Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right And Wrong

In the paper, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, J. L Mackie responds to the conception of objective moral values. In his paper, he argues that the ordinary conception of morality on objective moral values are based on three principles; language, practice, and crises. (ELABORATE ON THESE THREE PRINCIPLES) He introduces the Error- Theory which explains that we are all generally mistaken about the fundamentals of objective moral values. Mackie addresses this argument by explaining that there is a certain naturalistic or scientific world view that we have been taught and the laws learned are the fundamental elements of what we believe. Mackie debates that there are other types of world views out there that we also take into account, which …show more content…
The first type of queerness he discusses is the meta-ethical queerness, which is ontological in nature. This claim is based on the fundamental idea that everything in the physical world is constituted of energy and matter. Therefore, the argument that objective truths are not made of energy or matter means that they are not real. The second queer argument of moral truths is the epistemological queerness of moral truths, which are just how one come to ascertain knowledge. Many gain knowledge through reason and analysis, experiences and sensations, memory and testimony. However, if the case of defining objective moral truths as being real, it is almost impossible to justify that they came about through memory, testimony, reason, experiences, etc. There is an alternative argument to these queer theories are the objectification of the moral truths. The way you interpret how something is, creates the reality. For instance, one would view the act of drinking out of the toilet in disgust. Therefore, being disgusted about drinking out of the toilet is the subjective aspect of reality, because if a dog were to see a toilet bowl they would not view it in