Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
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Product Description
Product Description
An insight into moral skepticism of the 20th century. The author argues that our every-day moral codes are an 'error theory' based on the presumption of moral facts which, he persuasively argues, don't exist. His refutation of such facts is based on their metaphysical 'queerness' and the observation of cultural relativity.
About the Author
John Leslie Mackie (1917-1981) was a philosopher who made significant contributions to the fields of ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. A professor of philosophy at the universities of Sydney, Otago, New Zealand, and York, he was elected a fellow of the University of Oxford in 1967 and to the British Academy in 1974.
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To the south of the Bering Straight, the smooth ocean floor is covered by shallow water. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
To the south of the Bering Straight, the smooth ocean floor is covered by shallow water. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this book up in Waterstones as an adjunct to another book on professional ethics in my field (software engineering). Once I had started to read it I just kept going, ever more engaged, to the end.
Skepticism has its limits and wielded by less than agile minds can be a very blunt tool. Here, however, Mackie presents a convincing (at least to me) argument against the entire fabric of moral precepts by elucidating not so much their contradictions as their incoherence from a philosophical viewpoint.
Yet this is not a crude argument for moral relativism. Rather, Mackie simply argues that if moral precepts won't do, we need to replace them with something that will. To fill this gap he proposes an ethics based on individual rights and obligations. There is nothing new in this idea for it goes back to the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Mackie offers it in a clear form without arbitrary prescriptions for the societies in which moral actors live. Thereby he avoids the absurdities propounded by various American thinkers (notably the psychotic-libertarian school represented by Nozick) and that is this book's great strength.
Mackie left me admiring him for having the guts not to be radical but simply to admit that practical ethics does not work unless it has the pragmatism to make frequent sanity checks upon itself.
For its plain words and good sense I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Skepticism has its limits and wielded by less than agile minds can be a very blunt tool. Here, however, Mackie presents a convincing (at least to me) argument against the entire fabric of moral precepts by elucidating not so much their contradictions as their incoherence from a philosophical viewpoint.
Yet this is not a crude argument for moral relativism. Rather, Mackie simply argues that if moral precepts won't do, we need to replace them with something that will. To fill this gap he proposes an ethics based on individual rights and obligations. There is nothing new in this idea for it goes back to the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Mackie offers it in a clear form without arbitrary prescriptions for the societies in which moral actors live. Thereby he avoids the absurdities propounded by various American thinkers (notably the psychotic-libertarian school represented by Nozick) and that is this book's great strength.
Mackie left me admiring him for having the guts not to be radical but simply to admit that practical ethics does not work unless it has the pragmatism to make frequent sanity checks upon itself.
For its plain words and good sense I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mackie is ever-provocative, just see his 'Miracle of Theism' for proof, and here he attacks morality. Our every-day moral codes, he argues, are an 'error theory' based on the presumption of moral facts which, he persuasively argues, don't exist. His refutation of such facts is based on their metaphysical 'queerness' and the observation of cultural relativity. I can't say whether he's 'right', but if you're interested in the objectivity (or otherwise) of moral standards, this is a recommended read.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A little disappointed. I find it interesting that a previous review says that the second part of the book stands in a somewhat awkward relation to the first. I would put this a bit more strongly - it seems to me that the second part is in danger of contradicting the first. I'm actually a bit confused as to what this book is offering. In the first part of the book he argues the radical thesis that there are "no objective values" - a position he calls 'moral scepticism'. Yet in the second part of the book he seems to assume that there are objective moral values, but we need to reason very carefully about how they can practicably be applied or turned into concrete principles. I fully agree with this second less radical thesis, but I'm rather concerned about how he confuses it with the more radical thesis that there are 'no objective moral values'. Perhaps I have missed something.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Warning - Not an enjoyable read!
Warning - not an enjoyable read.
Some of you will laugh and think that this point is completely obvious. But, this book is not an easy read. Neither is it an enjoyable read. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2006
Not what was expected but nonetheless and interesting read
I was expecting more of a dialectic from a scholar but instead received his account of various ethical ideas and their relation to his postulation that there is no objective... Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2003 by edmund
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