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Issues for moral realism (Mackie's Argument from Relativity (No…

- - - - Depends on the verification principle
        
        Principle itself is meaningless
        
        Not analytic or empirically verifiable
        
        True but meaningless
    - - Not an accurate criterion of literal meaning
        
        Provides arguments in specific cases
        
        If unconvincing, there is no independent support
- - - - Moral judgements are not relations of ideas
        
        Supposed to be certain
        
        Moral claims are not conceptual
        
        Does not apply just to morality
        
        Applies to physical objects
      - Moral judgements are not matters of fact
      - Moral judgements are not judgements of reason
        
        Cannot have have any knowledge of them
    - - Wilful premeditated killing
        
        Hume response
        
        Action has a different cause
      - Relation remains the same
        
        It is up to the person who wants to claim moral judgements are relations of ideas to show this
  - - - Moral intuitions are synthetic propositions
      - Established synthetic propositions
    - - Moral judgements are matters of fact
- - - - Moral judgements are not judgement of reason
  - - - World to mind direction of fit
      - Motivate us on how to act
    - - Mind to world direction of fit
  - - - Claim that moral judgements can motivate actions is false
      - We have the desire to be good as well
        
        Argument gives us no reason to believe that moral judgements aren't judgements of reason
    - - People almost always do care about morality
      - Making claims shows relevance
    - - Some judgements of reason that can motivate us
      - Moral judgements are matters of fact
      - Remains difficult to understand how such judgements could be motivating
- - - - Tells me how the world is
      - Tells me how the world ought to be
      - Cannot infer one from the other
- - - - Factual
      - Certainty
  - - - Objective truths
    - - Possibility that there are objective moral truths
  - - - Implausible
  - - - Lying
      - Theft
      - Killing
    - - Weak
      - Shows fundamental principles are objective
      - Intuition of something that is wrong
  - - - Mackie has not shown otherwise
      - Moore
        
        Not gut reactions
        
        Rational, self - evident propositions
        
        Can only have intuitions in this sense about fundamental moral principles
    - - Misunderstands the nature or moral reality
      - Relative truth
        
        Realists say this about moral judgements
      - Living conditions
        
        Conflicting issues
        
        Stealing under conditions
        
        Not a relative truth
        
        Universal truth
- - - - Connection between morality and motivation
      - Moral judgements motivate us
      - Simply knowing what is good/bad would be enough to motivate us to act in certain ways
      - Goodness
        
        To be pursedness
      - Confusing idea
        
        How could there be some direct, immediate relation between some fact of the world and our desire?
        
        Doesn't entail being motivated to do anything about it
        
        The direction of fit is wrong
    - - Not intrinsically motivating
      - Moral properties
        
        Non - natural properties
      - Shows peculiarity of non - natural properties
  - - - If some actions have the property of being objectively right
      - How could we know objective properties
      - Mackie
        
        Intuitionism says no more than that we have some special faculty
        
        Terrible answer
      - Usual ways of knowing the world can explain knowledge of morality
      - Doesn't give any real answer as to how we know truth by intuition
    - - Not our knowledge of morality facing this objection
      - Cannot gain knowledge of maths
      - Appealing to rationalist arguments about a priori knowledge
      - Mackie accepts this point
        
        Depends on empiricism
    - - Cruelty is a natural property
      - Psychological fact
        
        Causes pain
        
        Someone's motive
      - Not an analytic truth
        
        Cannot be deduced
        
        Intuitionism fails to tell us how morality is related to anything else
  - - - Why should we think that all reality is like physical reality?
      - Moral properties aren't going to be like physical properties
      - Most likely psychological properties
    - - Not mind independent
        
        Fact about the minds
      - Mind independent
        
        Independent of what anyone thinks
        
        Can be mistaken
        
        Eudaimonia is objective
        
        Independent of our judgement and made true by the way the world is
    - - Whether a moral claim is true doesn't depend on whether we think that it is true
      - Doesn't have to claim that moral judgements are not about minds
      - If moral facts about our minds, perhaps they are not all 'queer'
    - - Utilitarianism
        
        Experience does give us evidence or what is good
        
        What is good is desirable
        
        No epistemological difficulty in discovering moral properties
        
        There is no epistemological difficulty in discovering moral properties