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20th WCP: Self-Worth and Moral Knowledge: A Moral Argument for a Moderate Moral Skepticism I propose a version of this argument that employs a broad conception of self-worth, a virtue found in a wide range of moral traditions that suppose a person would have an appropriate sense of self-worth in the face of tendencies both to overestimate and underestimate the value of one’s self. In general form, the argument is based on the contention that persons are unlikely to have moral knowledge insofar as they lack certain moral virtues; it continues with the claim that persons are commonly deficient in these virtues, and it concludes that they are regularly unlikely to have adequate moral knowledge. By contrast, the argument here is drawn from considerations that are internal to many moral traditions, namely those that have reason to regard self-worth as a virtue, to think its absence tends to preclude moral knowledge, and to believe self-worth is difficult to achieve. www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthGowa.htm   (3511 words)

Non-cognitivism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia As with other non-objectivist models of morality, non-cognitivism is largely supported by the argument from queerness: ethical properties, if they existed, would be different from any other thing in the universe, since they have no observable effect on the world. A similar argument against non-cognitivism is that of ethical argument. A common argument might be, "If killing an innocent human is always wrong, and all fetuses are innocent humans, then killing a fetus is always wrong." Most people would consider such an utterance to represent an analytic proposition which is true a priori. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Emotivism   (965 words)

Skeptical Cognitivism The first consideration reflects the argument from relativity, while the second, third and fourth are from the argument from queerness. Here the argument from relativity is similar to an argument one might imagine given in the middle ages when the world was assumed by most Europeans to be flat, rather than spherical. This second consideration, which falls under the argument from queerness, asserts that if moral facts exist, they would be required to have some sort of action guiding character about them or a "has to-be-pursuedness" residing in their natural makeup. www.lib.utah.edu /epubs/undergrad/vol7/peterson.html   (3083 words)

Mackie Reading   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) The argument from relativity has as its premiss the well‑known variation in moral codes from one society to another and from one period to another, and also the differences in moral beliefs between different groups and classes within a complex community. In short, the argument from relativity has some force simply because the actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values. It may be thought that the argument from queerness is given an unfair start if we thus relate it to what are admittedly among the wilder products of philosophical fancy ‑ Platonic Forms, non‑natural qualities, self­-evident relations of fitness, faculties of intuition, and the like. garnet.acns.fsu.edu /~srm9778/mackie.htm   (2939 words)

Glossary An argument developed by J. Mackie, claiming that moral objectivism is excessively complex and, therefore, unlikley to be true. What an argument aims at proving; the statement that is supposedly proved by the premises of an argument. A type of argument that questions the wisdom or legitimacy of a proposed act or policy on the grounds of potential long-term harm or hazard. wps.ablongman.com /long_waller_ce_1/0,9709,1622214-,00.html   (1301 words)

Constructing Queerness and Problems of Opression Queerness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a part of it yet, seemingly, not everyone can be queer without changing the very nature of queerness. Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer identities and behaviors. The interpretation of queerness as being a "catch-all" category for sexualities and genders which do not fit into the category of heterosexual, man, and woman, supports the idea that queer status is a second class status because there is nothing particular about it other than the fact that it is not normal. serendip.brynmawr.edu /sci_cult/courses/knowbody/f04/web1/d2little.html   (1125 words)

Metaethics Quentin Smith As such, [moral antirealism] needs arguments to support it against common sense.”[7] Mackie’s argument from queerness is in effect an attack on premise (2) of my argument; he wants to show there are empirical reasons to reject the moral realist thesis that is tacit in commonsense moral beliefs. The argument from moral disagreement as it is normally understood, however, is an argument that human life is objectively meaningless, that is, that there are no objective moral facts. Brink addresses the argument from moral disagreement by noting that realism about a discipline does not require that all actual cognizers eventually reach agreement; rather, it is reasonable to expect agreement on all facts only if all cognizers (a) are fully informed, (b) are fully rational, and (c) have sufficient time for deliberation. www.qsmithwmu.com /metaethics_quentin_smith.htm   (8054 words)

Refuting the Error It is my argument, however, that moral realism can be defended from each of these attacks, and that far more work on the error-theorist’s part is required if moral realism is to be rejected. Arguments to such effect may be found in the works of many thinkers, including Freud, Sartre, Nietzsche, Marx and others. Similarly, the argument from metaphysical queerness will come apart once we reject the notion of moral facts as objectively prescriptive, and insist rather that they, like facts about mental states, supervene on physical facts. tiger.towson.edu /users/sfrank2/refuting_the_error.htm   (4061 words)

1000Ar1   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) All of these arguments show that relativism sort of robs you of the ground to stand on when criticizing a given practice as immoral. An argument is logically valid if and only if it is not logically possible for the premisses to be true and the conclusion false. The falsity of the premiss renders the argument not sound, but it is still valid in the sense that were all of the premisses true, logic alone would force the conclusion to be true. www.artsci.lsu.edu /phil/phil1/cogburn/currentcourses/1000/viiinormativity/metaethics.htm   (2660 words)

Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) This argument is clearly valid, so the question facing those who wish to defend at least the existence dimension of realism in the case of morals is whether the premises are true. Dummett's arguments can retain their relevance to metaphysical debate even if the metaphor and constitution theses are false, and, indeed, even if Dummett's view (1973: 669) that the theory of meaning is the foundation of all philosophy is rejected. For these—the argument from rule-following and the argument from normativity—see the Introduction to Wright 1993. plato.stanford.edu /entries/realism   (11753 words)

On Philosophy: Illustrating Mackie's main argument against the existence of moral facts. [Page 1 of 4] He argues for this in a variety of ways: his main argument is the argument from queerness, though he also utilises an argument from relativity. Mackie argues that moral statements, such as 'Murder is wrong,' do not have a truth-value: they are neither true nor false in the same way that propositions such as 'the curtains are blue,' or 'two plus two equals four,' can be true or false. Mackie's thesis is a metaethical, or second order, claim, rather than a normative, or first order, one: he is not recommending subjectivism as a course of action, instead he is making an observation as to the nature of normative moral statements. www.onphilosophy.co.uk /mackie_and_moral_facts.html   (337 words)

Kruzak Product 4 The paper looks critically at the argument from “queerness”, the argument from relativity, the argument from explanation, and epistemological arguments. He is right that there is a New Logical Connections Argument to be made, and that it does show that water thoughts and XYZ thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to intentional properties of behaviors. However, the New Logical Connections Argument also shows that they are not causal powers at all with respect to intentional properties of behaviors, and so Fodor’s argument to individualism and narrow content is unsound. www.kruzak.hr /prod5.htm   (844 words)

#2 Nevertheless, enough damage is done to premise 1 of the argument from social diversity that the sweeping conclusion of that argument no longer follows. Against this argument, Balfour maintains that moral objectivism is really a better explanation insofar as many accepted social practices are corrupt and true objective morality is intuitively clear. A second criticism of the argument from social diversity is that social practices are not as diverse as the relativist contends, and, in fact, some key moral values are cross-cultural. www.utm.edu /~jfieser/vita/research/ages.htm   (7793 words)

Moral_facts Against the third of these arguments, that moral facts are queer entities, it may be argued that: (1) moral facts may be non-queer natural facts, or (2) moral facts may supervene upon natural facts. Mackie's argument from queerness is really composed of two separate parts, one which is metaphysical and one which is epistemological. The epistemological argument from queerness, similar to the metaphysical argument says: If we are aware of moral facts, then we must come to know them through some strange, or queer, faculty. www.yellowpigs.net /philosophy/moral_facts   (6814 words)

Faces, Chapter 6 Introduction The main caveat is that the argument as it stands in §6.1 is meant neither as a non-question-begging proof of objectivism, nor as a non-question-begging refutation of subjectivism or anti-realism in morals. The argument from queerness is meant to discharge this burden. If we can undermine the argument from queerness, by showing how an objective ethics is possible, we need not worry so deeply about irresolvable moral disagreements and the occasional seeming irrelevance or impotence of moral explanations of various admitted facts. www.vanderbilt.edu /~postjf/fech6int.htm   (1741 words)

Contemporary Ethical Theory - Second Exam Gewirth takes some pains in his argument in "Epistemology of Human Rights" to defend his inference from "I must have freedom and well-being" to "I have rights to freedom and well-being." Explain and critically discuss his defense of this inference. Gewirth takes some pains in his argument in "The Justificatory Argument for Human Rights" to defend his inference from "I must have freedom and well-being" to "I have rights to freedom and well-being." Explain and critically discuss his defense of this inference. Explain the argument for the possibility of moral dilemmas based on the appropriateness of feelings of guilt or regret. www.uark.edu /campus-resources/rlee/contau03/exam2q.html   (4666 words)

The Mysteries of Existence The need for an argument of this sort [i.e., the argument from queerness] can be brought out by reflection on Hume's argument that 'reason' -- in which at this stage he includes all sorts of knowing as well as reasoning -- can never be an 'influencing motive of the will'. In most cases, key premises of key arguments are carefully examined and defended in analytic philosophy, with this important exception: when the premise is that there exists a certain philosophical 'mystery' or 'problem', the premise is almost never scrutinized. Excluding his earlier 'argument from relativity', which is supposed to be a separate argument. home.sprynet.com /~owl1/mystery.htm   (7891 words)

Relativism vs. Objectivism The slippery slope fallacy states that people on one side of an argument find it easy to accuse the other side of being on the extreme; in other words, the other side is a slippery slope, and it is easy to go to extremes. She uses the argument from 'normality': each culture defines what behavior is normal, to fit the behavior of the majority. In the end, we are left to evaluate the two sides of this argument as being polar, complete opposites of each other. www.angelfire.com /weird/enanareina/essays/relobj.html   (1601 words)

