Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

1. Introduction

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977) is J. L. Mackie’s most influential work in moral philosophy and a central text in late twentieth‑century meta-ethics. The treatise advances a distinctive combination of two claims:

1. Descriptive thesis about moral discourse: Ordinary moral judgments, as speakers normally use them, purport to state facts about objective values—values taken to be independent of human attitudes and to provide categorical reasons for action.

2. Ontological thesis (error theory): No such objective values exist; consequently, all positive moral judgments are systematically false.

Within the book, Mackie develops this moral error theory using several lines of argument, most famously the argument from relativity (based on persistent moral disagreement) and the argument from queerness (highlighting the alleged metaphysical and epistemological strangeness of objective values). At the same time, he attempts to explain the practices of morality—its role in social life, its psychological underpinnings, and its connection to prudential reasoning—without invoking any independent moral realm.

The work is primarily situated in meta-ethics, the branch of ethics concerned with the status, semantics, and epistemology of moral claims, rather than with defending a particular first-order moral code. Nevertheless, it also ventures into more substantive areas, including accounts of the good life, the motivation to be moral, and the interplay between morality, law, and politics.

Readers have interpreted the book in two partially independent ways:

Subsequent sections of this entry detail the context of the book’s composition, its internal structure, Mackie’s central arguments and concepts, and the major debates that have developed in response.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

2.1 Analytic Ethics in the Mid‑Twentieth Century

Mackie’s book emerges from a period in analytic philosophy when meta-ethics was dominated by debates over the meaning and status of moral language. Earlier in the century, influential figures such as G. E. Moore, A. J. Ayer, and R. M. Hare had framed the terrain:

By the 1960s and 1970s, analytic philosophers increasingly examined logical form, ordinary language, and the connection between moral discourse and reasons for action, paving the way for Mackie’s more systematically skeptical treatment.

2.2 Scientific Naturalism and Explanatory Ambitions

The book is also steeped in a broader climate of scientific naturalism, in which psychological, sociological, and evolutionary explanations of human behavior were gaining influence. Moral practices were often approached as phenomena to be explained rather than as immediate sources of normatively authoritative truths.

Mackie adopts this naturalistic outlook, aiming to:

• Explain moral disagreement through differences in ways of life rather than divergent access to moral facts.
• Account for moral motivation and moral sentiments via psychology and socialization.
• Treat moral norms as instruments for social coordination and conflict resolution.

2.3 Relationship to Earlier Moral Skepticism

Historically, Mackie’s skepticism resonates with strands in Hume, Nietzsche, and later logical positivism, while employing the analytic tools of his time. Commentators often situate him as:

• More radical than moderate moral skeptics, who doubt our knowledge of moral truths but not their existence.
• More ontologically deflationary than non-cognitivists, since he insists that moral judgments are truth-apt yet almost always false.

2.4 Place in 1970s Ethical Theory

The 1970s also saw renewed interest in substantive normative theories—e.g., John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) and developments in utilitarianism. Against this backdrop, Mackie’s book stands out for foregrounding meta-ethical questions: before endorsing any moral theory, he asks what, if anything, could make its claims true.

3. Author and Composition

3.1 J. L. Mackie: Biographical Sketch

John Leslie Mackie (1917–1981) was an Australian-born philosopher who worked mainly in the analytic tradition. Educated at the University of Sydney and then Oxford, he held academic positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand before becoming Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford in 1967. His work covered:

• Metaphysics (e.g., on universals and causation),
• Philosophy of religion (notably his critique of theism),
• Ethics and meta-ethics, culminating in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.

Mackie was known for clear argumentation and for developing systematically skeptical positions, often challenging widely held philosophical assumptions.

3.2 Precursor Papers and Development of the Central View

Mackie’s error theory and its supporting arguments did not first appear in the 1977 book but were elaborations of earlier work, most prominently his 1977 article “Ethics” (in Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and earlier papers on moral skepticism. Themes that would become central in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong can be traced to:

The book systematizes and extends these strands into a unified meta-ethical position and a broader treatment of morality’s role in human life.

