The Subjectivity Of Values By Mackie - 1398 Words

In Mackie’s paper, â€Å"The Subjectivity of Values†, he aims to show us readers how â€Å"there are no objective values† (Mackie 777). He starts off by giving different arguments for this thesis. However, his metaphysical argument on queerness fails because the world is changing all around us and new things are discovered everyday. Leading on, I will give you a summary of J.L. Mackie’s â€Å"Subjectivity of Values† and explain to you Mackie’s metaphysical argument from queerness. Next, I will argue that Mackie’s metaphysical argument from queerness fails. Lastly, I will consider the objections to my argument and give my responses to them. Mackie starts his very first sentence by saying â€Å"there are no objective values† (Mackie 777). He believes that values like graciousness, gratitude, and accountability don’t exist. In making this point, he uses other philosophers’ agreement on moral objectivism to show how he thinks that all of these well-known people are wrong in their thinking. Some of these philosophers he talks about are Kant, Aristotle, and Plato. Take Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for example. In this he talks about how knowledge and happiness are desires. However, Mackie seems to think differently. He thinks that Aristotle shouldn’t be thinking these things because it is very â€Å"plain† of him (Mackie 781). Mackie feels that is bad to think such things because we can’t have desires. If we had desires, then we would have to have â€Å"objective moral values† (Mackie 777). Mackie alsoShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Inventing Right And Wrong 909 Words   |  4 PagesValues in Meta-ethics In John Ludwig Mackie’s book Inventing Right and Wrong, he claims that â€Å"in making moral judgments we are pointing to something objectively prescriptive, but that these judgments are all false†. By saying this, he supports his main point that there are no objective values. However, John McDowell will be against Mackie’s argument, because he suggests that moral values are secondary qualities which can be objective. I hold the same viewpoint as McDowell’s. In this essay, I willRead More Mackies Arguments Against Objective Values Essay1693 Words   |  7 PagesMackie?s Arguments Against Objective Values J. L. Mackie makes his position explicit by opening his article The Subjectivity of Values with this terse statement: There are no objective values. Mackie had found recent dialogue in moral philosophy to be fraught with misunderstandings and conflations of various moral positions, so he felt it necessary to rigorously define his position as well as the boundaries of his concerns. Thus his article has two major parts: First, Mackie defines the natureRead MoreEthics And The Argument On The Existence Of Subjective Moral Value1184 Words   |  5 PagesA moral is defined as concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior. Many philosophers have argued and debated about moral subjectivity and objectivity from the start of philosophy. However, I will focus in on and agree with one particular philosopher, J.L. Mackie, and his argument on the existence of subjective moral value. Mackie argues that morals are subjective, therefore they are not agreed upon universally, and there is no underlying correct moral belief. He argues againstRead MoreEthical Naturalism, By Peter Railton1845 Words   |  8 Pagesrespect to metaphysical and epistemological non-queerness, I mean queerness in precisely the way which John Mackie uses it in â€Å"The Subjectivity of Values† from his 1977 book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Railton’s account is not metaphysically queer in this sense as it does not require the existence of objects with an intrinsic â€Å"to-be-pursuedness† applicable to all knowledgeable agents (Mackie 19-20). Similarly, it is not epistemologically queer in Mackie’s sense as there need not be any specialRead More A Taxonomy of Moral Realism Essay1637 Words   |  7 PagesMoral Realism ABSTRACT: The realist dispute in ethics has wide implications for moral ontology, epistemology, and semantics. Common opinion holds that this debate goes to the heart of the phenomenology of moral values and affects the way in which we understand the nature of moral value, moral disagreement, and moral reflection. But it has not been clearly demonstrated what is involved in moral realist theory. I provide a framework which distinguishes three different versions of the theory whileRead MoreBusiness Ethics: Miriam vs. Jenny Case Study2804 Words   |  11 PagesInc. 2011, p. 1, or Nordstrom, 2011, p. 1, e.g.), rather than iron laws, in which sense they mirror the laws and rules of our society at large as indicated by our employment of juries and judges, where the absence of mitigating circumstances or subjectivity could allow us to save all that trouble and expense and just sentence deviants from a menu of every possible circumstance. The American Purchasing Society (APS) advocates (20 12, n.pag.) a relatively short list of principles and standards thatRead More Kant and Moral Values Essay4760 Words   |  20 PagesKant says that moral values are ‘good without qualification.’ This assertion and similar remarks of Plato can be understood in terms of a return to moral data themselves in the following ways: 1. Moral values are objectively good and not relative to our judgments; 2. Moral goodness is intrinsic goodness grounded in the nature of acts and independent of our subjective satisfaction; 3. Moral goodness expresses in an essentially new and higher sense of the idea of value as such; 4. Moral Goodness cannotRead MoreCompare and Contrast Functionalism and Structuralism14315 Words   |  58 PagesStenner and his colleagues as ‘the study of the relationships between social processes (which always have a psychological dimension) and subjectivity (which is always socially, culturally and historically structured). . . . [The purpose is] to shed l ight upon the relations between forms of social regulation and governance on the one hand, and forms of subjectivity, selfhood, identity and experience on the other’ (Stenner et al., Psychosocial Studies website, University of Brighton, 2010). What we can