From: Russell Blackford (RussellBlackford@bigpond.com)
Date: Sun Aug 26 2001 - 03:53:20 MDT
Lee quoted Mark
>> I think you need to explain this a bit more. Relativists do not generally
>> deny that morality exists--indeed, if anything the complaint against
>> relativists is that they allow for a superabundance of morality.
Yes, this is what I called the New Age theory of morality in the previous
post.
>>There are
>> thinkers that deny that morality exists. The Aussi philosopher J L Mackie
>> famously argued that all moral truths are false because there are no
moral
>> facts, i.e., morality does not exist. Mackie and other error theorists
>> (Nietzsche is sometimes interpreted this way) do not say that moral
truths
>> are relative to some social group, rather all such claims are false.
>
>That sounds inconsistent to me. In one sentence, Mackie allegedly
>argues that there are no moral truths, and then in the next says that
>they're false.
No. What Mackie says is that moral *propositions*, such as "X is morally
wrong", are false. He says that such propositions purport to ascribe ethical
moral properties, such as "moral wrongness" to things such as X in our
example. However, there are no such properties. Therefore, such statements
are false.
A way out that would be more strictly subjectivist would be to say that "X
is morally wrong" is not a statement ascribing a moral property to X.
Rather, it *prescribes* or *recommends* that we not do X. Or perhaps it
merely *expresses* our dislike of X or *reports* that dislike. There are
many such subjectivist theories. Mackie does not take this way out because
he thinks that ordinarily we do - and this is built into the language
itself - think we are ascribing moral properties, not merely making reports
or recommendations, etc.
>This is uselessly confusing IMO. Why not just avoid using the "M"
>word, e.g., never say "That's immoral!!", "we much teach morality
>in the school", etc.? A quite unnecessary (to me, at least until
>you enlighten me) semantic quagmire opens up under us whenever we
>try to discuss the "M" word in the abstract, instead of much more
>usefully attacking the things we dislike or think are harmful to
>people, e.g., adultery, disloyalty, brutality, political correctness,
>divisiveness, racism, diversity, separatism, zenophobia, etc.
Why is "diversity" on this list? All things being equal, I *like* diversity.
It is an important value/commitment of mine, along with freedom,
benevolence, industriousness, etc.
>I have to go along with those who say that m******* is
>relative, because that's closer to abandoning the term, and
>doesn't allude to something in the universe that no one has
>ever seen.
This is one (though only one) of Mackie's arguments. Moral properties (or
entities or phenomena, such as "goodness") just seem like such "queer"
(Mackie's word) metaphysical things.
Cheers
Russell
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