Tom Swann Mackie Ethics

mackie - ethics

P 16

normative ethics // meta-ethics

P19 ontology // conceptual question. “the problem of what goodness is cannot be settled conclusively or exhaustively by finding out what the word ‘good’ means, or what it is conventionally used to say or to do.”

analogy with Locke on secondary qualities. cannot be settled by analysing colour words. naive realism about colour possible analysis of colour terms but “yet it might not be a correct account of the status of colours”.

“error could well result then… from taking an account of the meanings of statements as a full account of what there is”.

Hare: does not understand what is meant by the “objectivity of values” imagines an objectively valued world and a nihilist world in which people are concerned about the same things. what difference ? P22 the difference only highlights the difference between first and second order. in one world something “backs up and validates the subjective concerns… in the other there is not”. epistemic relations. also possible differences in causal interactions.

“subjective agreement would give intersubjective values, but intersubjectivity is not objectivity.” >>>does not so much as argue for this, and does not even say why intersubjectivity is not enough for what he needs objectivity to do in his argument<<< nor is objectivity simply universalizability“. the possibility of prescribing and prohibiting in systematically generalised ways, while at the same time recognising that”such… were his activities, nothing more." >>>two senses of universalisability! a normative standard that cuts across all possible cases in a systematic way, and a normative standard that all should subscribe to said standard.<<<

descriptivism neither entails nor is entailed by objectivity. the crucial aspect of values is their action-guiding quality. meant to be at once prescriptive and objective. >>>and describable, surely? <<<

P25 makes certain moral arguments possible / impossible . >>>so they are not independant~!<<<

Egoist: my happiness is objectively good. utilitarian: yours not any more than any other’s. the mere fact that you are you cannot have anything to do with objective goodness. >>>(I think the objectivist must be saying: ONLY my happiness is good.) Mackie: need objective goodness here, not just rationality. else we could universalise the egoist position to say: each should pursue their own happiness.

value statements not liable to T/F? but can be T/F in the sense of saying how something matches up to a standard. can be respectfully objective in this sense but this leaves open the question of objective prescription. pushes question back to the standards clearly the standards not totally abitrary. relative to ends in some sense. but objective value in the sense looked for here is not the value of something that satisfies a desire.

hypothetical and categorical imperatives categorical: oughts not relative to some desires. determinant here is the grounds of the reason. So "if you ar