Introduction

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.

This topic is about whether right and wrong are real or just a matter of opinion/feeling. Perhaps what we think is right/wrong is merely the result of our upbringing. How do we know we were raised in the right culture? Does there actually have to be a right culture? What would that even mean?

Meta-ethics is the area of philosophy which attempts to answer the question of what goodness actually is, including whether it even exists.

Normative ethical theories attempt to devise a system for determining which actions are good and which are bad, e.g., Utilitarianism, Kantian deontology and Virtue ethics.

Normative ethical theories all have a Meta-ethical core. Some forms of utilitarianism claim that goodness = pleasure/happiness. That is a meta-ethical view about what goodness is which forms Utilitarianism’s meta-ethical core. Once that is established, Utilitarianism can go on to formulate the details of a system that enables us determine which actions are good and which bad. For example, in the case of Act Utilitarianism, that would include the hedonic calculus.

Normative theories typically require that goodness at least exists, though they argue over what it actually is. However, some meta-ethical theories (anti-realist theories) claim that goodness does not actually exist. This makes the outcome of meta-ethical debate is crucial for normative ethics. If there is no such thing as objective goodness/badness then it seems difficult to construct a normative theory. If goodness does exist, then what exactly goodness is will limit normative theories to whatever goodness is.

There are two main aspects to the question of what goodness is: metaphysical and linguistic. 

Metaphysical: What is the nature of goodness? There are two opposing views on this:

• Moral Realism: The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) exist in reality.
• Moral anti-realism: The view that moral properties (like goodness/badness) do not exist in reality.

Linguistic: What is the meaning of ethical language? There are two opposing views on this:

• Cognitivism: ethical language expresses beliefs about reality which can therefore be true or false.
• Non-cognitivism: ethical language expresses some non-cognition like an emotion, does not attempt to describe reality and therefore cannot be true or false.

Ethical Naturalism (cognitivist realism)

Ethical naturalism is the view that goodness is something real in the natural (physical) world – typically a natural property. A natural property is a trait or feature of natural things.

This makes naturalism is cognitive. Ethical language expresses beliefs related to the natural property of goodness.

Aristotelian naturalism. Aristotle claims that goodness = eudaimonia (flourishing). Flourishing is a factual feature of natural organisms. Philippa Foot defends this view, pointing to the example of plants. There is a factual, natural difference between a plant that is flourishing and a plant that is not. The same is true for humans.

Utilitarian naturalism. Bentham claims that goodness = pleasure. Pleasure is a natural property of natural creatures (at least if you don’t believe in a non-natural soul).

The linguistic claims of naturalism. Naturalism is cognitive. It claims moral properties like goodness are natural properties.

Naturalism vs Hume’s ‘is-ought’ gap

A strength of Naturalism is Aristotle, Bentham and Mill’s arguments for it.

Aristotle’s argument was that eudaimonia (flourishing) is our telos. Every human action is naturally aimed at living a good life, so that must be our purpose.

The classical Utilitarians adapted this argument, removing telos which had come to be seen as an unscientific concept and replacing flourishing with pleasure (Bentham) or happiness (Mill).

“Nature has placed us under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do … a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while”. – Bentham.

It is part of our nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that inescapably determines our morality.

Mill builds on this, using the broader term ‘happiness’. Happiness is our ultimate end. Everything else is valued only insofar as it brings happiness.

Bentham and Mill try to capture the psychological essence of the experience of pleasure. It does seem intrinsic to the experience of pleasure/happiness that it is good.

Weakness: Hume’s is-ought gap

Hume’s is-ought gap attempts to show that moral judgments cannot be inferred from facts.

Hume’s is-ought gap (also called Hume’s law) criticises naturalism and cognitivism. Hume said philosophers talk about the way things are and then jump with no apparent justification to a claim about the way things ought to be. Put another way, you cannot deduce a value from a fact. You can’t get an ought from an is.