3.3 Composition and Aims

Composed in the early 1970s and published by Penguin Books in 1977, the treatise was aimed at both professional philosophers and advanced students. Mackie sought to:

• Present a comprehensive case for moral error theory.
• Engage directly with leading contemporaries, especially non-cognitivists and intuitionists.
• Integrate meta-ethical arguments with discussions of well-being, motivation, and social institutions.

The dedication to Mary Mackie and the accessible paperback format suggest a desire to reach beyond a narrow specialist audience, even while employing technical arguments.

3.4 Position within Mackie’s Oeuvre

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong complements Mackie’s other major works, such as Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973) and The Miracle of Theism (1982, posthumous). Some interpreters note thematic continuities:

• A general error-theoretic tendency (e.g., toward objective values, toward religious claims).
• A commitment to naturalistic explanation and conceptual clarity.

The ethical treatise is widely regarded as his most influential and systematic contribution to philosophy.

4. Structure and Organization of the Treatise

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is organized into seven chapters followed by brief concluding remarks. The structure moves from meta-ethical analysis to more applied and constructive themes.

4.1 Overview of Chapters

4.2 Progression of Argument

The book’s architecture is often described as moving through three interconnected stages:

1. Meta-ethical foundation (Chs. 1–3): Mackie argues that ordinary moral discourse aims at objective truth but that no objective values exist or can be known.
2. Descriptive and explanatory account (Ch. 4): He then turns to explaining what morality is and how it functions, given this meta-ethical stance.
3. Constructive and practical issues (Chs. 5–7): Finally, he addresses questions about the good life, motivation to be moral, and the design and evaluation of political and legal institutions under the assumption that morality is a human invention.

4.3 Pedagogical Features

The treatise is written in a relatively accessible style, with:

• Clear signposting of argumentative steps,
• Frequent engagement with opposing views,
• Illustrative examples of moral disagreement and institutional arrangements.

The internal organization of chapters typically proceeds from statement of an issue, through survey of existing positions, to Mackie’s critical assessment and proposed alternative, providing a coherent path from the opening thesis to later applications.

5. Mackie’s Error Theory: Overview

5.1 Core Components

Mackie’s moral error theory combines two main theses:

1. Cognitivism about moral judgments: Ordinary moral sentences (e.g., “Stealing is wrong”) are used and understood as truth-apt statements, purporting to describe features of the world—specifically, objective values or properties.
2. Ontological denial: There are no such objective values or properties. Thus, when people assert positive moral claims, they are committed to the existence of entities that do not exist, rendering the claims systematically false.

This distinguishes error theory from both robust moral realism (which affirms objective values) and typical forms of non-cognitivism (which deny that moral sentences even purport to state facts).

5.2 The Target: Objective Values

For Mackie, ordinary moral thought is naturally interpreted as committed to objective prescriptivity—the idea that some actions or states of affairs possess inherent, categorical “to-be-done-ness” or “to-be-avoided-ness,” independent of individual desires or social conventions. He argues that this is not merely a philosopher’s gloss but is implicit in much everyday moral discourse and in many philosophical moral theories.

5.3 The Error-Theoretic Claim

Given this interpretation of moral discourse, Mackie maintains:

• Every positive moral judgment (e.g., “X is good,” “Y is wrong”) includes a false presupposition that there exist objective values.
• Negative or second-order claims (e.g., “There are no objective values”) can be true.
• The resulting view is not simple relativism or subjectivism; rather, it is a global falsity thesis about ordinary moral assertions understood in their standard sense.

5.4 Supporting Arguments (In Outline)

Mackie supports error theory primarily through:

• The argument from relativity, which appeals to wide and deep moral disagreement and its sociological explanation.
• The argument from queerness, which contends that objective values would be metaphysically and epistemologically unlike anything else we know.

These arguments are developed in detail in Chapter 1 and elaborated in later chapters when Mackie addresses moral semantics and objectivity.

5.5 Distinguishing Error Theory from Nearby Views

Subsequent sections examine Mackie’s specific arguments for this position and its implications for ethical theory and practice.

6. The Argument from Relativity

6.1 Basic Formulation

Mackie’s argument from relativity begins from the observation of extensive and persistent moral disagreement across cultures and historical periods. He notes that:

• Societies differ widely about issues such as sexuality, property, punishment, and the status of persons.
• These differences endure even under conditions where participants appear fully informed and rational by ordinary standards.

