What Would It Mean For Morality To Be 'objective'? Would Objective Morality Be 'queer'?

Mackie's attack on moral objectivity (which he calls moral scepticism) has, in his summary, five distinct prongs: i) the relativity of some important starting points for moral thinking; ii) the metaphysical peculiarity of the supposed objective values; iii) the problem of how such moral values could supervene upon natural features; iv) the epistemological problem of how we can possibly understand the connection between the natural features and the moral judgment; and, v) the idea that if there were no objective values, people might still come to think that there are objective values by reason of the various patterns of objectification outlined in Mackie's work. The first part of this essay will focus on what we actually mean when we say that moral values are 'objective' and, if objective morality were accepted, some of the things that this would mean for moral inquiry more generally. Once I have explored this, I will assess Mackie's 'argument from queerness', addressing the question of whether objective morality, if established, could be described as metaphysically 'queer'. In Mackie's view, this is the most plausible strand of his argument. I will try and demonstrate below that: a) objectivists can view morality as being 'objective' in two senses, which I think go hand-in-hand; b) for morality to be objective, it would require the existence of evidence-independent moral facts; and, c) in answer to the final part of the question, that objective morality would indeed be metaphysically queer (though this alone would not preclude completely the possibility of such moral objectivity). I am nonetheless of the view that the burden of proof in meta-ethics is on the objectivist to establish the case for objectivity, because JL Mackie's arguments from queerness and relativity are more persuasive than David Brink's linguistic analysis in attempting to shift the argumentative burden to the other side.

What would it mean for morality to be 'objective'?

This part of the question can be split broadly into two separate discussions: the questions of, i) what do we mean when we talk of 'objective morality'? and, ii) what would objective morality entail, if it were indeed accepted?

'Objective morality' is not in itself a clear-cut expression of a distinct concept, and so needs clarification. For one example, it would be misguided, in my view, to equate the claim of objectivity with the quite vague claim that "morality exists" (which I think Brink's term 'moral realism' unfortunately implies by linking something being 'real' to something being 'objectively real'). This view that "morality exists" is clearly something that both objectivists and subjectivists could agree on - the idea of morality 'existing' is consonant with a one possible subjectivist view that morality is a socially constructed mechanism for regulating our and others' behaviour. In fact, we can find support for such a view of morality in Mackie's own work, when he argues:"Moral attitudes themselves are at least partly social in origin: socially established - and socially necessary - patterns of behaviour put pressure on individuals, and each individual tends to internalise these pressure and to join in requiring these pattern of behaviour of himself and of others." Obvious parallels can be drawn to other socially constructed ideas, like gender and ethnicity - both 'exist' in that they regulate the lives of people, and yet both are not metaphysically 'objective' (insofar as the relevant anthropological data suggests that they are not part of the natural world).

It is also briefly worth noting some other things that objectivity is not. Objectivity is not merely complete consensus (which Mackie describes as 'inter-subjectivity'). The simple fact that all persons believe X to be true does not of itself make X actually true. It is also not the property of a statement or principle being merely universalisable, because we can universalise a statement without thinking it objectively true. Finally, Mackie says, objectivism does not entail agreement with descri ptivism. Statements of moral facts are descri ptive, in that they describe a feature of the natural world, but this does not take away from their commendatory nature (both in terms of illocution and often also perlocution).

A useful conception of objective morality is given by David Brink. He says that a moral realist holds two things. First, that there are objective moral facts which moral judgments try to state, the consequence of which is that moral claims can be either objectively true or objectively false (and that some of them will be true). Second, a moral realist holds that values are objective in the sense that they are true independent of people's belief(s) about them being right or wrong, and are true independent of any evidence for them being right or wrong. It is the first sense of objectivity which Brink says distinguishes moral realism from non-cognitivist and nihilistic meta-ethical theories, and the second sense of objectivity which distinguishes moral realism from constructivist versions of cognitivism. So the crux of the objectivist's position, as understood in this essay, is that a moral value is either 'right' or 'wrong', and this is the case regardless of any empirical evidence. This would then entail in my view that: a) the function of moral reasoning is to help the moral agent arrive at moral truth; and, b) the function of moral statements is to express this discovered truth to others in the declarative form.

Hence, I think that this brand of moral objectivity also entails the collapse of the distinction between 'is' and 'ought' statements, because the objectivist's 'ought' statements become expressions of moral fact. In other words, on the objectivist view, when X says to Y "you must not hit Z, because it is morally wrong to hit people", X is not just expressing her own subjective desires in the declarative form (perhaps to give Y - and maybe even X herself - the false impression that X's desires are externally validated and are therefore binding on Y). X is describing to Y a negative obligation Y owes to Z, which is an external fact (ie. derived from the natural world). So the normative statement becomes a statement of fact and the is/ought distinction is collapsed, which for the objectivist is not problematic.