Applying this to Bentham’s argument:

P1. It is human nature to find pleasure good (fact – ‘is-statement’).
C1. Pleasure is good and we ought to maximise pleasure (value – ‘ought’ statement)

Hume’s point is that this is not a valid deduction. This conclusion does not follow, is not justified, by that premise. The fact that it is human nature to find pleasure good, only means that it is human nature to find pleasure good. It doesn’t mean that pleasure is good and that we ought to maximise pleasure.

Non-cognitivism. Since our moral judgements could not have been inferred from facts, they must have a different origin. Hume proposes that ethical language comes from ‘the heart’, not ‘the understanding’. It expresses an ‘active feeling or sentiment’. This makes the is-ought gap also an argument against cognitivism and for non-cognitivism. Hume is arguably a proto-emotivist.

Moral judgements can’t be deduced from facts, they are instead caused by non-cognitive personal feelings.

Moore’s non-naturalist Intuitionism (cognitivist realism)

Moore developed Hume’s criticisms of naturalism. However, once he thought he had shown naturalism to be false, he did not abandon objective morality like Hume did. Moore thought there was another way for goodness to be real than as a natural property.

Moore’s open question argument

Moore argued that if naturalism were true, the result would be illogical. Take any naturalist claim about what goodness is, such as that goodness = pleasure.

IF: goodness = pleasure
THEN: (goodness = pleasure) = (pleasure = pleasure).
BUT: goodness = pleasure is informative, telling us about the world.
YET: pleasure = pleasure is not informative (tautology).

An informative statement cannot be equal in meaning to an uninformative tautological statement. So, goodness cannot = pleasure, or any other natural property. Therefore, naturalism is false.

A question is closed if it shows ignorance of the meanings of the terms involved to ask. A question is open if it does not display ignorance of those meanings to ask it. Since ‘Goodness = X natural property’ for a naturalist would be synthetic, one could be acquainted with the subject (goodness) but not the predicate (X natural property) and therefore would not necessarily be displaying ignorance of the terms involved to ask the question. Therefore, it will always be an open question whether goodness really is X natural property as we can always meaningfully and intelligibly ask the question ‘is goodness really X natural property?’

Moore’s naturalistic fallacy

Moore developed Hume’s is-ought gap into the naturalistic fallacy: It is a fallacy to assume that something being natural means that it is good.

Naturalists seem to make that assumption. Bentham assumes that it being natural to ultimately desire pleasure means pleasure is good. This commits the naturalistic fallacy.

Moore intended the naturalistic fallacy to attack other forms of non-naturalism too. E.g. divine command theory claims that goodness = being commanded by God. But if God commands something, that only means that God commands something. It doesn’t mean that it is Good. What makes God’s commands good?

Whatever way goodness is proposed to be defined, whether natural things like pleasure or non-natural things like the commands of a God, it seems impossible to actually have a reason for doing so. All definitions of goodness therefore rest on baseless assumption and so commit the naturalistic fallacy.

Moore concluded that we can’t define goodness. We can’t say what goodness is because it is only itself – it is sui generis (unique). This explains why goodness cannot be equated in terms of anything else, as shown by the naturalistic fallacy and open question arguments.

Goodness is like the color yellow. You can’t describe or define yellow, you just know it intuitively when you apprehend it. Similarly, we just know whether an action is good or bad through intuition, i.e., we know it without figuring it out through a process of reasoning.

Moore’s Non-naturalism 

This makes Moore a non-naturalist, the view that goodness is a non-natural property. This goes back to Plato’s theory of forms & the form of the good, which is not a natural thing. Moore didn’t believe in the world of forms, but he did think goodness was real and yet not natural. He drew an analogy. Numbers are real in some way, but they are clearly not natural physical objects. So, there must be more to reality than just the natural. Goodness is real in a similar non-natural form. So, the failure of naturalism is not the end of moral realism.