Mackie then asks which explanation of this phenomenon is more plausible:

1. That people are perceiving or reasoning about the same objective moral facts but arrive at divergent conclusions; or
2. That moral codes reflect and respond to differing ways of life, material conditions, and psychological needs.

He argues that the second explanation is superior.

6.2 Structure of the Inference

The argument is often reconstructed as an inference to the best explanation:

Mackie does not claim that disagreement by itself logically refutes objectivism; rather, he claims that the best explanatory hypothesis does not require objective values.

6.3 Role in Support of Error Theory

Within the larger error theory, the argument from relativity serves to:

• Challenge the idea that different moral outlooks are tracking a single moral reality.
• Suggest instead that moral codes are adaptive responses to social and environmental conditions.
• Undercut appeals to moral consensus or convergence as evidence for objective value.

It thus contributes to the case that morality is an invention shaped by human interests and contexts rather than a discovery of independent facts.

6.4 Responses and Alternative Interpretations

Commentators have articulated several responses:

• Realist reconciliation strategies: Moral realists argue that some disagreements can be explained by non-moral factual error or differing empirical beliefs rather than by differences in moral principles. They may also stress areas of moral convergence (e.g., prohibitions on gratuitous killing) as supporting objectivity.
• Relativist or constructivist readings: Some use Mackie’s sociological observations to motivate cultural relativism or constructivism, though Mackie himself opts for error theory rather than relativism.
• Critiques of explanatory exclusivity: Critics contend that even if social and psychological factors influence moral codes, this does not preclude the existence of objective values; instead, such factors might shape our access or response to them.

Despite these debates, the argument from relativity remains a central reference point in discussions of whether widespread moral disagreement undermines moral realism.

7. The Argument from Queerness

7.1 Two Dimensions of Queerness

Mackie’s argument from queerness claims that if objective moral values existed, they would be “queer”—that is, metaphysically and epistemologically unusual in a way that provides grounds for skepticism. He distinguishes:

1. Metaphysical queerness: The nature of the supposed moral properties.
2. Epistemological queerness: How we could know about or respond to such properties.

7.2 Metaphysical Queerness

On Mackie’s characterization, objective moral properties would be:

• Intrinsically prescriptive: They would not only describe how things are but inherently entail how agents ought to act.
• Categorically action-guiding: Their prescriptive force would apply regardless of an agent’s desires, interests, or commitments.
• Non-natural (on many realist views): Often conceived as irreducible to natural properties like pleasure, pain, or preference-satisfaction.

He suggests that positing such properties introduces entities unlike anything else recognized in science or common-sense ontology, making their existence ontologically suspect.

7.3 Epistemological Queerness

Mackie also questions how humans could have reliable epistemic access to such properties. If objective values are sui generis, then:

• We would need some special faculty of moral perception or intuition.
• This faculty would have to track irreducibly normative features that somehow exert motivational force.

He regards such faculties as mysterious and poorly integrated with ordinary accounts of human cognition developed in psychology and the natural sciences.

7.4 From Queerness to Skepticism

The argument from queerness is again an explanatory and abductive argument. It can be summarized:

This supports Mackie’s conclusion that our ordinary moral discourse, which seems committed to such properties, is in error.

7.5 Realist and Non-Realist Responses

Subsequent philosophers have reacted in diverse ways:

• Naturalistic realists argue that moral properties can be identified with or reduced to natural properties (e.g., promoting well-being), thus avoiding the charge of queerness.
• Non-naturalist realists accept sui generis moral properties but contend that positing them is no more problematic than accepting irreducible mathematical or epistemic norms.
• Non-cognitivists and expressivists accept Mackie’s queerness concerns but respond by reinterpreting moral discourse to avoid commitment to queer properties altogether.
• Error theorists after Mackie, such as Richard Joyce and Jonas Olson, refine the queerness considerations while updating them with contemporary metaphysical and epistemological debates.

The argument from queerness remains one of the most discussed and contested features of Mackie’s meta-ethical position.

8. Moral Language: Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism

8.1 The Meta-Semantic Question

Chapter 2 of Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong addresses how moral language functions. The central question is whether moral sentences:

• Express beliefs that can be true or false (cognitivism), or
• Primarily express attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions and are not truth-apt (non-cognitivism).

