What’s So Queer About Morality?
One of the currently available versions of moral antirealism is a view called moral
error theory; hereafter simply “error theory.” Error theory is usually based on two major
claims: a falsity claim and an error claim.1
The falsity claim is as follows: moral
judgments are a species of belief and are thus capable of being either true or false.
However, there are no moral facts in the world, and therefore all moral judgments are
false. The error claim goes like this: when we make moral judgments, we unknowingly
project our feelings, wants and demands onto the world and then we mistakenly think that
we’ve come into cognitive contact with objective moral facts.
Probably the most famous line of argumentation for error theory is what J.L.
Mackie called the argument from queerness. The crux of what is commonly known as
the metaphysical version of this argument is the notion that if there were objective moral
facts or properties, they would possess properties that are utterly unlike anything else in
the world. This essay will address strands of the metaphysical argument from queerness
as presented in the works of Mackie, Richard Garner and Richard Joyce.
Mackie
Mackie thinks that the commonsense view of morality includes the notion of
moral authority. On his view, moral authority involves the conjunction of two properties;
namely, objectivity and what he calls intrinsic prescriptivity. 2 Morality is objective if
Cf. Richard Garner (1990), “On the Genuine Queerness of Moral Properties and Facts,” Australasian
Journal of Philosophy. vol. 68, no, 2, pp. 137-146
2
Mackie faults moral naturalism and moral noncognitivism on the grounds that both views “leave out the
apparent authority of ethics, the one by excluding the categorically imperative aspect, the other the claim to
1
least some moral claims are true irrespective of anyone’s beliefs or desires about them.
For example, if murder is objectively wrong, then murder is wrong regardless of whether
it achieves (or fails to achieve) anyone’s goals, fulfills (or fails to fulfill) anyone’s
desires, or even whether anyone believes that murder is wrong.
Mackie takes Plato’s Forms as a model of what the moral objectivist is committed
to, claiming that “Plato’s Forms give a dramatic picture of what objective values would
have to be.”3 According to Mackie, the commonsense view of morality implies that
knowledge of what one ought to do both tells one what he or she ought to do and
provides her with an overriding motive to do so. In Mackie’s words, knowledge of what
one ought to do “makes him pursue it.” When stated in terms of moral authority, which
is what Mackie originally seemed to find problematic about a commitment to moral
objectivity, the metaphysical version of the queerness argument claims that anything
which is both objective and intrinsically prescriptive is utterly unlike anything else in the
world; something akin to Plato’s Forms. Such entities would be queer not just because
nothing else is both objective and intrinsically prescriptive, but also because they have
some sort of intrinsic motivational force that apparently nothing else has.
The standard moral realist reply to Mackie has been made by David Brink. Brink
claims that the metaphysical version of Mackie’s queerness argument assumes what
Brink calls strong motivational internalism, which is that, “it is a conceptual truth that
moral considerations provide sufficient motive for action.”4 In light of Mackie’s claim
that knowledge of what one ought morally to do “makes him pursue it,” Brink’s analysis
objective validity or truth.” Mackie (1977), Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, New York: Pelican, p.
33.(33)
3
Ibid., p. 40. Emphasis mine.
4
Brink (1984), “Moral Realism and the Sceptical Arguments from Disagreement and Queerness,”
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 62, no. 2, p. 111-125.
seems plausible. Brink responds to Mackie by arguing both that internalism is false and
that, arguably, moral realism should not be taken to be committed to internalism in the
first place.5
Contemporary error theorists including Richard Garner and Richard Joyce are
unimpressed with Brink’s move. They contend that, contrary to appearances, Mackie’s
primary concern in the motivational argument was not motivation in the causal sense, but
rather motivation in the justificatory sense. Joyce, for example, writes, “…if Mackie
thought that motivational internalism were the culprit, it would be odd for him to expend
time arguing about our attributing to the world queer properties…”6 He then approvingly
cites Richard Garner, who interprets Mackie as holding that, “the queerness of being a
property that is intrinsically motivating is not the only, or even the major, queerness
moral facts exhibit.” Rather, according to Garner,
It is hard to deny that recognition of a moral fact...if such a thing were possible, would
give us a justifying reason for refraining from performing that action…Moral realists
need not be saddled with motivational internalism, but they may have to embrace reasons
internalism when ‘reason’ means ‘justifying reason’. If we recognize a moral fact, then
we recognize it as a moral fact, which is to say that we recognize it as directing us to be
or act one way rather than another—and we recognize this whether or not we are moved
to obey the directions. It is the peculiar combination of objectivity and prescriptivity,
rather than any intrinsic motivational power, that makes moral facts and properties queer,
and neither Brink nor anyone else can purge that from them to protect them from the
argument from queerness.7
5
Ibid., pp. 114-15
Joyce (2001), The Myth of Morality (Cambridge), p. 30.
