Mackie’s Ethics: Right and Wrong

John Mackie's 1977 book 'Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong' strongly influenced my views on ethics, mainly from my reactions against it. I analyse where I think Mackie got it wrong and how my current perspective incorporates ideas from the book. See a separate post for my notes recording the book's contents.

Mackie’s Ethics: Right and Wrong

From some books you learn more from what you disagree with that from what you endorse. John Mackie’s ‘Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong’ is such a book for me – it has greatly influenced my view of ethics, but more from reaction than agreement.

The book was published in 1977, and it is a classic in the field of metaethics. Mackie’s central argument is that morality is not objective, and that therefore our moral concepts are fundamentally in error. When I first read the books in the early 1980s, I strongly agreed with his dismissal of objective morality, but puzzled over his other conclusions. Since then I have tried to clarify the various points on which I disagreed.

On recently re-reading the book I was impressed by the breadth of issues in moral philosophy that Mackie addresses, and of the quality of his writing and knowledge. The book falls half-way between an academic book and a book for the layman, and while I wouldn’t recommend it now for a non-specialist, it is a fine read for anyone interested in 20^th Century moral philosophy.

The first chapter, entitled ‘The Subjectivity of Value’, is a staple of ethics reading lists and is the most important part of the book. It argues that it is a mistake to think that morality is objective, and as such thinking is fundamental to our morality, that our morality is in error. To show that morality is not objective, Mackie presents the ‘Argument from Queerness’ – that there is no place for objective values that are intrinsically action-guiding and motivating in a naturalistic understanding of the universe – and the ‘Argument from Relativity’ – that moralities differ and seem to more reflect ways of life than efforts to find an objective truth.

In the remaining nine chapters of the book Mackie explores the implications of values not being objective and tries to sketch out a non-objective morality. His well-informed discussion covers many aspects of the landscape of moral philosophy of his time, including moral language, utilitarianism, evolution and games theory. He concludes that ‘morality is not to be discovered but to be made’, that morality should be considered as ‘a device for counteracting limited sympathies’ that utilitarianism is based on fictions, that ‘egoism and self-referential altruism would form a central part of the good life’, and that his ultimate view could be broadly characterised as ‘rule-right-duty-disposition utilitarianism-egoism’.

Right and Wrong

It is helpful to summarise the arguments of the book in five statements:

Morality is not objective;
Our moral concepts fundamentally assume that morality is objective;
Therefore, our moral concepts are in error;
Nevertheless, let us develop a non-objective morality; and
Such a reconsidered morality would be a more refined version of existing morality.

I strongly agree with (1). To the extent that morality is thought of as having an objective, independent existence rather than being a construction of human thought, that is wrong.

On a naturalistic worldview there is no place for a supernatural objective morality or a supernatural conscience faculty, any more than there is a place for other instinctive concepts that philosophy dismisses such as non-scientific views of consciousness, free will and souls. Mackie does a valuable job of laying out the ways in which, for a naturalist, morality cannot be objective.

But I think Mackie goes wrong with (2). While objectifying morality is a feature of our instincts and language, it is not the fundamental feature. Firstly, morality, as an element within practical reason, is fundamentally about evaluating how to act. That there are erroneous ideas about the ontological nature of morality does not nullify its function of evaluating actions. Secondly, not everyone thinks that morality is objective – many people do morality without regarding it as so.

So, while Mackie makes a good point about the metaphysical nature of morality, he goes too far in thinking that this is a fundamental aspect which makes all morality erroneous. Instead, the lesson should be that to the extent that morality is considered objective, this view of morality’s nature is wrong. That he goes too far is demonstrated by the inconsistency between Statements (3) and (4) above: despite saying in his first chapter that morality is in error, he goes on in the rest of the book to develop a morality. His whole approach implies that a non-objective morality is possible, which entails that not all morality can be in error.

While in Chapter 1 Mackie is emphatic in his dismissal of objective morality, in the remainder of the book Mackie is less forceful, to the point of it being difficult to be certain of his conclusions. I hope my Statement (5) captures his main view – that first-order morality can be refined, but not too fundamentally – he thinks a degree of egoism is natural and he criticises utilitarianism for making excessive demands. But my view, here, also differs from Mackie. I think that once objective morality and moral intuitions are dismissed, then reason needs to be used to work out what to do, and reason may well identify new demands beyond conventional morality. Also, I see normativity and motivation as separate questions so that a normative analysis of what should be done is not necessarily limited by what people are motivated to do.