Moore’s Intuitionism

Intuitionism is the theory that we know what is good/bad right/wrong through intuition, without any process of reasoning.

A strength of intuitionist cognitivism is that it fits with human psychology. Moore argues that when we observe or reflect on a moral action and its consequences, we intuitively know whether it was right or wrong.

G. E. Moore’s meta-ethics is non-naturalist intuitionism. It is a cognitivist theory, claiming ethical language expresses belief about the objective rightness or wrongness of an action.

Intuitionism & moral dis/agreement 

Strength of Moore’s intuitionism: cross-cultural moral agreement

There are a set of core moral principles similar in all societies however, such as prohibitions on stealing and murder. This shows there is some absolutist moral truth that all humans are somehow apprehending.

While there is also moral disagreement, Moore argues this is due to people not articulating their moral views clearly. Pritchard further added that disagreement is caused by people having different levels of practical knowledge about the world and levels of personal moral development.

Weakness: Mackie’s argument from relativity 

Mackie attacks moral realism with an abductive argument. He notes that there is cross-cultural moral disagreement. This does not prove that there are no objective moral properties, no more than people disagreeing about the shape of the earth proves there is no objective shape of the earth.

However, consider the reasons for moral disagreement verses scientific disagreement. The reason for scientific disagreements is access to evidence and ability to make intelligent hypotheses. Mackie argues the reason for moral disagreement is best explained by adherence to different forms of life, i.e., social conditioning.

Mackie accepts that of course he can’t prove that there isn’t some mysterious non-natural moral property influences our moral views. However, his point is we have no reason to think there is, especially when we have the better explanation for our moral views of social conditioning. Intuitionists can attempt to explain moral disagreement in ways that fit their theory, but that does not overcome Mackie’s criticism. Relativism and conditioning is simply a better explanation of moral disagreement than Intuitionism.

People have moral intuitions, but they are better explained by social conditioning than intuition of non-natural properties.

Hume’s non-cognitive moral psychology (theory of motivation)

An argument supporting non-cognitivism against cognitivism is Hume’s theory of motivation. It aims to show that moral judgements (i.e., thinking “X is right/wrong”) cannot be caused by reason.

Moral judgements involve motivation to action. Motivation must involve desire (mental sates which attract or repel our behaviour).

Moral judgements always come after and are joined with emotional approval or disapproval. We have positive or negative emotion towards an action and then judge it good or bad.

Reason does not have control over emotions, so it cannot create moral judgements. In fact, Hume claimed it was the other way around, that reason is “the slave of the passions”. Reason can only create beliefs about how to satisfy/achieve our desired ends.

We have particular emotional associations and feelings due to our socially conditioned preferences and biases. Reason then provides ad hoc rationalisations for our prejudices. Our mind is more like a lawyer than a scientist.

So, desire is the foundational motivator of moral judgements, not reason. Ethical language thus expresses non-cognitive desires.

“Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will” – Hume.

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of reason” – Hume.

P1. Moral judgements are motivating.
P2. Reason & belief are not motivating.
C1. Reason cannot create moral judgements.
C2. Moral judgements express non-cognitive states.

Weakness of non-cognitivism & strength of cognitivism: Aristotelian virtue ethics

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt creates an illustration to show how Hume went too far calling reason a ‘slave’. Emotions are like an elephant and reason is like its rider. The elephant will often just go wherever it likes, dragging the rider along with it. Nonetheless, over the long-term, the rider can control the general direction of the elephant. Similarly, a human’s reason can control their general behaviour despite their emotions, e.g. getting themselves to revise by planning rewards and rest breaks.

Haidt’s point resonates with the insights of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Hume was right that our emotions affect reason and our moral judgements. Aristotle also accepted that our emotions are not under the direct control of reason. Reason does have indirect control, however. Over the long-term we can cultivate habits which control our emotions.