Mackie’s error theory requires that moral statements purport to state facts, even though the relevant facts do not exist.

8.2 Mackie’s Cognitivist Stance

Mackie argues that ordinary usage supports a broadly cognitivist interpretation:

• People argue over moral claims as if they were disputes about truth.
• Moral sentences grammatically resemble declarative statements.
• Speakers often treat moral judgments as correctable by further information or reasoning.

He thus maintains that the best account of moral language is that it expresses beliefs about putative objective values.

8.3 Critique of Non-Cognitivism

Mackie engages with prominent non-cognitivist theories:

He acknowledges that moral language has emotive and prescriptive functions but insists that these do not exhaust its meaning.

8.4 Error Theory vs. Moral Fictionalism

Mackie’s position is distinct from later moral fictionalism, which suggests we might treat moral discourse as a useful pretense. For Mackie, moral judgments literally aim at truth and are, as stated, systematically false. He does not reinterpret them as non-literal or as knowingly fictional at the time of utterance, though some later philosophers have explored that route as a way of building on his insights.

8.5 Implications for the Broader Project

By defending a cognitivist reading of moral language, Mackie:

• Secures the starting point for error theory: there is something to be mistaken about.
• Differentiates his view from both realism (which affirms truth for some moral judgments) and non-cognitivism (which denies truth-aptness).
• Provides a framework in which the later explanatory chapters can treat moral beliefs as beliefs about nonexistent properties, analogous in some respects to beliefs about fictional or illusory entities.

The semantic analysis thus undergirds his broader claim that everyday moral thought involves a pervasive but understandable illusion.

9. Morality, Human Nature, and Social Cooperation

9.1 Morality as a Human Institution

In Chapter 4, Mackie shifts from meta-ethical denial of objective values to an explanatory account of morality as a social practice. On his view, moral systems arise and persist because they serve identifiable human needs and functions, rather than because they track objective moral truths.

Key functions include:

• Regulating self-interest to reduce conflict,
• Coordinating behavior for mutual advantage,
• Stabilizing expectations among members of a group.

9.2 Human Nature and Motivational Tendencies

Mackie draws on a broadly naturalistic picture of human nature, noting:

• Individuals are often self-interested, seeking to advance their own projects and welfare.
• At the same time, humans display sympathy, sociality, and capacities for rule-following and internalization of norms.
• These traits create both the need for and the feasibility of moral regulations.

Morality, on this view, is a way of channeling complex motivational tendencies into stable patterns of cooperation.

9.3 Emergence of Moral Rules

Moral codes, Mackie suggests, can be understood as:

• Conventional solutions to recurring problems (e.g., distribution of resources, responses to aggression).
• Evolving systems shaped by trial, error, and social learning.
• Partially overlapping with other normative domains (law, custom, etiquette) but distinguished by their connection to notions like right, wrong, obligation, and desert.

He is particularly interested in how certain moral norms become internalized such that individuals feel guilt, shame, or obligation, even when external sanctions are absent.

9.4 Cooperation and Conflict

Mackie emphasizes that morality is not purely altruistic; it often reflects and manages conflicts of interest between individuals and groups. Moral norms may:

• Protect vulnerable parties by restraining more powerful agents,
• Legitimize certain power structures,
• Provide shared standards for resolving disputes.

From his perspective, understanding morality requires attending to power relations, bargaining, and compromise alongside shared interests.

9.5 Explanatory Role in the Anti-Realist Program

This sociological and psychological account supports Mackie’s broader error theory by offering a naturalistic explanation of:

• Why people make moral judgments,
• Why they experience them as authoritative,
• Why different societies endorse divergent moral codes.

Instead of invoking objective moral facts, Mackie explains moral practice as a contingent but intelligible human invention rooted in our nature and social circumstances.

10. The Good Life and Prudential Value

10.1 Focus of Chapter 5

Chapter 5 turns from moral norms governing interpersonal behavior to questions about prudential value—what is good or worthwhile for an individual’s own life. Mackie examines whether there is an objective standard of the good life or whether such value is also to be understood in non-objectivist terms.