How Reacting Against Mackie has Influenced my Ethics

While I agree with Mackie that it is wrong to objectify morality, on a series of other points I have developed approaches partly in reaction to his views.

First, I take a ‘Practical Reason First’ perspective. I see practical reason, deciding what to do generally, as a wide domain, and that morality is subsidiary to this. Morality is only a corner of practical reason and on this view Mackie’s error theory has limited application: even if false objectification is problematic for some morality, the extensive task of practical reason, choosing how to act, remains.

Mackie makes this distinction:

‘A morality in the broad sense would be a general, all-inclusive theory of conduct: the morality to which someone subscribed would be whatever body of principles he allowed ultimately to guide or determine his choices of action. In the narrow sense, a morality is a system of a particular sort of constraints on conduct – ones whose central task is to protect the interests of persons other than the agent.’

So, Mackie’s ‘broad morality’ is underlying principles for practical reason. On my perspective, there is the wide field of practical reason (evaluating how to act generally) and, within this, questions about core rules (narrow morality) and questions about systematic general principles (broad morality). Mackie says that it is essential not to confuse mortality’s two meanings as narrow morality has a ‘tendency … to usurp both the name and the function of a general theory of conduct.’ I would go further as I think confusions arise both from the two meanings of the word ‘moral’, and from failing to see that both are only part of practical reason.

This leads to my second point, the nature of practical reason. I think this can be understand as being about making evaluations relative to chosen ends, with both ends and means being reasoned about. This seems to be the nature of all normative thought and language including practical reason and the sub-domain of morality. Mackie analyses ‘good’ and ‘ought’ but does not reach a thorough-going end-relational understanding.

My third, related, point is that as practical reason and morality are grounded in pursuing welfare and other ends that matter, then many practical judgements will be true and in a sense ‘objective.’ Practical judgements are man-made but relate to facts in the world. While not being ‘objective’ in Mackie’s sense of ‘independently existing’, they can be ‘objective’ in corresponding to natural facts. My judgement that I should turn right to get to the shop, is made by me but is objectively true as it reflects facts in the world; similarly, my moral judgement not to steal is man-made, but supported by facts about human nature. Mackie does acknowledge that ‘there are certain kinds of value statements which undoubtedly can be true or false…. given any sufficiently determinate standards, it will be an objective issue, a matter of truth and falsehood, how well any particular specimen measures up to those standards.’ My point is that all practical reasoning, including morality, involves making evaluations relative to ends and criteria.

My fourth point is about the nature of narrow sense morality. I see this as being about core societal rules, which I agree in some form will be required. Morality may also feature assumptions of independent existence (which Mackie concentrates on dismissing), of absolutist, moralistic language and thinking (which Mackie also warns against) and of strong reactive attitudes such as anger at rule-breakers. Because I see morality as only an element within practical reason, I see the style it employs as somewhat optional: we can chose not to think of core rules as objectively existing, chose not to treat them as absolute and chose the reactive attitudes we use.

Fifth, I believe that once objective morality and moral intuitions are dismissed, we should use reason to work out what to do and that this may lead to new conclusions. I disagree with Mackie’s main view that morality should not be changed too radically. But Mackie also hints that something larger may be required: ‘for the changes and political extensions that are now necessary we cannot rely on the past achievements of evolution and social tradition. We have to find principles of equity and ways of making and keeping agreements without which we cannot hold together.’ I like Peter Singer’s image of reasoning as an escalator – once you get on it may take you further than you expect.

Sixth, and related, I think we should treat the normative question of what to do as distinct from questions of motivation. While narrow morality may be limited by the realities of human nature, in the wider evaluations of practical reason we do not need this constraint. I do not agree with Mackie when he says about utilitarianism that ‘to identify our morality with something that certainly will not be followed is a sure way of bringing it into contempt.’

Finally, I think utilitarianism has more going for it than Mackie allows. I agree with Mackie that crude act utilitarianism can be counterproductive and there are ‘good reasons why specific rules, rather than a general utilitarian principle, should form the core of morality in the narrow sense.’ But I think the utilitarian framework – of identifying welfare or happiness as at least the main end, recognising the need for impartiality and aiming effectively to improve welfare – is where reason takes us.

It is striking that on all these seven points, Mackie provides hints towards the views that I now endorse. So, perhaps it would be fairer to say that my views are less of a reaction against Mackie, and more a development of some of the ideas he included in his discussion.