7
Garner (1990), p. 142
6
From here, Garner and Joyce launch distinct but closely related attacks against moral
realism that do not depend for their success on the notion that moral realism requires
motivational internalism. More on this later.
Mackie claimed that, aside from alleged moral facts and properties, nothing else
in the world is both objective and prescriptive. Thus, were moral facts and properties to
exist, they would be unlike anything else in the world. Therefore, one has at least prima
facie justification for omitting them from one’s ontology. One issue that presents itself
here is how one is to understand what Mackie has in mind by ‘prescriptivity’. If we
interpret prescriptivity here as just moral prescriptivity, then Mackie’s charge seems true
but trivial and therefore not damaging to moral realism. After all, if there were some
other type of fact in the world that was objective and prescriptive in just the same way
that morality is supposed to be objective and prescriptive, then it would seem that,
whatever its other features, this putatively other type of fact would also be moral in
nature. Fortunately, certain passages in Mackie’s work suggest a way of understanding
his claim that does not make it a trivial one. He claims, for example, that,
A categorical imperative…would express a reason for acting which was unconditional in
the sense of not being contingent upon any present desire of the agent to whose
satisfaction the recommended action would contribute as a means…So far as ethics is
concerned, my thesis that there are no objective values is specifically the denial that any
such categorically imperative element is objectively valid.8
The above passage seems to indicate that, according to Mackie, an entity is objectively
prescriptive if it indicates or otherwise specifies what ought to be done, and if it does so
independently of whatever reasons one might have for obeying its prescriptions.
8
Mackie (1977), p. 29.
With these distinctions in mind, it is important to remember that Mackie’s charge
seems to be simply that nothing in the world (besides morality, if it exists) is both
objective and prescriptive. That said, it seems that the naturalist moral realist can appeal
to things like biological or proper functions and biological or proper function statements
as a way of deflecting the force of Mackie’s metaphysical argument from queerness.
Proper function statements are statements which purport to explain the behavior of some
organism or of some mechanism within the organism by appealing to the purpose or
function of that behavior or mechanism. In turn, proper functions are sometimes
described as what a particular mechanism, trait, or process is supposed to do, what it has
been designed to do, or what it ought to do.
Though the details differ, the basic notion of function at work here is that for
some entity X and some behavior , X ought biologically to  (or, alternatively, the
proper function of X is to ) if -ing by evolutionary ancestors of X tended to bring about
their continued survival and reproductive success. It appears, then, that in virtue of
certain causal and historical facts about -ing in X’s evolutionary ancestors, -ing in X
takes on a certain sort of normative significance. In short, teleofunctionalists appear
committed to claiming something like, “X ought biologically to ” is true if and only if
the proper function of X is -ing and in turn, the proper function of X is -ing if and only
if -ing by evolutionary ancestors of X tended to bring about their continued survival and
reproductive success. On a related note, teleofunctionalists appear to think that proper
function statements are (or at least can be) both normative and objectively true. If they
are right, and if a naturalistically respectable account of the truth conditions of such
statements can be given, then the fact that moral statements purport to be both normative
and objectively true is not all by itself a good reason for thinking that moral imperatives
are queer.