Would objective morality be 'queer', as Mackie claims?

I will below outline in brief Mackie's argument from queerness and arguments given in favour of anti-subjectivism by John Finnis and David Brink respectively, before moving on to agree with Mackie that objective morality would indeed be metaphysically queer. However, this this does not of itself go towards disproving the objectivity of moral values, given that Finnis specifically argues that they lie outside the scope of a scientistic approach to epistemology.

Mackie's Argument from Queerness:

JL Mackie argues against the likelihood of our moral values having an objective basis in the natural order of things. His argument from queerness runs that, if there were objective values, they would be like nothing else we know of in our universe. Hence, for us to know about them we would need some kind of moral intuition or special perceptive faculty utterly different from our ordinary ways of acquiring knowledge.

Mackie cannot grasp from where we would derive such moral values. When we say that an act is 'wrong' because it is deliberately and gratuitously cruel, we refer to an 'objective' moral quality (wrongness) which is somehow consequential on the natural facts about the act (its hurtfulness, its gratuitousness, its deliberateness and so on), but "what is the connection between the natural fact that an action is a piece of deliberate cruelty - say, causing pain just for fun - and the moral fact that it is wrong?" He says that to understand where this connection comes from, we would need some special mental faculty which can see: a) the natural features that constitute the cruelty; b) the wrongness of the action; and crucially, c) the link between the moral fact (wrongness) and the non-moral fact (cruelty).

We can trace the subjectivist concern with this connection between the moral quality and the natural quality back in time. For example, Hume put forward a similar idea, saying that when we look at a murder "from all angles", you do not just discover the vice within the situation. It is not automatically there. Rather, you find passions, motives, volitions, thoughts of the murderer and of the victim, social context, political implications, and so on; but you do not just find the vice. For there to be vice, some disapprobation must come from us in the direction of the act.

Mackie does at one point acknowledge a counter argument which is connected to an argument of Finnis'. Richard Price argued in the 18th century that it is not just moral knowledge which empiricism cannot account for - it also cannot account for our ideas of essence, identity, diversity, inertia, solidity and so on. Price argues, if this special faculty we have for discerning truth operates for these things, then why can it not operate for moral judgment too?

The only response that Mackie says he could have to this would be to show how we understand all these matters (something he cannot do in Ethics). He just states his belief that these things that Price talks about can be accounted for in empirical terms and, it must be said, fields of study like anthropology, social psychology and so on have been able to develop understandings of some of these concepts.

Nonetheless, Finnis and Brink make stronger criticisms of Mackie's subjectivism, which will be explored below and, ultimately, rejected.

Finnis' Criticisms:

Finnis argues that Mackie falls foul of his own criticism of moral objectivity. Mackie naturally thinks that his theory is true, and so he asserts his proposition(s). His words, says Finnis, like everyone else's words, are just marks on the page, and they are intended by Mackie to convey a particular proposition. However, the relationship between expression and proposition is meaning - and Finnis says that meaning itself is also 'queer' (ie. unlike anything else in the universe).

So, if we accept this criticism, "intentions, meanings, and truth are utterly queer" too, and Mackie's argument would be self-refuting. To understand meaning for example, we would need the 'special faculty of intuition' that Mackie says objective theorists need if they are to obtain knowledge of moral facts, because the process of creating meaning is also very different from scientistic approaches to knowledge-gathering. Gathering and constructing meaning from language is not very similar to observing, inspecting, surveying, measuring and so on, just like moral statements which themselves purport to give objective truths.

I think this comparison can be challenged. It is not claimed by moral sceptics that the drawing of meaning is an exercise in objective truth-finding. Our acquisition of language allows us to connect symbols with abstract concepts, which are themselves socially constructed. During our socialisation, beginning from an early age and continuing through adulthood, we learn concepts and ideas; and through the acquisition and development of language, we learn to tie meaning (which is inter-subjective, not objective) to those concepts and use language to communicate meaning inter-subjectively with others.

There is nothing 'objective' about this process; it is an inter-subjective process of generating shared concepts between persons by a process of associating concepts with sounds and/or symbols. This is not to say I come even remotely close to understanding this process here, just that there are entire fields of natural and social scientific learning which devote themselves to understanding this process.

