Abstract J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection.

References

Ayer, A. J., 1946. Language, Truth, and Logic, 2nd ed. New York: Dover.



Berker, Selim, 2011. “Lecture 4: Other Interpretations of Mackie.” http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic972109.files/phil173-2011-lec4-garner.pdf, accessed 6 September 2014.



Brink, David, 1984. “Moral Realism and the Sceptical Arguments from Disagreement and Queerness.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62: 111–25.



Dworkin, Ronald, 1996. “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Believe It.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 25: 87–139.



Enoch, David, 2011. Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Finlay, Stephen, 2008. “The Error in the Error Theory.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86: 347–69.



Firth, Roderick, 1952. “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12: 317–45.



Foot, Philippa, 1972. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” The Philosophical Review 81: 305–16.



Francén Olinder, Ragnar, 2012. “Moral and Metaethical Pluralism: Unity in Variation.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50: 583–601.



Gill, Michael B., 2009. “Indeterminacy and Variability in Meta-Ethics.” Philosophical Studies 145: 215–34.



Hare, R. M., 1952. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



Huemer, Michael, 2005. Ethical Intuitionism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.



Johansson, Jens and Jonas Olson, 2015. “Against Pluralism in Metaethics.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, edited by C. Daly, pp. 593–609. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.



Joyce, Richard, 2001. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



———, 2008. “Replies.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77: 245–67.



———, 2012. “Metaethical Pluralism: How Both Moral Naturalism and Moral Skepticism May Be Permissible Positions.” In Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates, edited by S. Nuccetelli and G. Seay, pp. 89–109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Joyce, Richard and Simon Kirchin, 2010. “Introduction.” In A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory, edited by R. Joyce and S. Kirchin, pp. ix–xxiv. Dodrecht: Springer.



Loeb, Don, 2008. “Moral Incoherentism: How to Pull a Metaphysical Rabbit out of a Semantic Hat.” In Moral Psychology, vol. 2, The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity, edited by W. Sinnott-Armstrong, pp. 355–85. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.



Mackie, J. L., 1946. “A Refutation of Morals.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 24: 77–90.



———, 1970. “Simple Truth.” The Philosophical Quarterly 20: 321–33.



———, 1973. Truth, Probability, and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



———, 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.



———, 1980. Hume’s Moral Theory. London: Routledge.



———, 1982. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



Olson, Jonas, 2014. Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Phillips, David K., 2010. “Mackie on Practical Reason.” In A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory, edited by R. Joyce and S. Kirchin, pp. 87–99. Dordrecht: Springer.



Pigden, Charles R., 2016. “Hume on Is and Ought: Logic, Promises and the Duke of Wellington.” In The Oxford Handbook of Hume, edited by P. Russell, pp. 401–15. New York: Oxford University Press.



Robinson, Richard, 1948. “The Emotive Theory of Ethics.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 22: 79–106.



Schroeder, Mark, 2009. “Hybrid Expressivism: Virtues and Vices.” Ethics 119: 257–309.



Searle, John, 1964. “How to Derive ‘Ought’ From ‘Is’.” The Philosophical Review 73: 43–58.



Shafer-Landau, Russ, 2003. Moral Realism: A Defence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



Smith, Michael, 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell.



Stevenson, C. L., 1944. Ethics and Language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.



Sturgeon, Nicholas L., 2006. “Ethical Naturalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by D. Copp, pp. 91–121. New York: Oxford University Press.



Timmons, Mark, 1999. Morality without Foundations. New York: Oxford University Press.



Westermarck, Edvard, 1932. Ethical Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.