Fides Quaerens Intellectum » Moral Realism and the Problem of Relativity In Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, J. Mackie presents two formidable arguments against moral realism—the argument from queerness and the argument from relativity. Instead, the critic could maintain this argument is supposed to be part of a larger inductive case against realism, and when taken with the other arguments, it has some force. Of course, the critic better have a sound argument to back this up if he is going to make this move. blog.johndepoe.com /?p=179   (1091 words)

Sample Chapter for Robinson, D.N.: Praise and Blame: Moral Realism and Its Applications. The argument found its voice earlier in the Enlightenment, many concluding that there was a clear separation to be honored between psychological and moral modes of understanding and explanation. But just in case an argument leading to this conclusion is defensible, neither the number of residents inside or outside that space nor the acknowledgment of those outside that space would have any bearing on the success of the argument itself. The lynchpin of his argument is the demonstrable fact that the visually perceived world of figures has as its content the tangible properties of these figures and not the properties of their retinal projections. www.pupress.princeton.edu /chapters/s7401.html   (20601 words)

Normative Entities and Obligations   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) For her, we fall into the category of Mackie’s “queer” entities: First, we can obligate one another and are therefore prescriptive; second, the way we know others is not like the way we know anything else. Simply stated, Mackie’s AFQ says: if moral values existed they would be queer entities; there are no queer entities in the world, therefore there are no moral values. He thinks his argument shows that we are wrong in presupposing the existence of prescriptive entities or objective values when making moral judgments. www.auburn.edu /~tutwija/normative_entities_and_obligatio.htm   (2675 words)

The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy: Evolutionary Moral Psychology and the Insistence of Brute Facts by Alex Walter I think part of the answer is because not much of a philosophical argument was constructed in defense of the move from ethical objectivism to naturalism. Although, it is true that Quine's argument can be interpreted to support the view that ethical facts are facts like any other natural fact, it is unlikely that Hume's 'law' was designed to preserve the analytic/synthetic distinction. Let's briefly recapitulate his argument in order to ensure that we understand how far Darwin thought we could go towards 'ought' from 'is", and to see whether or not Hume would raise any objections. human-nature.com /ep/articles/ep043348.html   (6544 words)

Mackie, moral nihilism vs There’s some dispute about whether Mackie, the author of the celebrated ‘queerness’ argument against objective moral properties thought that there were no moral facts, or that these facts were subjective in nature. This is that nothing of philosophical importance hangs on the choice between the first nihilist and the second subjectivist version of the argument, and that Mackie may have, realizing this, expressed himself sometimes one way and sometimes the other out of courtesy. If we are convinced by the argument from queerness that there could be no properties which were both suitably objective and motivating then we face a linguistic dilemma in how to report this discovery. www.people.fas.harvard.edu /~seberry/moralphil/mackie   (670 words)

Maverick Philosopher Moral Realism and Mackie's Argument from Queerness At this juncture we encounter J.L. Mackie's Argument from Queerness, which is one of his arguments against the objectivity of values. Metaphysically, the argument questions whether there are the sorts of 'queer' entities that there would have to be if there were such things as (veridical) perceptions of value/disvalue. Given this second argument, the epistemological problem is not merely one of explaining how we can be aware of objective values, but also of how we can be aware of their linkage to facts. maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com /posts/1151717390.shtml   (6719 words)

From Is to Ought: Another Way (12/1/00)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) This epistemological argument succeeds if the listed kinds of account all fail and there is no other way we could be aware of the would-be objective normativity. What is queer to physics is not so queer to biology, which is up to its neck in talk about the naturalistic property of being an adaptation, and thereby about what the adaptation is for, as in effect Brandon, Sober, Millikan, Sterelny and Griffiths, and others have been telling us for some time. Another part of Mackie's argument -- that something's being morally good, and/or the judgment that it is, is intrinsically or necessarily motivating and therefore must be ontologically queer from the point of view of naturalism -- is addressed at relevant places in the following sections. web-srv1.web.vanderbilt.edu /~postjf/fritofrag.htm   (16377 words)

Subjectivity of Objective Moral Values   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) Mackie begins his Argument from Relativity by asserting that different groups and cultures have different moral codes and often disagree over morality. We may be able to get closer to settling moral disputes by clarifying all of the facts, such as in the case of scientific disputes; however, it is much more difficult to clarify the facts in morality. Just as there is correct information to appeal to in the case of scientific disputes, there is also an unbiased viewpoint in these arguments that we can eventually reach; such is not the case with moral disagreements. www.auburn.edu /~tutwija/subjectivity_of_objective_moral.htm   (2506 words)

Amazon.ca: Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics: Books   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) He argues that Mackie's argument from queerness fails because moral facts are natural facts and because moral facts don't involve any intrinsic and categorical prescriptivity. In response to Mackie's other argument for anti-realism, the argument from disagreement, he argues that the nonexistence of moral facts isn't clearly the best explanation of the existence and persistence of moral disagreement. Furthermore, he's often willing to point out areas of his argument that might not be especially compelling and that leave room for proponents of views other than the one he prefers. www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0521359376   (1158 words)

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