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- Title
What's So Queer About Morality?
- Authors
Taylor, Luke
- Abstract
Mackie (Ethics: inventing right and wrong, Penguin Books, London, 1977) famously argued for a moral error theory on the basis that objective moral values, if they existed, would be very queer entities. Unfortunately, his argument is very brief and it is not totally obvious from what he says exactly where the queerness of moral values is supposed to lie. In this paper I will firstly show why a typical interpretation of Mackie is problematic and secondly offer a new interpretation. I will argue that, whether or not we have reason to live in the morally correct way, what seems queer about moral properties is that there is a morally correct way in which to live in the first place. This interpretation makes sense of Mackie's claim that theism might be able to solve the queerness problem; the notion of an objectively correct way to live may make sense if theism is true, but not otherwise.
- Subjects
LONDON (England); PENGUIN Books Ltd.; ETHICS; ERROR analysis in mathematics; RIGHT &; wrong; THEISM
- Publication
Journal of Ethics, 2020, Vol 24, Issue 1, p11
- ISSN
1382-4554
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10892-019-09307-0