Analysis Of J. L. Mackie's Moral Error Theory

On the stage of philosophy concerning meta-ethics, the Moral Error Theory followed in Hume’s footsteps and made significant breakthroughs with J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong and Richard Joyce’s more recent The Myth of Morality. They both argue that i) moral judgments presuppose objective and categorical moral values and ii) this presupposition is false since there are no such things. Therefore, they conclude, moral judgments are systematically false. Although Mackie offers an argument from relativity and an argument from queerness in support of his claim, this paper will focus on the former.
The Moral Error Theory
To begin, Mackie’s first sentence sides with anti-realism concerning moral facts in that “there are no objective
Joyce interprets this idea as “when we up-the ante to a moral ‘good’, we are implicitly referring to requirements for which there is no requirer” (Joyce, 2001, 16 emphasis mine). Mackie then argues that merely these objective standards is a substantive failing -an error- because it does not possess categorical value, or universal and prescriptive imperatives regardless of an agent’s desires. For instance, Mackie uses the example of objective standards such as justice and injustice to point out how, regardless of a court decision being just or unjust, it still does not hold categorical value. In another section, he clearly draws a line between natural and moral facts by questioning “What is the connection between the natural fact that an action is a piece of deliberate cruelty and the moral fact that it is wrong?” (Mackie, 41). Likewise, Joyce also rejects Moral Internalism in that he denies a necessary connection between “an agent who judges that one of his available actions is morally obligatory” and “motivation to perform that action” (Joyce, 2001, 18). According to Mackie, no such connection exists. For, he makes the metaphysical claim that objective and prescriptive
However, Mackie predicts this “well-known argument” that appeals to “general basic principles which are recognized at least implicitly to some extent in all societies” and then refutes such claims by saying “if things had been otherwise, quite different sorts of actions would have been right” (Mackie, 37). In other words, to argue for such a principle like the Utilitarian or Universalist would ground morals in the circumstances. Yet, to undermine Mackie’s argument, one does not have to look to universal principles in contemporary society. For, ancient religions developed in isolation from and completely different circumstances compared to each other still express some form of the golden rule:
Ancient Egyptian: “Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do” (the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109-110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson)
Zoroastrianism: “whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others” (Shayast-na-Shayast