Abstract
Despite much discussion over the existence of moral facts, metaethicists have largely ignored the related question of their possibility. This paper addresses the issue from the moral error theorist’s perspective, and shows how the arguments that error theorists have produced against the existence of moral facts at this world, if sound, also show that moral facts are impossible, at least at worlds non-morally identical to our own and, on some versions of the error theory, at any world. So error theorists’ arguments warrant a stronger conclusion than has previously been noticed. This may appear to make them vulnerable to counterarguments that take the possibility of moral facts as a premise. However, I show that any such arguments would be question-begging.
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Notes
See Dreier (2004) for a review.
The locus classicus for moral error theory is Mackie (1977).
To ‘de-bunk’ is to remove the nonsense (bunk) from. In this case, the nonsense is objective moral values. The argument from relativity is one example of a debunking argument. Another of Mackie’s is based around his belief in projectivism, which he takes from Hume. According to Mackie, that which we desire is seen as good because we desire it; but we mistakenly reverse the direction of dependence, thinking that we desire what we desire because it is good (Mackie 1977, p. 43). More recently, moral sceptics have focussed on evolutionary debunking arguments, which try to account for moral behaviour by showing how it enhanced the reproductive fitness of our ancestors. Very roughly, our moral attitudes do not correspond to moral facts, on this view, but are caused (at least in part) by features of our psychology that have been shaped by our evolutionary history; so we can have no confidence that our moral beliefs are true. See Joyce (2006) for an argument of this type.
Streumer’s thesis has the interesting consequence that if it is true we can have no reason to believe it. Streumer accepts this consequence, but does not see it is a problem for error theory (Streumer forthcoming). Indeed a number of philosophers have argued that Mackie’s version of the error theory also has this consequence, on the grounds that epistemic facts, if they exist, are no less categorical or objective than moral facts, and thus if we reject the latter we ought to reject the former as well. This is taken to be a reductio moral error theory. See Cuneo (2007) for a book-length version of this argument.
The nature of the supervenience relation between moral and non-moral properties is controversial, particularly with regard to what exactly is supposed to supervene on what. This is not surprising given the broad acceptance of Supervenience coupled with the diversity of accounts of what our moral judgements commit us to, ontologically speaking. Sturgeon (2009) has argued that given the different ontological commitments of rival metaethical theses, there is in fact no one supervenience thesis that is generally agreed upon. I have stated Supervenience as blandly as possible to avoid such subtleties.
The exception is Richard Joyce.
His actual argument is more complex than this, because he uses a modal argument not only to attack error theory, but also to demonstrate the truth of a substantive moral claim (roughly, that causing harm in a way that advances no one’s ends is always wrong). But his more complex argument contains the simpler argument that I discuss here, so the former fails if the latter does.
I would like to thank … and … for much helpful discussion.
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Brown, P. The possibility of morality. Philos Stud 163, 627–636 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9835-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9835-x