PHIL 24320 Lecture 14: 10-12-16: Ayer & Mackie
Document Summary
Mackie"s view: (objective) values don"t exist (meaning goodness, badness, right, wrong), although ordinarily moral judgements, common sense moral judgements imply that they do. There are no values in a certain sense, in that value can mean either a kind of feature that we attribute to an object but it can also mean a property of a valuing person. Ex: describing a person saying he and i have different values. There is nothing in things which makes it right or wrong to value in a certain way. Mackie and ayer deny is that in some objects there is something that makes it right to value things positively or negatively. We say things like how can you that if it"s just not true? (regarding value attributions) This argument against ayer, mackie would agree with because he thinks all value attributions are just not true. What mackie can"t grasp is that statements like it"s wrong to sacrifice babies are true or.