10.2 Desires, Interests, and Well-Being

Mackie tends to analyze prudential value in terms of:

• Desires and preferences: What people want, care about, or are deeply committed to.
• Interests: Conditions under which individuals can successfully pursue and realize their projects.

He considers the idea that something is good for a person when it advances their interests or contributes to the satisfaction of their informed or reflective desires, rather than because it possesses an intrinsic, objective goodness.

10.3 Critique of Objective or Perfectionist Accounts

Mackie discusses and questions views that posit an objective list of goods (e.g., knowledge, achievement, friendship) or a perfectionist ideal of human flourishing independent of what individuals actually value. He raises concerns about:

• How such objective goods would be grounded, given his general skepticism about objective values.
• The diversity of human temperaments and projects, which makes a single, fixed ideal of the good life difficult to sustain.

10.4 Hedonism and Preference Satisfaction

Mackie also engages with hedonistic and preference-satisfaction theories of well-being:

He does not definitively endorse a single theory but explores how such accounts can be articulated without appeal to objective or intrinsically prescriptive values.

10.5 Connection to the Wider Project

The discussion of prudential value plays two roles in the broader treatise:

• It shows how talk about what is good for a person can be understood naturalistically, without invoking objective goodness.
• It prepares the ground for later chapters on why to be moral, since reasons for moral compliance must be related to agents’ interests and projects in the absence of categorical moral reasons.

In this way, Mackie aims to demonstrate that meaningful evaluation of lives and choices remains possible within an anti-realist framework.

11. Why Be Moral Without Objective Values?

11.1 The Central Challenge

Chapter 6 addresses the question: If there are no objective moral values, what reasons do individuals have to act morally? This is both a motivational and a rational challenge. Mackie considers whether, under error theory, there can still be good reasons to comply with moral norms and to endorse moral systems.

11.2 Egoistic and Prudential Considerations

Mackie places considerable weight on prudential reasons—reasons grounded in an agent’s own interests and projects. Moral behavior can often be justified because:

• Cooperation and rule-following tend to promote long-term self-interest (e.g., through social stability, trust, and reciprocal benefits).
• Violating moral norms may incur sanctions, loss of reputation, or exclusion from beneficial cooperative schemes.

Thus, even in the absence of categorical moral obligations, there may be strong instrumental reasons for acting in accordance with moral rules.

11.3 Internalization and Moral Motivation

Mackie also points to psychological mechanisms:

• Through socialization, individuals may internalize moral norms, developing conscience, guilt, and shame.
• These internalized attitudes can motivate action even where external incentives are weak.

He treats such mechanisms as contingent psychological facts rather than as manifestations of an objective moral law.

11.4 Limits of Rational Requirement

Mackie is skeptical of strong forms of moral rationalism that claim it is always irrational to act immorally. He envisages the possibility of a rational amoralist whose interests are not aligned with moral requirements and who may not be decisively criticizable in purely rational terms, given the absence of categorical values.

11.5 Cooperative Justification of Moral Systems

In place of categorical obligations, Mackie sketches a more contractual or cooperative justification:

• Individuals have reasons to support and comply with moral systems that can be mutually justified in terms of shared and overlapping interests.
• Morality can be defended as a set of practices and rules that, on balance, most people have reason to endorse given their aims and vulnerabilities.

This approach treats moral norms as negotiated and revisable human constructs, whose authority is grounded in their role in enabling beneficial forms of social life rather than in objective rightness.

12. Politics, Law, and the Limits of Morality

12.1 Scope of Chapter 7

Chapter 7 extends Mackie’s anti-realist and explanatory approach to the domains of politics and law, examining how moral norms interact with and are embodied in institutional structures. It also explores the limits of moral demands in governing political and legal arrangements.

12.2 Morality and Legal Systems

Mackie discusses how moral norms are often:

• Codified into law (e.g., prohibitions on violence, theft),
• Supported by legal sanctions,
• Supplemented or constrained by legal procedures and rights.

However, he resists any straightforward identification of law with morality, emphasizing that legal systems:

• May serve functional aims (order, predictability) that are not coextensive with moral aims,
• Can embody contested or oppressive norms, reflecting particular power structures rather than objective justice.