When a person says “X is wrong”, they are partly expressing how they feel, and they feel that way partly due to social conditioning. However, Hume was wrong to leave his analysis there. People also have a degree of rational autonomy. We can rationally control and cultivate our emotional reactions and habits towards flourishing. Then, our moral judgements also expresses cognitions regarding flourishing or what a virtuous person would do.

Emotivism

Ayer’s Emotivism

Hume concluded, and Ayer agreed, that moral judgements are not judgements of reason. The origin of our moral judgements is our feelings. When we call something good or bad, we are expressing how we personally feel about it. We express non-cognitions, like emotional approval or disapproval.

Moore accepted that Hume countered naturalism, but attempted to suggest that ‘goodness’ could still be a non-natural property. Ayer rejects that as unverifiable and thus meaningless.

Ayer also accepted the fact-value distinction implied by Hume’s theory of motivation and is-ought gap.

Ayer thinks we are therefore left with anti-realism. We cannot assert that there are either natural nor non-natural moral properties. So, anti-realism is true. Ethical language expresses emotion, so non-cognitivism is true.

The boo/hurrah theory. Saying ‘X is wrong’ is just saying ‘boo to X’, or just saying X with a really disgusted tone of voice. When we call things good or bad, right or wrong, we are just having an emotional outburst. Saying ‘X is good’ is just saying ‘hurrah to X’.

This fits with the reality of human psychology. When people engage in moral debates, it does seem that they are merely having an emotional conflict. That’s why moral debates are often described as ‘heated’.

Hume’s fork & Ayer’s verificationism

An important pillar of Ayer’s anti-realism and emotivist non-cognitivism is Hume’s fork and its development into the verification principle.

Hume’s fork aims to show that moral judgements cannot be judgements of reason (neither analytic or synthetic).

Hume’s fork claims that there are two types of judgements of reason:

1. Synthetic judgements, only known a posteriori.
2. Analytic judgements, only known a priori.

Ayer’s verification principle expanded this to become the criteria of meaningful cognitive language. A statement is only meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable through experience.

Firstly, ethical statements are not analytic. Analytic statements are true by definition and cannot be denied without contradiction. Denying that ‘a Batchelor is an unmarried man’ is contradictory. Ethical statements can be denied without contradiction. If I deny that ‘stealing is wrong’, there is no apparent contradiction. The concept of ‘stealing’ does not seem contradicted by ‘not wrong’.

Secondly, ethical statements are not synthetic nor empirically verifiable. Moral properties like ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ do not seem to exist in experience. They are not observable. In a supposedly ‘moral’ action, we could list the physical facts about it which we can experience. The so-called ‘good/badness’ of the action cannot be found amongst them.

So, moral judgements are neither analytic nor synthetic (Hume), nor empirically verifiable (Ayer).

Counter:

Neither Hume’s fork nor the verification principle themselves seem analytic as they can be denied without contradiction, but it’s hard to see how either could be inferred from experience. So, they fail their own test. Hume’s fork is not a judgement of reason. The verification principle is meaningless.

However, it is important to note that Ayer did not think his emotivism really needed verificationism. He thought that even if verificationism were proven false, he could still rely on Hume’s motivation argument for non-cognitivism to show that ethical language expressed emotions.

Mackie’s anti-realist arguments

Mackie’s anti-realist arguments are in a stronger position than Hume and Ayer’s because they do not rely on empiricist doctrines like the fork or verification principle.

Mackie thinks that the linguistic approach to meta-ethics was flawed. Ayer’s verification principle and also Moore’s open question argument & naturalistic fallacy were overly focused on linguistic analysis of moral concepts. They wrongly thought linguistic analysis entitled them to draw metaphysical conclusions.

“There are questions of factual rather than conceptual analysis: the problem of what goodness is cannot be settled conclusively or exhaustively by finding out what the word ‘good’ means, or what it is conventionally used to say or to do. Recent philosophy, biased as it has been towards various kinds of linguistic inquiry, has tended to doubt this.” – Mackie.

