Mackie’s theory of error: is there such a thing as objective morality?

The philosopher John Mackie defended moral skepticism by affirming that good and evil are relative.

Human beings are gregarious and social beings, who need contact with other members of their species to survive and adapt successfully. But living together is not simple: it is necessary to establish a series of rules that allow us to limit our behavior so that both our own rights and those of others are respected, rules that are generally based on ethics and morality: what is good and what is bad, what is right and wrong, what is just and what is unjust, what is worthy or unworthy, and what is considered permissible and what is not.

Since ancient times, morality has been the subject of philosophical discussion and with time of scientific research from fields such as psychology or sociology, with multiple positions, perspectives and theories on the subject. One of them is Mackie's theory of error, which we are going to talk about in the next section.of which we are going to talk about in this article.

Mackie's theory of error: basic description

The so-called Mackie's error theory is an approach made by the author himself according to which each and every one of our moral judgments are erroneous and false, based on the consideration that morality does not exist as an objective elementThere are no moral properties in reality as such, but morality is constructed on the basis of subjective beliefs. Technically, this theory would fall within a cognitivist perspective of what is called subjectivist anti-realism.

The error theory was elaborated by John Leslie Mackie in 1977, based on the premises of cognitivism and indicating that if true moral judgments exist, they would be principles that guide behavior directly and of which it would not be possible to doubt.

He considers that moral judgment is a cognitive act that has the capacity for falsification, but given that moral judgment only exists insofar as there really exists an always moral property as such, invariant and without the possibility of interpretation.

However, since there is no such property at the absolute level, but what is or is not moral is decided by the community of belonging, no moral judgment can be true either. Therefore, although it may be socially considered true for a given group that completely shares such judgments, moral judgment always commits the error of believing itself to be objective.

The author's intention is not to eliminate or consider the moral act useless (i.e., he does not want to stop doing things considered just or good), but to reform the way of understanding ethics and morality as something relative and not as a universal absolute. Moreover, he proposes that ethics and morality should be relative and not a universal absolute, proposes that ethics and morality should be continually reinvented, not as something fixed to be studiednot as something fixed to be studied but as something to be modified according to how humanity evolves.

Two basic arguments

In the elaboration of his theory, John Mackie considers and uses two different types of arguments. The first of these is the argument of the relativity of moral judgments.The second argument is that what we consider moral may not be moral for another person without this being wrong.

The second argument is that of singularity. According to this argument, if there exist objective properties or values should be entities different from anything else that exists.According to this argument, if there are objective properties or values, they should be entities different from anything else that exists, and a special faculty would be required to be able to grasp such property or value. And yet one more property would be necessary, that of being able to interpret the observed facts with the objective value.

Instead, Mackie considers that what we actually experience is a reaction to the sight of a fact that derives from what is culturally learned or from the linkage with one's own experiences. For example, that one animal hunts another for food is a behavior that is visible to us, and that will generate different subjective impressions for each of those affected.

Morality as subjective perception: a comparison with color.

Mackie's theory of error establishes, then, that every moral judgment is false or erroneous since it starts from the assumption that the moral property we grant to an act or phenomenon is universal.

As an analogy to make his theory more easily understandable, the author himself used the example of color perception in his theory. It is possible that we see a red, blue, green or white object, just as it is possible that a great majority of people do too.

However, the object in question does not have this or that color, the object in question does not have that or those colors per se.In reality, when we see colors, what we see is the refraction in our eyes of the wavelengths of light that the object has not been able to absorb.

Color would therefore not be a property of the object but a Biological reaction of ours to the reflection of light: it would not be something objective but subjective. Thus, the water of the sea is not blue or the leaf of the tree green, but we perceive them in that color. And in fact, not everyone will see the same coloras may happen in the case of a color blind person.

The same can be said of moral properties: there would be nothing good or bad, moral or amoral by itself but we perceive it as such according to its adjustment to our perception of the world. And just as a colorblind person might not perceive the color red (even if he identifies a certain shade as such), another person might judge that an act that for us has a certain moral connotation has for him the direct opposite one.

Although the fact that morality is something subjective today may seem logical to assume, the truth is that throughout history morality has been held by a large number of people as something objective and unchanging, often being also a reason for discrimination against groups (e.g. people of race, religion, religion, religion, etc.). (e.g. people of a different race, religion or sexuality than the typical) or practices that today we consider commonplace.