12.3 Evaluating Political and Legal Institutions

In the absence of objective values, Mackie suggests that political and legal institutions should be evaluated by their consequences for human interests and their effectiveness in:

• Securing social cooperation,
• Protecting individuals from harm, exploitation, or domination,
• Providing stable frameworks within which people can pursue their own projects.

He thus emphasizes a broadly consequentialist and interest-based mode of assessment, without invoking objective rights or natural law.

12.4 The Limits of Moralization

Mackie is attentive to the limits of morality in politics and law. Not all aspects of political life, he suggests, should be fully moralized, because:

• Excessive moralization can lead to intolerance and suppression of pluralism.
• Some conflicts of interest may have to be settled by bargaining, compromise, or non-moral conventions rather than by appealing to right or wrong.

He argues for recognizing areas where non-moral considerations—such as administrative efficiency, stability, or strategic prudence—appropriately guide political decision-making.

12.5 Rights, Liberty, and Authority

Although Mackie is critical of the idea of objective natural rights, he acknowledges that the language of rights and liberties can be useful as part of a constructed political morality. Their legitimacy, on his view, depends on:

• How well they protect individuals’ interests,
• Their role in underpinning mutually advantageous cooperation.

Political authority, similarly, is to be justified pragmatically, not by appeal to an objective moral order.

In sum, Chapter 7 integrates Mackie’s meta-ethical skepticism with an account of how we might nonetheless design and assess political and legal institutions in practical, interest-sensitive terms, while recognizing that not every political question admits of a uniquely “moral” solution.

13. Key Concepts and Technical Terms

This section highlights key concepts as they function within Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, complementing the glossary provided for the overall entry.

13.1 Error Theory

Error theory (moral error theory) designates Mackie’s central view that:

• Moral judgments are cognitive and truth-apt.
• They systematically presuppose objective values.
• Since no such values exist, all positive moral judgments are false.

It is a second-order (meta-ethical) thesis about the status of moral discourse, not itself a first-order moral claim.

13.2 Objective Values and Objective Prescriptivity

Objective values are conceived as:

• Mind-independent: existing regardless of human attitudes or conventions.
• Categorically prescriptive: supplying reasons for action that hold independently of an agent’s desires.

Mackie frequently uses the phrase objective prescriptivity to emphasize the inbuilt “oughtness” that he takes to be attributed by ordinary moral thought.

13.3 Argument from Relativity and Argument from Queerness

These are Mackie’s two most cited arguments against objective values:

• The argument from relativity appeals to widespread moral disagreement and its sociological explanation.
• The argument from queerness highlights the alleged metaphysical and epistemological strangeness of objective values and our access to them.

Both function as explanatory debunking arguments within his anti-realist framework.

13.4 Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism

In the book:

• Cognitivism: moral sentences express beliefs and are capable of truth or falsity. Mackie adopts this for ordinary moral discourse.
• Non-cognitivism: moral sentences primarily express attitudes, emotions, or prescriptions and are not straightforwardly truth-apt. Mackie critically examines emotivism and prescriptivism.

13.5 Queer Properties

Queer properties are the hypothetical objective moral properties that, according to Mackie, would be:

• Intrinsically prescriptive,
• Categorically action-guiding,
• Sui generis in a way that makes their postulation metaphysically and epistemologically problematic.

The term “queer” here is purely philosophical, indicating ontological peculiarity.

13.6 Invented Morality

Invented morality refers to Mackie’s positive proposal that:

• Moral norms are human constructions, developed to manage social life.
• Their justification lies in their practical roles (e.g., promoting cooperation, protecting interests) rather than in correspondence to objective moral facts.

13.7 Categorical Reasons and the Categorical “Ought”

Mackie distinguishes:

• Categorical reasons / categorical ought: reasons that apply to agents regardless of their desires or aims, often associated with Kantian ethics and robust realism.
• Hypothetical or interest-based reasons: reasons contingent on an agent’s goals and interests.

He denies the existence of genuine categorical reasons grounded in objective values.

13.8 Social Cooperation

Social cooperation is a central explanatory notion:

• It refers to coordinated interaction for mutual advantage.
• Moral rules are treated as tools for organizing and sustaining such cooperation, especially in the face of potential conflict and free-riding.