Mackie instead makes the argument that objective values are actually ‘queer’ and thus incomprehensible.

Metaphysical queerness. As Hume pointed out, there is a connection between moral judgments and motivation. If moral realism were true and moral judgements were somehow reflective of reality, there would have to be objective moral properties which motivate us. Mackie sums this up as that ‘not-to-be-doneness’ would be somehow present in reality. It’s impossible to conceive of what that would involve. This is grounds for thinking there are no objective moral properties.

Epistemological queerness. Even if there were objective moral properties, how could we know them? Moore’s answer that we just have a mysterious faculty of intuition is arguably not an answer because it doesn’t explain how that faculty works.

Evaluation defending moral realism

Mackie’s queerness arguments really only work against non-naturalism, not naturalism.

If we could prove that goodness is pleasure or flourishing, then there would be nothing incomprehensible about moral properties existing, motivating us nor how we come to have knowledge of them. It’s not strange at all that we would be motivated to flourish.

Mackie’s relativity argument claimed social conditioning was the best explanation of our moral views. Virtue ethicists again can respond that while this is often true, humans can cultivate virtues and rational autonomy to indirectly control their emotional reactions. So, we are not solely led by social conditioning or adherence to a form of life. Our moral views can sometimes result from rationally cultivated virtuous habits.

Utilitarians can respond similarly regarding pleasure/happiness.

The Virtue ethicist defence of naturalism and critique of Kant & Mill’s response to Hume

McIntyre points out that in ancient times ethics like Aristotle’s grew organically out of reasoning about the human ends/needs for flourishing inherent to a particular ‘practice’; a form of social/cultural life.

M. Stocker argues that modernity’s transition from community-life to city-life required the development of a more impersonal, legalistic and bureaucratic form morality. McIntyre argues modernity separated morality from its foundation in ‘practice’ and reasoning about ends.

This was a mistake because without its foundation in practice, morality seemed arbitrary and without basis in reality. Hume’s anti-realist arguments then appeared to show moral judgements were separate from reasoning about ends and without a foundation in reason or reality. Hume concluded they merely reflected our socially conditioned emotional associations.

McIntyre argues that Kant, Bentham and Mill responded to Hume in the wrong way, by trying to find a philosophical foundation for moral goodness by itself, instead of just rejecting the separation of it from practice. Their failure led to modern moral thought being taken over by emotivism.

Kant agreed that reasoning about ends is not morality but mere hypothetical imperatives. Moral rightness is indeed separate like Hume said, but Kant argued it actually could be discovered by reason as the categorical imperative. Bentham and Mill were less accepting of Hume’s separation as they attempted to define goodness as a natural property, but their definition still separated morality from practice.

It’s extremely philosophically difficult to find a basis for morality once isolated from practice. A. J. Ayer thought Kant and Mill had failed to overcome Hume’s destruction of objective morality.

The solution proposed by modern virtue ethics revivalists is to return to an Aristotelian understanding of moral concepts. Anscombe argues that “Ought” really functions like the word “need”, such as a machine needs oil in order to run well. For life in general, ‘ought’ is simply ‘the needs of flourishing’. Humans need certain things in order to flourish, to live well.

Philippa Foot concludes there is “no difficulty” in deriving ought from is. Foot’s example: it is a fact that children cannot flourish without help from adults, from which we can derive that adults ‘ought’ to protect children.

Hume and the modern moral thought he influenced want to press the meta-ethical response of why should one flourish, or why is flourishing ‘good’? Hume, Ayer and Moore think that question cannot be answered meaningfully.

However, asking that question is confused. To be a living being is to have a certain function which comes with needs and the potential to flourish if they are met. Nietzsche said that if one doesn’t want to flourish, that’s probably simply a sign that one’s needs are not being met. Asking why flourishing is good is just a sign of not flourishing. There is no extra moral reason for why flourishing is good. Once morality is reabsorbed into human social practice, it no longer looks like a baseless matter of opinion or feeling.

