Prospects for Moral Success Theory

<p>In this thesis, I will argue that the existence of moral facts does not rely on the existence of a reason for action, and that moral facts can be made sense of in other ways. My thesis is both a reply to a type of moral error theory that has been advanced by Richard Joyce and John Mackie, and an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The argument for error theory that I respond to is roughly as follows: moral judgments are judgments about external practical reasons. But external reasons do not exist, and so no moral judgment is ever true. In the first part of my thesis, I will argue in favour of the latter premise of the error theorist’s argument, but against the former: external reasons do not exist, but moral judgments are not committed to them. In the second half of my thesis I build up a positive account of what moral judgments involve. If moral judgments are not judgments about reasons, then what are moral judgments about? I develop the widely supported idea that moral judgments are judgments that are based on welfarist considerations, and attempt to give this idea a more precise formulation than what has been previously offered. From this account, I go on to develop an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The account I end up with is an ideal observer theory that I believe makes sense of a broad range of intuitions about morality. My hope is that this thesis will be of interest to others who feel the pull of moral error theory, but would prefer to see moral success theory vindicated.</p>

Prospects for Moral Success Theory

<p>In this thesis, I will argue that the existence of moral facts does not rely on the existence of a reason for action, and that moral facts can be made sense of in other ways. My thesis is both a reply to a type of moral error theory that has been advanced by Richard Joyce and John Mackie, and an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The argument for error theory that I respond to is roughly as follows: moral judgments are judgments about external practical reasons. But external reasons do not exist, and so no moral judgment is ever true. In the first part of my thesis, I will argue in favour of the latter premise of the error theorist’s argument, but against the former: external reasons do not exist, but moral judgments are not committed to them. In the second half of my thesis I build up a positive account of what moral judgments involve. If moral judgments are not judgments about reasons, then what are moral judgments about? I develop the widely supported idea that moral judgments are judgments that are based on welfarist considerations, and attempt to give this idea a more precise formulation than what has been previously offered. From this account, I go on to develop an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The account I end up with is an ideal observer theory that I believe makes sense of a broad range of intuitions about morality. My hope is that this thesis will be of interest to others who feel the pull of moral error theory, but would prefer to see moral success theory vindicated.</p>

Using and Abusing Moorean Arguments

Metaethical Mooreanism is the view that without being able to explain how we know certain moral claims we can nevertheless be sure that we do know them. In this article I focus on the Moorean argument against moral error theory. I conclude that it fails. To show this failure, I first distinguish Moorean claims from Moorean arguments, and then so-called presumptive support from dialogical support. With these distinctions in place, I argue that the key Moorean claim requires dialogical support in order to be used within the Moorean argument against moral error theory, but metaethical Mooreans have provided only presumptive support for the Moorean claim. Not only is this presumptive support inadequate for fending off the moral error theory, it is doubtful that Mooreans can actually provide dialogical support for the key Moorean claim.

Prudential Normativity, Moral Scepticisms, and Metaethics

In earlier chapters it was argued that prudential value gives agents normative, prudential reasons and that prudential judgements are normative judgements on a par with moral judgements. This chapter spells out some ramifications of these theses by examining four different areas of inquiry about morality and moral discourse, showing how the theses hitherto defended in this book affect them. It begins with the form of moral scepticism found within the ‘why be moral?’ debate. It then examines hermeneutic moral error theory and proposes a companions-in-guilt argument based on the normativity of prudential discourse. Third, it examines arguments given within the literature on revisionary metaethical views, pointing out and questioning their commitment to prudential justifications. Finally, it is shown how the normativity of prudential properties applies to a central debate about thick concepts, that between reductionists and non-reductionists about such concepts.

"Ought" and Error

The moral error theory generally does not receive good press in metaethics. This paper adds to the bad news. In contrast to other critics, though, I do not attack error theorists’ characteristic thesis that no moral assertion is ever true. Instead, I develop a new counter-argument which questions error theorists’ ability to defend their claim that moral utterances are (typically) meaningful assertions. More precisely: Moral error theorists lack a convincing account of the meaning of deontic moral assertions, or so I will argue.

Moral Error Theory Without Epistemic Error Theory: Scepticism About Second-Personal Reasons

Proponents of the epistemic companions in guilt argument argue that we should reject the moral error theory because it entails that there are no epistemic reasons. In this paper, I investigate whether a plausible version of the moral error theory can be constructed that does not entail an error theory about epistemic reasons. I argue that there are no irreducibly normative second-personal reasons even if there are irreducibly normative reasons. And epistemic reasons are not second-personal reasons. In this case, a plausible version of the moral error theory can be constructed that does not entail an error theory about epistemic reasons if facts and claims about morality entail facts and claims about irreducibly normative second-personal reasons. And, as I explain, there is a good case that facts and claims about morality do entail facts and claims about irreducibly normative second-personal reasons.

What’s So Queer About Morality?

Mackie (Ethics: inventing right and wrong, Penguin Books, London, 1977) famously argued for a moral error theory on the basis that objective moral values, if they existed, would be very queer entities. Unfortunately, his argument is very brief and it is not totally obvious from what he says exactly where the queerness of moral values is supposed to lie. In this paper I will firstly show why a typical interpretation of Mackie is problematic and secondly offer a new interpretation. I will argue that, whether or not we have reason to live in the morally correct way, what seems queer about moral properties is that there is a morally correct way in which to live in the first place. This interpretation makes sense of Mackie’s claim that theism might be able to solve the queerness problem; the notion of an objectively correct way to live may make sense if theism is true, but not otherwise.