My response is therefore similar to that offered by Mackie to Price: certain things we might not initially understand can be brought within the bounds of empiricism. This is not to say that empiricism is the whole picture when it comes to speculating about our existence, just that objections like those offered by Price and Finnis to Mackie's argument from queerness are insufficient in so far as they try to rebut the queerness argument by alleging metaphysical queerness about things which, on greater reflection, do not seem very metaphysically peculiar at all.

Finally, Finnis also argues that it is scientistic to impose on the search for true knowledge the restriction that knowledge is only of the kind that can be regarded impersonally or externally. Such a restriction takes a helpful rule of scientific inquiry and imposes it on a distinct area of inquiry (moral reasoning), to the effect that it blocks and obscures a fully accurate picture. This, he says, is the illusion at the root "of all those reductive programmes which we call philosophical empiricism - programmes like those of Hobbes and Hume and successors of theirs such as John Mackie."

I think this leaves us in a stalemate. Moral objectivity cannot be proved because it is by definition evidence-independent, and yet this kind of appeal to objectivity by writers like Finnis leaves moral sceptics without any basis on which they can seek to establish a case for subjectivism. The objectivist reply to Mackie's arguments, which aim to call into question the likelihood of objectively identifiable moral values, is invariably another appeal to objectivity. It is not enough to show the objectivist that most people do not hold value X to be morally good, or to demonstrate to the objectivist a reasoned argument as to why value X might not be morally good. In rebuttal, the objectivist has his trump card - the appeal to objectivity!

Brink's Presumption of Objectivity:

David Brink offers one way in which we might offer a presumption (a strong one, in Brink's view) that moral values are objective in the sense outlined in the first part of this essay. Brink's view, put briefly, is that moral realism better explains the way we can and do conduct moral inquiry, whereas anti-realist assumptions about morality block our understanding of the nature and significance of moral inquiry. Brink acknowledges that it could be that our whole system of moral inquiry is in some way flawed (ie. resting on false objectivity assumptions), but Brink says that this requires "powerful objections" to moral realism before we depart from it. It hence ought to be our initial assumption when we think about meta-ethics.

Brink offers two justifications for this presumption, neither of which I find sufficient. First, the declarative form, and imperative content of our moral statements, imply, Brink says, an appeal to objective truth - a strong dichotomy between right answers and wrong answers. In other words, our moral statements purport to be fact-stating, and they also carry cognitivist content: for example, "X should have known better". Second, we, as moral agents, act as if there were a 'right answer' to a moral problem. We are often constrained in our actions by morality; we impose morality on others; and we deliberate on an issue of moral conflict as if there were a right answer for us to identify.

I do not find these observations persuasive. This argument would only really be compelling if other competing explanations for the declarative form, cognitivist content, and answer-searching illusion could not be found with ease. In fact, a variety of possible explanations are available (of equal, if not greater, plausibility than the objectivist explanation). For example, it could be argued that this declarative form comes from a historical monopolisation of moral discourse by the socially and politically powerful. Mackie talks of the important social function played by moral discourse, in constraining and guiding patterns of behaviour, which is certainly consistent with moral agents using the declarative form.

Another example could be that ideas of moral objectivity have a theistic bent and objectivity is a mere hangover from widespread religious belief which pierces the modern search for non-religious moral values. A further possibility is that moral agents project onto their moral statements their own desires and use morality to legitimise said wants and desires.

My point here is not necessarily to endorse or reject any of these specific possibilities, but to show that it is not an obvious jump from "moral agents act act as though moral values are objective" to "presumptively, therefore, moral values are objective". In this vein, I think that objective morality would indeed be far more metaphysically 'queer' than Brink and Finnis try to argue. It is not a natural presumption, and the burden should not automatically go to the subjectivist to establish a negative - that objective moral values do not exist.

Conclusion:

In summary, then, I think that objective morality would indeed be metaphysically queer, and hence needs far greater justification than that offered by Brink and Finnis. It is not sufficient for Brink to point to the status quo relating to our assumptions about moral values and moral inquiry to support a prima facie acceptance of moral objectivity, as such belief could be explained in a number of competing and equally plausible ways, outlined above. I have also rejected Finnis' argument, which compares the queerness of moral objectivity to the alleged queerness of 'meaning' on the basis that 'meaning' is inter-subjectively constructed and passed along, rather than objectively claimed. There are serious problems with Mackie's subjectivist position, outlined persuasively by Bernard Williams, but the question of whether objective morality would be metaphysically queer should, in my view, be resolved in the subjectivist's favour.