These concepts collectively form the backbone of Mackie’s analysis of moral discourse, its metaphysical commitments, and its social functions.

14. Famous Passages and Central Claims

14.1 “There Are No Objective Values”

One of the most frequently quoted lines appears early in Chapter 1:

"

"There are no objective values."

— J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Ch. 1

This succinctly states the thesis that structures the entire book. Mackie frames it as an “ontological denial” that underlies his error theory.

14.2 Formulation of the Error Theory

Mackie describes his position as an error theory about morality, emphasizing both the cognitivist and skeptical elements:

"

Moral judgments “purport to describe some feature of the world,” but “since no such qualities exist, these moral judgments are all false.”

— Paraphrasing Mackie, Ethics, Ch. 1

This captures the distinctive combination of truth-aptness and systematic falsity.

14.3 The Argument from Relativity

In outlining the argument from relativity, Mackie draws attention to moral disagreement:

"

“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 of objective values.”

— J. L. Mackie, Ethics, Ch. 1

Here, the central move is explanatory: moral diversity is treated as evidence favoring a sociological rather than an objectivist interpretation.

14.4 The Argument from Queerness

Mackie’s formulation of the queerness of objective values is another well-known passage:

"

“If there were objective values, they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.”

— J. L. Mackie, Ethics, Ch. 1

He adds that such entities would require equally queer faculties for their detection, casting doubt on the realism they would support.

14.5 Ethics as Invention

Later in the book, Mackie articulates his constructive suggestion that ethics is a human creation:

"

“We can, and should, construct and adopt moralities that will serve our purposes.”

— Paraphrasing Mackie, Ethics, Ch. 5

This passage encapsulates his replacement for objective morality: a deliberate, reflective invention of moral systems tailored to human needs and interests.

14.6 Central Themes in Brief

These passages collectively highlight:

Together, they provide a compact entry-point into the book’s overarching argumentative structure and its enduring points of controversy.

15. Critical Reception and Major Debates

15.1 Contemporary Reactions

Upon publication in 1977, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong attracted significant attention in analytic philosophy. Reviewers commonly praised:

• The clarity and rigor of Mackie’s arguments,
• The systematic integration of meta-ethics with broader issues about morality’s social role.

At the same time, many philosophers rejected his error-theoretic conclusion, even when they found his challenges to simple moral realism compelling.

15.2 Key Lines of Criticism

Subsequent debate has focused on several main issues:

15.3 Debates Over Relativity and Disagreement

One major debate concerns how far moral disagreement undermines objectivity:

• Proponents of Mackie-style skepticism see persistent disagreement as best explained by social and psychological factors.
• Realists emphasize areas of convergence and argue that disagreement is compatible with, or even predicted by, theories of objective moral truth, given differences in non-moral beliefs or circumstances.

15.4 Debates Over Moral Semantics

Another focal point is Mackie’s cognitivist reading of moral discourse:

• Some non-cognitivists claim that his error theory is unnecessary if moral language is properly understood as non-descriptive.
• Hybrid theorists and quasi-realists attempt to preserve much of ordinary moral practice while eschewing Mackie’s robust ontological commitments.

15.5 The Emergence of Neo-Error Theory and Realist Responses

In later decades:

• Philosophers such as Richard Joyce and Jonas Olson have developed and defended refined versions of moral error theory, sometimes modifying Mackie’s arguments and addressing objections about motivation and practical guidance.
• Realists, including Terence Cuneo and others, have responded with sophisticated defenses of moral objectivity, often targeting the argument from queerness and emphasizing links between moral and other normative domains (e.g., epistemic norms).

Through these debates, Mackie’s book has remained a central touchstone in contemporary meta-ethics.

16. Influence on Contemporary Meta-Ethics

16.1 Canonical Status of Mackie’s Challenge

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is widely treated as the canonical formulation of moral error theory. Its arguments from relativity and queerness have become standard reference points that contemporary theories—realist, non-cognitivist, and constructivist—are expected to address.