The idea that there needs be some further meta-ethical warrant for morality is the confusion of modernity. Anscombe and Nietzsche argued this impulse of philosophers is a result of the remaining religious influence on our ethical concepts. We want to find an ultimate source of moral justification, like God. Kant and Mill tried to answer that want. They failed to realise that this question or impulse instead required dissolving through sociological analysis of the conditions that led to it.

Cognitive/non-cognitive debate over how ethical language is used

Moore: Cognitivism can account for the way ethical language is used better than non-cognitivism

Moore points out that ethical language appears to involve features like moral reasoning, persuading and disagreeing. These seem to require cognitions. Disagreement requires contrasting truth claims about reality. Non-cognitive states like emotions can conflict, but they cannot ‘disagree’ because they do not represent reality.

People engage in disputes which are ordinarily thought of as disputes about value and have what can sound like rational arguments on either side of what seems like a debate. If ethical language were really just an expression of emotion, that should not be possible.

P1. Disagreement requires contrasting beliefs about reality.
P2. Non-cognitive states like emotions cannot disagree.
P3. Ethical language involves moral disagreement.
C2. Ethical language is cognitive.

Prescriptivism (anti-realist & non-cognitivist)

R. M. Hare invented prescriptivism. He intended it to be an improvement on emotivism. Hare agreed with Ayer that Hume had successfully shown that anti-realism was true. Hare also agreed that non-cognitivism was true. However, Hare was not satisfied with Ayer’s reduction of ethical language completely to emotion. Hare thought that ethical language did indeed express emotion – but also and primarily expressed prescriptions. Prescriptions are like commands or recommendation. For Hare, if someone says ‘stealing is wrong’ that just means ‘don’t steal’. This is still non-cognitive because the statement can’t be true or false.

Hare was influenced by Kant. Kant thought that actions are only morally good if they are universalizable – i.e., if everyone can do them. Hare doesn’t think there is such a thing as good or bad – but he did think Kant was partially right about how ethical language functions. When we say ‘stealing is wrong’ we are intending to universally prescribe that action to everyone. When I say ‘stealing is wrong’, that means ‘don’t steal’ and it means that I’m prescribing that no one should steal.

Hare’s solution to moral disagreement. Hare thought his approach helped to explain the role of reason, logic and disagreement in ethical language, which seem irreducible to emotion. When we make a prescription, however, we do need to use reason and logic to think about whether we would really accept it universally in all cases. Prescriptions can conflict with each other, causing what appears to be moral disagreement.

Hare illustrated with the example of Nazis who thought killing Jews should be universally prescribed. Imagine a Nazi found out they were Jewish. Most would not want to be killed. But then, they do not really accept their own universal prescription. So, Nazis are irrational. This doesn’t mean they are objectively wrong, but it does explain the role of reason, logic and disagreement in ethical language better than Ayer did.

Mackie’s error theory & critique of non-cognitivism

Mackie’s argument for cognitivism. Mackie is an anti-realist. However, he argues people think good/bad objectively exists and so they talk about good/bad as if they did. This makes ethical language cognitive, expressing belief about reality. However, the unusual thing about Mackie’s theory is that he combines cognitivism with anti-realism. So, since there are no objective moral properties, all ethical beliefs are false, a position called error theory.

Ethical terms like ‘good’:

‘are used as if it were the name of a supposed non-natural quality’ – Mackie.

If we were to ask a random person of the street whether they thought it was wrong to kill people they would likely say yes. Imagine if we asked if they believed that was a fact of reality. Mackie thinks they would likely say yes. He concludes that objectivism about values has ‘a firm basis’ in ordinary thought.

Mackie’s argument against the non-cognitivism of Hume, Ayer & Hare. Mackie accepts that emotivism is ‘part of the truth’ because of Hume’s psychology. Ethical language expresses non-cognitions that motivate us. Mackie’s contention is that ethical language also expresses cognitions, making it cognitive.