In addition, perhaps the naturalist moral realist can exploit a structural parallel
between biological and moral norm statements to address Mackie’s argument. It seems
platitudinous that what ought to be the case is a subset of what is the case, and that, pace
Moore, if any states of affairs ought to be the case, they are so in virtue of their
possessing certain otherwise ordinary descriptive properties. Similarly, it seems that at
some point, any adequate account of moral realism will have to be informed by some
normative ethical theory or other. One cannot just argue that moral realism is true and
leave it at that; rather, at some point one will have to say which sorts of descriptive facts
make it the case that there are moral facts. For example, if Mill’s utilitarianism is the
correct moral theory, then an action is morally normative if it tends to produce the
greatest happiness for the greatest number.
That is, facts about what will produce
happiness or pain for the greatest number determine (in some metaphysically strict sense
of determine) what is morally right or wrong, thereby also determining at some level
what one ought to do. If so, then the moral realist would be committed to something like,
“X ought morally to ” is true if and only if -ing tends to bring about the greatest
happiness for the greatest number. In short, if there exist at least some true proper
function statements in biology which have naturalistically respectable truth conditions,
then the moral naturalist can appeal to these as a way of showing that the alleged
objectivity and prescriptivity of moral ought claims does not all by itself make them
ontologically queer.9
9
Perhaps not surprisingly, a related move is open to the theistic moral realist. Like the naturalist, the theist
can claim that there are biological norms or purposes in nature. However, whereas the naturalistic view of
Richard Garner
As noted earlier, Garner claims that reasons internalism is the source of the
problem for moral realists. Recall his claim that,
Moral realists need not be saddled with motivational internalism, but they may have to
embrace reasons internalism when ‘reason’ means ‘justifying reason’. 10
Garner construes reasons internalism as involving at least two claims; a subjunctive
conditional claim and an epistemological one. The subjunctive conditional claim is, were
one to recognize a moral fact, one would have a justifying reason for performing or
refraining from some action.11 The epistemological claim is that mistakenly believing
that one recognizes a moral fact gives one a justifying reason for performing or
refraining from some action.12
One plausible move is for the realist to deny that moral realists must be
committed to this sort of internalism. Motivation for this move stems from reflection on
a longstanding epistemological debate over the nature of warrant. At least since the
publication of Edmund Gettier’s famous essay,13 epistemologists have debated whether
warrant requires truth; or, alternatively, whether warranted false belief is possible.14
biological norms claims that, for some entity X and some behavior , X ought biologically to  (or,
alternatively, the proper function of X is to ) if -ing by evolutionary ancestors of X tended to bring about
their continued survival and reproductive success, the theistic defender of biological norms might claim
that the proper function of X is to  if -ing is part of a divine design plan for that organism. Compare
Alvin Plantinga (1993), Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford), especially chapter 11.
10
Ibid.
11
Compare Garner: “It is hard to deny that the recognition of a moral fact (say the wrongness of an action),
if such a thing were possible, would give us a justifying reason for refraining from performing that action.”
Garner (1990), p. 142.
12
Compare Garner: “Recognizing such a moral fact, or even mistakenly believing that we recognize it, we
would have such a reason, whether we were motivated by it or not.” (Ibid., emphasis mine.)
13
Edmund L. Gettier (1963), “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, vol. 23, pp. 121-123.
14
For a survey of views, see Howard-Snyder et al (2003), “Infallibilism and Gettier’s Legacy,” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 304-327.
Following current convention, the term warrant refers to whatever it is that, when present
to a sufficient degree, makes the difference between knowledge and mere or accidentally
true belief. Those who claim that warranted false belief is possible are commonly called
warrant fallibilists. Those who claim that warrant requires truth (and thus warranted false
belief is impossible) are commonly called warrant infallibilists.15
That warrant
infallibilism is a popular contender among metaphilosophical theories of warrant leaves
open the following rejoinder on behalf of the moral realist: As noted earlier, the version
of reasons internalism that Garner thinks moral realism is committed to involves the
claim that mistakenly believing that one recognizes a moral fact gives one a justifying
reason for performing or refraining from some action.16 That is, some false moral beliefs
convey justification or warrant on their possessors. But this is precisely what warrant
infallibilism denies. Short of a convincing argument against warrant infallibilism, then,
there seems no reason why a moral realist could not embrace this view of warrant. Such
a realist could argue that warrant infallibilism is true and thus reasons internalism is false.
