Twentieth-century philosophy · 1917–1981

Mackie

Mackie argues that ordinary moral claims purport to report objective requirements, but that no such requirements exist.

Mackie in a shaded warm-grey editorial portrait, turning one palm upward beneath a compact muted-gold bow tie.

John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher who worked in metaethics, philosophy of religion, causation and personal identity. He is best known for moral error theory and for presenting the logical problem of evil as a challenge to traditional theism.

EthicsKnowledge

The question he enters

What if moral judgements aim at objective truth but the world contains no objective moral properties for them to describe?

Moral error theoryAnalytic philosophyPhilosophy of religion

The central move

Take moral language seriously, then deny its objects

Mackie does not treat ordinary moral claims as mere expressions of feeling. They present actions as objectively required or forbidden. His error theory says this claim to objective prescriptivity is systematically false, supported by disagreement and by the metaphysical strangeness that objective values would require.

Key ideas

Terms that carry the argument.

Error theory: Ordinary moral judgements make truth-apt claims, but those claims are uniformly false because objective values do not exist.
Argument from relativity: Persistent moral disagreement is better explained by different ways of life than by perception of one objective moral realm.
Argument from queerness: Objective values would be metaphysically and epistemically unlike ordinary natural facts because they would intrinsically prescribe action.
Logical problem of evil: The claim that traditional divine attributes and the existence of evil appear inconsistent without adequate additional premises.

Where the view strains

Objections and limits.

Disagreement does not prove error

Disagreement occurs in science and history too, so moral variation alone may not undermine objective truth.

Normative facts need not be queer

Moral realists argue that reasons and values can be objective without exerting mysterious causal or motivational force.

Sources and routes

Read the work. Follow the argument.

Primary texts

Where to meet the position.

On this site

Continue in a usable resource.

Why would a good God allow evil?Appears hereInquiry · Mackie argues that divine goodness and power sit in logical tension with evil unless further beliefs resolve it.