Error theories and values

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 76, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 534-552

  Burgess, John A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949257273     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409812348661     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Bernard Williams, 'Ethics and the Fabric of the World', in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity: Essays in Honour of J.h. Mackie (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp.203-214, noticed the problem at p. 213 but did not attempt to provide a detailed solution to it.
2. See J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), ch.5.
3. On this issue compare Richard Gamer, Beyond Morality (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1994),
4. Ian Hinckfuss, The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects (Canberra: ANU, RSSS, 1987)
5. and Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own (New York: Dover, 1973).
6. and David McNaughton, Moral Vision: An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 37 and p. 98, for responses of this kind in which both charges are levelled at Mackie.
7. Cf. Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 9-10. Wright first levels the stronger charge but then retreats from the hard line he begins with to a position closer to that which I shall be defending.
8. David Lewis, 'Dispositional Theories of Value', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 63 (1989), pp. 113-137, is one recent critic who is exempt from this criticism.
9. Paul A. Boghossian and J. David Velleman, 'Colour as a Secondary Quality', Mind 98 (1989), pp.81-103.
10. As presented in Hartry Field, Science Without Numbers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980). Field only makes a start to the formidable task of showing that all scientific sentences involving reference to mathematical entities admit of nominalistic reformulations.
11. See J.A. Burgess, 'Phenomenal Qualities and the Nontransitivity of Matching', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (1990), pp. 206-220, §5, for details. Note, however, that some 'translational' error theories might offer as the translation of a sentence of the error-ridden language, an infinitely long sentence in the kosher language. Clearly, in cases like this, the error-ridden language would be practically indispensable it had better be practically stable.
12. The most promising approaches to discharging this task all attempt to absorb and constrain permissible diversity by regarding moral concepts as essentially contestable. See, e.g., David Wiggins, 'Truth as Predicated of Moral Judgments', in Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 139-84
13. and 'A Sensible Subjectivism?', also in Needs, Values, Truth, pp. 185-214;
14. Mark Johnston, 'Disposilional Theories of Value', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 63 (1989), pp. 139-74;
15. and S.L. Hurley, Natural Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Note however that only Wiggins would call himself a subjectivist.