If so, then the realist is certainly not beholden to reasons internalism and Garner’s
argument fails. More modestly, the realist can simply point out that Garner’s reasonsbased queerness argument assumes warrant fallibilism, thus begging the question against
warrant infallibilism. But since warrant infallibilism is an option, and since warrant
fallibilism, if true, would render reasons internalism false (at least on Garner’s conception
See, e.g., Merricks (1995), “Warrant Entails Ttuth,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol.
55, p. 841-855; Merricks (1997), “More on Warrant’s Entailing Truth,” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, vol 57, pp. 627-631; Howard-Snyder et al (2003), and E.J. Coffman (2007), “Warrant Without
Truth?” Synthese.
16
Compare Garner: “Recognizing such a moral fact, or even mistakenly believing that we recognize it, we
would have such a reason, whether we were motivated by it or not.” (Ibid., emphasis mine.)
15
of reasons internalism), it does not follow that the moral realist must be committed to
reasons internalism. Again, Garner’s argument fails.17
Joyce
If the foregoing is correct, or at least approximately so, then I take myself to have
made substantial progress in showing how the moral naturalist can address metaphysical
queerness arguments for error theory. However, there is also a third challenge at hand;
namely, Richard Joyce’s deductive version of the argument from queerness which he
sketches in chapter two of his book, The Myth of Morality. He begins the argument with
the widely held claim that if morality is objective, then there are things that we ought to
do regardless of our desires, interests, or motives. In defense of this claim, he notes that
people would not rescind their condemnation of the Nazis even if they were to discover
17
Another move open to the realist is to grant for the sake of argument that he or she must embrace reasons
internalism but argue that doing so does not have any ontologically queer implications. Recall that
according to Garner, the thing that is supposedly so queer about morality in this context is that recognizing
a moral fact gives one a reason to act in a certain way. For example, recognizing the fact that one ought
morally to tell the truth gives one a reason to tell the truth. Garner seems to think that no other facts
possess this feature and therefore moral facts, if they exist, are ontologically queer. However, if biological
norms or biological proper functions exist, then there exists another set of facts, tokens of which, if
recognized, can provide the one who recognizes them with a reason for acting in a certain way. For
example, it is arguably the case that humans ought biologically to copulate. Not surprisingly, there is a
ready evolutionary explanation for this fact; namely, copulating is a type of behavior that has been selected
for in humans because it helps us survive as a species. Similarly, one possible justifying reason for
copulating is that it is biologically what one ought to do; it is how we keep the species going.
Alternatively, recognizing that one ought biologically to copulate provides the individual who recognizes
this fact with a reason to engage in the corresponding behavior, at least at some point in his or her life.
Note that this move also provides the moral realist with a means of addressing Garner’s queerness
charge in a way that remains neutral with respect to warrant fallibilism and infallibilism. This is important
because, as a way of addressing the objection that he has begged the question against the infallibilist moral
realist, Garner could conceivably adjust his definition of reasons internalism so as not to beg any questions
about the nature of warrant. More specifically, Garner might feasibly limit reasons internalism to the
subjunctive conditional claim that were one to recognize a moral fact, one would have a justifying reason
for performing or refraining from some action. Presumably, both fallibilists and infallibilists would want to
accept this modified version of reasons internalism. But if, as has been suggested, there is a set of
(presumably non-queer) non-moral facts, tokens of which, if recognized, can provide the individual who
recognizes them with a reason for action, then moral facts or properties which possess this reason-foraction conveying feature are not thereby ontologically queer, either. In short, even if the moral realist must
embrace reasons internalism, this does not seem problematic for realism.
that killing Jews and other non-Aryans satisfied Nazi interests. Rather, people widely
believe that if it was wrong for the Nazis to kill non-Aryans, then it was wrong for them
to do so irregardless of whether they wanted to kill non-Aryans, or even whether the
Nazis thought it was morally right for them to kill non-Aryans. In short, the common
conception of morality is such that the moral facts, if there are any, exist independently of
anyone’s beliefs, desires, or motives. Thinking that one ought morally to do something
doesn’t make it so.