16.2 Development of Error Theory

Mackie’s work directly inspired:

• Neo-error theorists, such as Richard Joyce (The Myth of Morality) and Jonas Olson (Moral Error Theory), who:
  • Refine Mackie’s arguments with more sophisticated metaphysical and epistemological tools,
  • Explore whether and how moral discourse can be retained or revised once its error is acknowledged (e.g., via fictionalism or revisionary projects).

These developments have turned moral error theory into a well-articulated and actively defended position rather than a marginal skepticism.

16.3 Realist Counter-Movements

Contemporary moral realists often frame their views partly in response to Mackie. Influential strands include:

• Naturalistic moral realism, which seeks to explain moral properties in terms of natural facts (e.g., about well-being or reasons), explicitly addressing Mackie’s concerns about queerness.
• Non-naturalist realism, exemplified by work such as Terence Cuneo’s The Normative Web, which argues that Mackie’s queerness objection would, if successful, undermine other normative domains (like epistemic norms), thereby making it self-defeating.

These responses have contributed to a revival and reshaping of realist meta-ethics.

16.4 Non-Cognitivism and Quasi-Realism in Mackie’s Shadow

Though Mackie himself is not a non-cognitivist, his objections to objective values have influenced quasi-realist and expressivist programs, which attempt to:

• Preserve much of the surface grammar and practical function of moral discourse,
• Avoid commitment to the kind of objective prescriptivity Mackie criticizes.

Such theories aim to answer the challenge: how can we take moral talk seriously while accepting many of Mackie’s anti-realist insights?

16.5 Debunking Arguments and Evolutionary Ethics

Mackie’s explanatory strategy—using naturalistic explanations of moral belief to undercut realist interpretations—has prefigured contemporary “debunking arguments” in meta-ethics. For example:

• Sharon Street’s Darwinian dilemma for value realism employs evolutionary theory to explain our normative judgments, echoing Mackie’s appeal to social and psychological explanations while updating the empirical basis.

These lines of work treat Mackie as an early exemplar of naturalistic skepticism about moral realism.

16.6 Broader Impact

Beyond narrow meta-ethics, Mackie’s approach has influenced:

• Political philosophy, in its concern with justification in the absence of objective values.
• Empirical moral psychology, which investigates moral judgment without presupposing moral realism.

In these ways, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong continues to shape theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary discussions about the nature and status of morality.

17. Legacy and Historical Significance

17.1 Place in Twentieth-Century Ethics

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong is widely regarded as a landmark text in twentieth-century moral philosophy. It consolidates earlier strands of moral skepticism into a systematic error theory and presents one of the most influential challenges to moral realism in the analytic tradition.

17.2 Shaping the Meta-Ethical Landscape

The book has helped structure the contemporary meta-ethical agenda in several ways:

• It solidified error theory as a distinct and serious option, alongside realism, non-cognitivism, and relativism.
• It forced realists to engage more directly with questions about the metaphysics and epistemology of value, rather than relying solely on intuitive support for moral truths.
• It encouraged non-cognitivists and constructivists to refine their accounts of moral language and normative explanation in light of Mackie’s objections.

17.3 Enduring Debates

Many ongoing debates trace their lineage to Mackie’s central claims, including:

• Whether moral properties can be naturalized without losing their normative character,
• Whether moral disagreement and diversity pose genuine threats to objectivity,
• How to reconcile normative authority with a thoroughly naturalistic worldview.

His arguments continue to be a standard part of graduate-level curricula in meta-ethics and are frequently re-examined in light of new developments in metaphysics, epistemology, and cognitive science.

17.4 Influence Across Disciplines

Mackie’s naturalistic and explanatory orientation has had resonance beyond philosophy:

• In law and political theory, his ideas inform discussions about the justification of rights and institutions without appeal to natural law.
• In moral psychology and evolutionary ethics, his emphasis on explaining moral practice via human nature and social conditions prefigures empirical work on the origins and functions of moral norms.

17.5 Historical Assessment

Historically, Mackie is often grouped with figures such as Hume and Nietzsche as a major critic of moral objectivity, but he does so in a distinctly analytic style, employing logical analysis and careful argument reconstruction. His book is commonly cited as:

While subsequent philosophers have modified, challenged, or rejected key elements of his view, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong remains a pivotal point of reference for understanding the development of contemporary discussions about moral truth, objectivity, and the nature of ethical practice.