Argument from queerness (Mackie)

alf, I'm not quite certain what you are saying here. Can you rephrase it, please?

Here are some lecture notes on Mackie: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/phil/classes/Fall2004/fa04-341handout90704.htm

This quote from the beginning of the notes sums it up pretty clearly for me:

Mackie's Thesis

There are no objective values. Values are not part of the fabric of the world.

Mackie's Thesis spelled out: There is no such thing as moral goodness (there are no morally good people or morally bad people), there are no intrinscially good or intrinsically bad objects or states of affairs, there is no such thing as rightness and wrongness (there are no right or wrong acts), there is no such thing as duty or obligation (there is no such thing as an act someone ought to perform), there are no such things as rotten, contemptible or base actions.

Notice that this is an ontological or metaphysical thesis: it purports to tell us what there isn't. He emphasizes several times that this is not to be confused with a semantic or conceptual thesis. There are two ways of taking the semantic claim Mackie means to be making:

Moral sentences are, as it turns out, neither true nor false.

Moral sentences are, as it turns out, all false.

What exactly Mackie means to be denying is the existence of "the peculiar evaluative, prescriptive, intrinsically action guiding aspects" of the property of being good, for instance. (p. 32) There are no properties or entities such that

(i) those properties or entities are objectively prescriptive

(ii) those properties or entities are intrinsically action guiding.

(iii) we could come to know what some of those properties or entities are (and which things have them)

(iv) those properties or entities are logically independent of and prior to our activities of valuing things

I see.

Thanks, Cav.

As far as I can gather from the excellent link that cavfancier posted, it seems that Mackie is arguing that "objective" values, if they are ascertainable, must be ascertained by some "mysterious faculty of knowing or intuiting" (hence the "queerness"). And since no one possesses such a faculty, objective values do not exist (actually, what he should be saying is that objective values, if they do exist, are not ascertainable, but the end result is largely the same).

Well, Joe. We can't prove everything. I was talking with someone about cause and effect, and even that has its weaknesses.

Hey, alf. Able to know? Hope so.

I already have those notes, its just that nothing i have found really explains *why* they are queer and unlike anything else. Everything I have read just says they are queer. Because I don't understand this aspect I can't' start to critique the theory, which is what I want to do.

You weren't, by any chance, communing with the spirit of David Hume, were you?

I can't give a thorough critique of Mackie, since I am not familiar with his work. From the link, though, it seems that, for Mackie, objective values should be knowable in the same way as anything else that is objective (like, e.g., trees, colors, motion, etc.). But Mackie holds that they are not knowable in the same way that we can know any other objective thing. Thus, if we can know them at all, we can only know them through some kind of "mysterious" way of knowing -- and that, according to Mackie, is "queer."

Who's David Hume. I know; I know. I could look him up, but I'd much rather have you tell me, Joe.

alf, the first thing that you should do is look at Cav's explanation of the link that he gave, then point out the strengths and weaknesses and support them where you can.

I have found this website
Argument from Queerness
Which describes the theory in pretty good detail (although the author's comments are lacking.)

Now I have a few questions regarding the argument from queerness.
Is Mackie arguing that an objective moral fact should compel us to do something and since morality cannot do this there are no moral facts?
Is he also saying that there is no logical connection between an action (causing cruelty) and the moral fact (it is wrong), and that this shows that morals are subjective responses? Is he saying that moral responses are only supervened onto actions, rather than being joined to them logically.

The help you have all given so far has been tremendous (thanks! ).
I think i'm starting to understant what he is arguing its just that I'm not too sure that I am getting it all right.

Your first question is rather convoluted and tangential. In your second question, I think you summarized Mackie's point quite well. Remember, Mackie's theory was metaphysical, not practical or literal, and related strictly to ethics as a concept, and was not a guideline on how one should act in the real world.

The first question is to do with motivational internalism. I'm not sure if this is right, but what I gathered was that if objective values exist then there will be motivational internalism compeling us to follow the moral "fact". I.e. if x is good, then we will do x. Is this right? or am i way off?

cheers
alf

I think Mackie was arguing that that sort of logic, when it comes to ethics, is overly simplistic. I believe he was arguing against that sort of equation. Think of how we try murderers today. By the x + x = y equation, we can say x = murder is a moral sin + x = murder is punishible by death, it's our moral responsibility, = y, all murderers should morally be put to death. However, in real trials, and real life, there are a lot of grey areas that allow for lighter sentences, or complete dismissal of charges, depending on the situation. You aren't wrong in your assessment of moral absolutism, but the operative word in your post is "if". Mackie didn't believe that objective values, as he defined them, had a logical place in ethics.

I didn't really understand what you were trying to say with the "if" aspect in my question. Would you be able to explain motivational internalism to me?

Is the epistemological part of the argument from queerness asking how we can be sure that our moral beliefs represent moral facts? And to do be able to do this we would need some kind of special sort of faculty of moral perception?

What is the metaphsyical part arguing?

I am now completely lost

I have to go run of to bed now (its 4am here in australia) I'll check this again in the morning if anybody would be so kind as to help me out.

Sorry, the "if" was in reference to "if objective values exist" and Mackie argued that they did not. Anyway, I don't have too much time, so I'm going to post a quote here from a paper written on Mackie, and provide the link. Hope it helps a bit:

"Mackie criticizes the nature of supposed objective values with the argument from queerness, which involves metaphysics and epistemology. The metaphysical problem with objective values is how they could carry a motivational force and how they could supervene upon natural features. Philosophers have failed to describe how it can be possible that an item of knowledge about what one should or should not do can automatically motivate an agent to act accordingly upon being understood. Furthermore, there is no explanation of how they automatically exist as a result of certain actions or features. What is the link between an action or its consequence and the moral value that prescribes or prohibits it?

Even if the assumption that these objective values exist is granted, the immediate epistemological problem is how one could ever come to know these values. Mackie points to the failure of the intuitionists and the absurdity of divining truths through mere contemplation to reject the notion of a moral faculty or intuition. If there is no such faculty, then the remaining possibility seems to be reason, but reason cannot even find the link between actions and their associated values, so it does not seem to provide a reliable means to find these values."

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~pritchea/phil3200paper2.htm

Funny Joe - I introduced my students to Hume the other say and talked about the uobservable causal nexus. Thier heads started smoking.

It seems, by the way, that sub atomic physics shows that Hume was basically right.

TTF