The second premise of Joyce’s argument is based on a claim that Joyce attributes
to Mackie. Joyce reads Mackie as holding that, necessarily and a priori, it is the case that
for any X, if X morally ought to  then X has a reason to .18 Joyce calls this claim
Mackie’s Platitude (hereafter MP).
Since X and  are variables, and since MP is
supposed to be a necessary truth, I take it that MP should also include the clause “for any
”. Joyce views having a reason to  as such that if X does not  then X is practically
irrational. Whatever other reasons X may have to not-, X may not rationally act on
them or appeal to them in X’s explanation for why X did not . The foregoing indicates
that MP in its full form should read as follows:
MP (expanded): Necessarily and a priori, for any X and any , if X
morally ought to , then X has a reason to  such that if X does not  then
X is practically irrational.19
Compare what Shafer-Landau (2005) calls moral rationalism or reasons existence internalism: “If one is
morally obligated to perform an action, then one has (defeasible) reason to do it. P. 145 fn 3. He defends it
in chapter 8. These are not quite the same thing. REI may explain MR, but MR can be true even if REI is
false.
19
By “rational” Joyce has in mind practical rationality.
18
Joyce defends MP on the following grounds: First, it would be odd to tell someone both
that (i) they ought morally to do something and that (ii) they have no reason to do it.
Second, he notes that when one confronts another with a moral claim of the form, “you
ought to ,” it is perfectly legitimate for the other person to ask why he or she ought to .
That is, it is perfectly legitimate for them to ask for some reason why they ought to .
Third, he points out that if we tell someone that they ought morally to , then we will
want to provide that person with a reason for our claim, and if we cannot, then the other
person might feel justified in ignoring our claim. From here, Joyce takes MP to support
the second premise of his argument, which is the more modest claim that if X ought to 
then X has a reason to .
By employing modus ponens, Joyce arrives at his third premise, which is that if
morality is objective, then there are some things we have a reason to do independently of
our desires, interests, or motives. But Joyce contends—and this is his fourth premise—
that no sense can be made of such ‘motive-independent’ reasons for action. Rather than
provide a direct argument for this claim, Joyce goes to considerable lengths to show that
a number of possible ways of understanding such reasons for action either fail to support
realism, or else they are nonsensical. In short, since moral realism is committed to both
moral objectivity and moral rationalism, and since there is no sense to be made of stanceindependent reasons, Joyce concludes that moral objectivism (and hence moral realism)
is false. The threat of error theory looms.
Joyce’s wording of (1) obscures what I take to be his main point about the realist’s
commitment to objective morality; namely, that moral facts (if any there be) are what
they are independently of one’s attitude toward them.20 In addition, Joyce appears to use
talk of desires, interests and the like as a loose way of referring to reasons for action. On
this basis, and in the interest of clarifying the structure of Joyce’s argument, I suggest the
following clarification of (1); namely, (1*). Where ought should be taken to be a moral
ought:
(1*) If X ought to , then X ought to  regardless of whether X has a reason to .
(2) If X ought to , then X has a reason for ing
(3*) Therefore, if X ought to , then X has a reason for ing regardless of whether X
has a reason to .
(4) But no sense can be made of such reasons
(5) Therefore, X is never under a moral obligation
Joyce interprets the structure of his argument from queerness in the following way:
If P, then Q
Here’s Shafer-Landau: “Realists believe that there are moral truths that obtain independently of any
preferred perspective, in the sense that the moral standards that fix the moral facts are not made true by
virtue of their ramification from within any actual or hypothetical perspective. That a person takes a
particular attitude toward a putative moral standard is not what makes that standard correct.” (ShaferLandau 2005), p. 15.
