have evolution in the first place or, more interestingly, why God would make humans go through such a long chain of evolution in order to give them a moral intuition only relatively recently in our evolutionary history) which makes it seem like a more plausible candidate than supernaturalist realism or error theory. These properties could have just been "sitting around" until humans evolved a more stable brain allowing them to do more reflection, tapping into these non-natural properties. Unlike mystic spirit trance, these properties would neither be personal nor offer any action guiding principle. They would rather only offer an adequate sense of "goodness" and "badness". Laying out these general definitions, the first philosophers who stumbled upon them would be thus equipped to build a strong normative ethical theory and apply it to the real world. However, the error theorist might remark, it is better to go from our experience with our own world, as we can understand it, as objectively as we can (i.e. through science) and leave out any room for non-natural or supernatural properties and their accompanying "intuitions". I therefore think that even the non-naturalist is able to offer an adequate basis for objective moral values, including the epistemic requirement.









Works Cited
Shafer-Landau, Russ. Ethical Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2007. Print. pp.25-35, 249.









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