J L Mackie is famous for his "Error Theory of Ethics'.
- An "error theory of ethics" is the view that the ordinary user of moral language is typically making claims that involve a mistake. The concepts of ethics introduce a mistaken, erroneous, way of thinking of the world or of conducting practical reasoning. The theory was most influentially proposed by John L. Mackie in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Mackie believed that ordinary moral claims presuppose that there are objective moral values, but there are no such things. Hence, the practice of morality is founded upon a metaphysical error.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities ... ory-ethics
"There are no Objective 'values’."
But in Chapter 1.5 Mackie did acknowledge there a Aesthetic and Moral Facts but these are not an issue with his theme in denying there are objective moral values.
What is objective to Mackie is implied in this;Chapter 1.5 Standards of Evaluation
One way of stating the thesis that there are no Objective values is to say that value statements cannot be either true or false.
But this formulation, too lends itself to misinterpretation.
For there are certain kinds of value statements which undoubtedly can be true or false, even if, in the sense I intend, there are no Objective values.
Evaluations of many sorts are commonly made in relation to agreed and assumed standards.
The classing of wool, the grading of apples, the awarding of prizes at sheepdog trials, flower shows, skating and diving championships, and even the marking of examination papers
are carried out in relation to standards of quality or merit which are peculiar to each particular subject-matter of type of contest,
which may be explicitly laid down but which,
even if they are nowhere explicitly stated,
are fairly well understood and agreed by those who are recognized as judges or experts in each particular field.
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.
Comparative judgements in particular will be capable of truth and falsehood: it will be a factual question whether this sheepdog has performed better than that one.
The Subjectivist about values, then, is not denying that there can be Objective evaluations relative to standards, and these are as possible in the aesthetic and Moral fields as in any of those just mentioned.
More than this, there is an Objective distinction which applies in many such fields, and yet would itself be regarded as a peculiarly Moral one: the distinction between justice and injustice.
In one important sense of the word it is a paradigm case of injustice if a court declares someone to be guilty of an offence of which it knows him to be innocent.
More generally, a finding is unjust if it is at variance with what the relevant law and the facts together require, and particularly if ’d is known by the court to be so.
More generally still, any award of marks, prizes, or the like is unjust if it is at variance with the agreed standards for the contest in question: if one diver's performance in fact measures up better to the accepted standards for diving than another's, it will be unjust if the latter is awarded higher marks or the prize.
In this way the justice or injustice of decisions relative to standards can be a thoroughly Objective matter, though there may still be a subjective element in the interpretation or application of standards.
But the statement that a certain decision is thus just or unjust will not be Objectively prescriptive: in so far as it can be simply true it leaves open the question whether there is any Objective requirement to do what is just and to refrain from what is unjust, and equally leaves open the practical decision to act in either way.
Recognizing the Objectivity of justice in relation to standards, and of evaluative judgements relative to standards, then, merely shift the question of the Objectivity of values back to the standards themselves.
The Subjectivist may try to make his point by insisting that there is no objective validity about the choice of standards.
Yet he [subjectivist] would clearly be wrong if he said that the choice of even the most basic standards in any field was completely arbitrary.
The standards used in sheepdog trials clearly bear some relation to the work that sheepdogs are kept to do, the standards for grading apples bear some relation to what people generally want in or like about apples, and so on.
On the other hand, standards are not as a rule strictly validated by such purposes.
The appropriateness of standards is neither fully determinate nor totally indeterminate in relation to independently specifiable aims or desires.
But however determinate it is, the Objective appropriateness of standards in relation to aims or desires is no more of a threat to the denial of Objective values than is the Objectivity of evaluation relative to standards.
In fact it is logically no different from the Objectivity of goodness relative to desires.
Something may be called good simply in so far as it satisfies or is such as to satisfy a certain desire:
but the Objectivity of such relations of satisfaction does not constitute in our sense an Objective value.
This is typical of the claim of what is mind-independent fact and objective reality by PH and his analytic gang.Of course if there were Objective values they would presumably belong to kinds of things or actions or states of affairs, so that the judgements that reported them would be universalizable; but the converse does not hold. 1.4
To PH & gang, what is an objective fact is that feature of reality, that is just is, being so, that is the case, states of affairs, existing as absolutely mind-independent; that is to the extent, the moon pre-existed humans and will continue to exists after humans are extinct.
As such Mackie is a philosophical realist.
Despite the above, Mackie do acknowledge there are aesthetic and moral facts which are relative to certain standards; however he had set them aside for the purpose of his book.
This is what I have been defining what is fact, i.e.
what is fact is conditioned upon a specific human-based FSR-FSK [with established standards therein].
Because these facts are conditioned upon a human-based FSR-FSK, they cannot be absolutely mind-independent as claimed by philosophical realists.
My point of this OP is not about Mackie's Error Theory, but to show that there are philosophers even of the analytical tradition who recognized there are FSK-ed facts; as philosophical realists they ignore these FSK-ed facts as objectively real.
I have been arguing, while the philosophical realists arrogantly claim their sense of fact is most realistic, they are delusional because their sense of what is fact is illusory.
Why Philosophical Realism is Illusory
viewtopic.php?t=40167
On the other hand,
I have demonstrated that the FSK-based fact is the most realistic and objective as conditioned upon a human-based FSR-FSK.
There are Two Senses of 'What is Fact'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39587
Two Senses of Reality
viewtopic.php?t=40265
What is Philosophical Objectivity?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31416
Two Senses of 'Objective'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39326
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