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Richard Joyce’s new book, Morality: From Error to Fiction, is a sophisticated and enjoyable work. While the book’s ambitions and structure are similar to those of Joyce’s 2001 book, The Myth of Morality, there are also several important differences. This time Joyce’s case for moral error theory appeals to a collection of arguments of different kinds, and he criticizes his earlier self as well as J. L. Mackie’s seminal 1977 book, Ethics, for relying too heavily on one or two master arguments. We argue, however, that some of Joyce’s arguments, especially his critique of moral naturalism, bear closer resemblance to Mackie’s than Joyce lets on. We also argue that Joyce’s critique of moral non-naturalism is less persuasive than Mackie’s. Finally, we briefly criticize some of Joyce’s ideas concerning the implications of metaethical indeterminacy.

This chapter discusses what might be called the paradox of moral objectivity. On the one hand, powerful arguments suggest that objective moral facts would be metaphysically weird and that, consequently, there are no such things. But, on the other hand, moral philosophy as well as our everyday moral thought and discourse appears to be committed to objective moral facts. The right view of morality, then, might be one that is analogous to atheism. According to atheism, religious beliefs involve commitment to metaphysically weird and hence non-existent divine facts. And, according to what is known as the error theory about morality, moral beliefs involve commitment to metaphysically weird and hence non-existent moral facts. However, while the merits of atheism can be debated, the error theory about morality is just too absurd, since it implies that nothing is right or wrong. Surely it was wrong for Ted Bundy to go on a killing spree, for example. And, if so, the error theory is not the right view of morality. How, then, can the paradox be avoided? Towards the end of the chapter a solution is sketched.

J. L. Mackie argued that moral thought and discourse involve commitment to an especially robust kind of normativity, which is too weird to exist. Thus, he concluded that moral thought and discourse involve systematic error. Much has been said about this argument in the last four decades or so. Nevertheless, at least one version of Mackie’s argument, specifically the one focusing on the intrinsic weirdness of the relevant kind of normativity, has not been fully unpacked. Thus, more needs to be said about the issue of how to interpret Mackie’s argument. Moreover, I argue that by looking closely at Mackie’s discussion, we can extract two distinct versions of the argument which together present a tougher, and also more precise, challenge for moral realism than extant versions. In this paper I thus revisit Mackie’s discussion with an eye to making progress on an important issue in contemporary metaethics.

I denna artikel presenterar jag ett nytt argument för moralisk nihilism genom att kapa ett av nihilismens kritikers viktigaste argument och vända det emot dem. Diskussionen i artikeln knyter även an till frågan huruvida nihilismen hotar vår moraliska praktik. Jag menar att den inte gör det, eftersom våra moraliska ställningstaganden i grund och botten är likgiltiga inför metafysiska frågor kring existensen eller icke-existensen av moraliska fakta.

In this paper, I discuss two different metaethical challenges based on population ethical impossibility results. According to the anti-realist challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the existence of objective moral facts. According to the skeptical challenge, the results pose a serious threat to the reliability of our moral intuitions. My aim is to systematically explore and evaluate these challenges. In addition to clarifying the issues, I argue that population ethical impossibility results do not in fact support any anti-realist or skeptical conclusions.

J. L. Mackies mest omfattande arbete inom politisk filosofi har nyligen (i oktober 2024) getts ut av Oxford University Press. Boken, som vi tillsammans har redigerat och försett med ett längre förord, har titeln Theories of Justice and Rights, och består huvudsakligen av ett tidigare opublicerat manuskript, författat i slutet av 1970-talet och/eller i början av 1980-talet.

I denna artikel ger vi en kort förhandsvisning av boken genom att skissera Mackies rättighetsbaserade teori om rättvisa och hans kritik av Rawls och Nozick. Vi diskuterar även hur Mackies politiska filosofi kan tänkas gå ihop med hans moraliska misstagsteori.

According to moral non-naturalism, the kind of genuine or robust normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements cannot be accounted for within a wholly naturalistic worldview, but requires us to posit a domain of non-natural properties and facts. The main argument for this core non-naturalist claim appeals to what David Enoch calls the 'just-too-different intuition'. According to Enoch, robust normativity cannot be natural, since it is just too different from anything natural. Derek Parfit makes essentially the same claim under the heading of 'the normativity objection', and several other non-naturalists have said similar things. While some naturalists may be tempted to reject this argument as methodologically or dialectically illegitimate, we argue instead that there are important limits to what the just-too-different intuition can show, even setting all other worries aside. More specifically, we argue that the just-too-different argument will backfire on any positive, independent specification of the distinction between the natural and the non-natural. The upshot is that the just-too-different argument can show significantly less than non-naturalists have suggested.

John Leslie Mackie (1917–1981) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His published works spanned many areas, but he is not well known as a political philosopher. In the late 1970s, however, Mackie turned his attention to issues concerning justice.

In a series of writings, Mackie built a case for a unique right-based approach to political philosophy, in part by delivering incisive critiques of theories dominant at the time. His most comprehensive work in this area is Theories of Justice and Rights—a previously unpublished manuscript that finally sees the light of day in this volume. Also included are two of Mackie's previously published papers, written during the same period: 'Can There Be a Right-Based Moral Theory?' (1978) and 'Rights, Utility, and External Costs' (1985). Some of Mackie's arguments in these works draw on the metaethical conclusions in his seminal book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). The editorial introduction canvasses the initially puzzling relation between Mackie's moral error theory and his account of justice and rights, addresses some exegetical queries, and connects to present-day debates. In addition, the introduction provides summaries of Mackie's theory of rights, his critique of Rawls's liberalism, and of Nozick's libertarianism.