Mackie illustrates with a bioweapons research scientist in a state of moral perplexity, wondering whether their research is morally justifiable.

“What they want to decide is not whether they really want to do the work, whether it will satisfy their emotions, whether they will have a positive attitude towards it in the long run, or whether the action is one they can happily, sincerely and rationally recommend or prescribe in all relevantly similar cases. What they ultimately want to know is whether this action is ‘wrong in itself’.” – Mackie (my emphasis).

When facing moral dilemmas, we don’t merely seek emotional satisfaction, nor to know whether a prescription about it is one we could rationally universally recommend. What we want to know is the objectively right answer about what we ought/should do.

Mackie concludes that in addition to motivating non-cognitions, ethical language also expresses cognitive beliefs about objective moral properties.

‘ordinary moral judgements include a claim to objectivity, an assumption that there are objective values’- Mackie.

However, since Mackie thinks there are no objective moral properties, all ethical beliefs are false. If someone says “stealing is good”, that’s false because it’s not true that goodness exists. If someone says “stealing is bad”, that’s false because it’s not true that badness exists.

The issue of whether anti-realism might destroy society (Nihilism)

Moral nihilism is the view that because there is no right or wrong, morality is pointless. Anti-realists like Ayer and Hare claim that there are no objective moral values. Many object that this view leads to the moral nihilist conclusion.

The concern arising from moral nihilism is that people might not bother to be moral. If everyone lost their belief in morality, society might struggle to maintain social order. This criticism gained popularity after world war 2 when the details of the holocaust emerged. Foot comments:

“in the face of the news of the concentration camps, I thought, ‘It just can’t be the way Stevenson, Ayer, and Hare say it is, that morality is just the expression of an attitude,’ and the subject haunted me. 

For, fundamentally, there is no way, if one takes this line, that one could imagine oneself saying to a Nazi, ‘but we are right, and you are wrong’ with there being any substance to the statement. 

Morality cannot just be subjective in the way that different attitudes, like some aesthetic ones, or like and dislikes, are subjective. The separation of descriptions from attitudes, or facts from values, that characterized the current moral philosophy had to be bad philosophy” – Philippa Foot.

The issue of anti-realism accounting for moral progress

Moral progress appears to occur. E.g., society used to accept slavery and deny women the vote.

The concept of ‘progress’ relies on an objective standard towards which increasing gains can be made. If moral progress exists, then objective moral values exist. It seems it exists, so it seems objective values exist.

Counter:

However, this criticism begs the question. Anti-realists would deny that there is an objective moral standard and so they would deny that progress has occurred. Certainly moral change has occurred, but to call it progress begs the question regarding the truth of moral realism.

Ayer can be defended with the counter-claim that there is no such thing as actual progress. The fact that women can now vote, for example, Ayer would regard as nothing more than that a sufficient number of people were persuaded to have a certain emotional reaction which was what society happened to require for the law to be changed.

Hare would regard moral progress as the increasing rational coherence of our prescriptions. For example, racism is not universalizable because a racist prescription against another race cannot apply to the speaker or the speakers race. There is ultimately no rational reason to prescribe racism nor to think one’s own race superior to another. Hare would explain the history of moral progress as the gradual erosion of irrational prescriptions and their replacement with rational ones.

Mackie acknowledges that there have been moral reformers who sought to instigate moral progress but argues that this does not come from their somehow having figured out objective moral facts. He instead suggests that ‘progress’ in fact resulting from thinking through the already held moral doctrines in a new way or recommending some new action because consistency of it with previous doctrines was desired. For example, the American constitution claims that all men have inalienable rights, and this was used by Martin Luther King to argue that black people should also have equal rights. So, King was merely expanding already existing doctrines not discovering objective moral progress. Mackie thus thinks our moral views and the changes they undergo originate from what a society happens to value due to contingencies of history and evolution, not some real objective standard within which their change could count as objective progress.