20
If P, then R
If P, then (Q&R)
Not (Q&R) Therefore,
Not P
As a result, he states, “Premises (1) and (2) and (4) are the ones that require argument
(premise (3), following from (1) and (2), requires no independent support).”21 However,
(3) does not in fact follow from (1) and (2); or if it does, it does not follow immediately
via modus ponens. To see why this is so, let us assume provisionally that X ought
morally to . That way, we can focus on the consequents of the conditionals (1) and (2)
to determine whether they yield the apparently problematic (3). Again, I take my (1*) to
be a more clearly worded equivalent of (1), and so in what follows I have the wording of
(1*) in mind.
The consequent of Joyce’s first premise is X ought to  regardless of whether X
has a reason to . The consequent of his second premise is X has a reason to . The
conjunction of these consequents is X ought to  regardless of whether X has a reason to
, and X has a reason to . For brevity’s sake in what follows, call this the conjunction
claim. To claim both that X ought to  regardless of whether X has a reason to  and that
X in fact has a reason to ; i.e., to make the conjunction claim, is not the same thing as
making the admittedly odd claim that X has a reason to  regardless of whether X has a
reason to . The conjunction claim states, on the one hand, that our moral obligations
would be as they are even if—perhaps per impossible—we had no reason to do what
21
Joyce (2001), p. 42.
morality requires of us, and on the other, that we in fact (always?) have a reason to do
what morality requires of us.
Put more colloquially, the conjunction claim views
morality as being such that even if one had no reason to do the right thing, one still ought
morally to do it; but as a matter of fact, one always does have a reason to do the right
thing.
The conjunction claim says nothing about ‘reasons independent reasons’ or
anything of that sort and therefore does not entail Joyce’s third premise.
One might think that even if the conjunction claim does not deductively entail
Joyce’s third premise, it nonetheless inferentially implies the third premise or something
very much like it. One might do so if one thought that moral facts somehow put into the
heads of moral agents certain reasons to act which correspond to the dictates of morality.
Joyce seems to interpret Kant as holding this sort of view, and he apparently thinks that
all moral realists are committed to this sort of view as well. Now, I admit that if the
moral realist was committed to the idea that moral facts, all by themselves somehow put
reasons into the heads of people, that would indeed be queer. However, to my knowledge
no one has ever held that view. Even Plato thought that one had to at least contemplate
the Forms before they could exert any transformative power. Alternatively, one might
think that Joyce’s third premise follows inferentially from his first two if one were to
adopt what I’ll call strong moral rationalism.22 As I am using the term, strong moral
rationalism is the view that moral facts are grounded in or determined by facts about
practical rationality. Compare this form of moral rationalism with what I’ll call moderate
moral rationalism, which is just the view that moral failings are also rational failings, and
perhaps necessarily so.23 On the picture that I am calling strong moral rationalism, the
22
23
See Joyce (2001), chapter three.
For an alternate characterization of moral rationalism, see Kerstein (2006)
facts about what it is practically rational for X to do both determine and explain the facts
about what one is morally obligated to do.24 Alternatively, what the moral facts are, and
what one’s moral obligations are depends on what one it is practically rational for one to
do. If, in accordance with the first premise, one’s moral obligations are independent of
one’s actual or hypothetical reasons, and if, in accordance with strong moral rationalism,
one’s moral obligations are grounded in considerations of practical rationality then it
would seem to follow that one possesses a queer sort of reasons-independent reason to do
what morality requires.
However, if strong moral rationalism is true, then (1) seems false. I take it that
(1) is supposed to capture the objectivity or ‘stance independence’ of morality, whereby
stance independence I have in mind the idea that moral facts are not determined in any
way by the actual or hypothetical mental states of moral agents.25 By contrast, I take it
that any view which bases moral obligations on what practically rational humans would
do is a form of constructivism, not realism. In short, the moral realist should not be a
strong moral rationalist. More importantly, since Joyce’s argument only shows that
realism has absurd implications if one assumes a view to which moral realists are (or at
least ought not to be) committed, the realist has little to fear from it.
In chapter (four?), Joyce himself appears to adopt this view, claiming that “” However, Joyce also
contends that this sort of view, which he takes the realist to be committed to as well, implies moral
relativism.
25
At this point I am leaving aside views like divine command theory, which I take to be a form of realism
even though on this view moral facts are based on some characteristic of a divine being.
24