Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence

by Jonas Olson

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. In Part I (History), he explores the historical context of the debate, and discusses the moral error theories of David Hume and of some more or less influential twentieth century philosophers, including Axel Hagerstrom, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Robinson. He argues that the early cases for moral error theory are suggestive but that they would have been stronger had they included something like J. L. Mackie's arguments that moral properties and facts are metaphysically queer. Part II (Critique) focuses on these arguments. Olson identifies four queerness arguments, concerning supervenience, knowledge, motivation, and irreducible normativity, and goes on to establish that while the first three are not compelling, the fourth has considerable force, especially when combined with debunking explanations of why we tend to believe
that there are moral properties and facts when in fact there are none. One conclusion of Part II is that a plausible error theory takes the form of an error theory about irreducible normativity. In Part III (Defence), Olson considers challenges according to which that kind of error theory has problematic ramifications regarding hypothetical reasons, epistemic reasons, and deliberation. He ends his discussion with a consideration of the implications of moral error theory for ordinary moral thought and talk, and for normative theorizing.

Genres: Philosophy

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence is an effective summary of the moral error theory debate. I attribute a considerable amount of the work's effectiveness to its structure.

The structure of Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, resembles the plot structure of a typical story. The resemblance is probably unintentional, but it is appreciated.

Olson's 'story' of moral error theory has four parts.

In the first part, Olson consults history and defines moral error theory. This part serves as an introduction to the protagonist of the story, moral error theory.

In the second part, Olson features many prominent criticisms of moral error theory. The criticisms carry considerable force against several prominent moral error theory arguments. This part serves as a build-up to the climax of the story, being the part that prompts readers to wonder about the fate of the protagonist.

In the third part, Olson makes a powerful case for moral error theory by defending moral error theory's most compelling argument against a particularly daunting criticism of moral error theory. This part serves as the climax to the story.

In the fourth part, Olson describes the ramifications of moral error theory. This part details the events which take place after the climax, and thus serves as the ending of the story.

The work features a sense of direction and progression that makes the story moral error theory easy to follow. Because I consider Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence to be a intuitive read, I consider Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence to be an great introduction to moral error theory.

[Konstantin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more familiar I become with the literature the less I like this book. Olson drives himself into a corner by forcing himself to do a reconstruction of Mackie's (kind of bad) argument. Since queerness only targets non-naturalist cognitivist realism, his arguments end up not speaking for error theory as such - in fact, they can be read as good arguments for naturalism or non-cognitivism.

Queerness and Debunking arguments are also famously extremely weak. They beg the question, are really susceptible to companions in guilt, and often contain better arguments within them. To illustrate that last point - Olson's first argument says that the fact that normative and certain disjunctive descriptive properties overlap perfectly means that they are the same property (Hume's Dictum) and yet realists want to insist this is not the case, which is queer, and queer properties do not exist, therefore these properties do not. Why add the entire second half? Why not just say they are the same properties and therefore non-naturalist realism is false? I feel like if we scrapped the whole argument from queerness bit and took the queerness out of the queerness arguments everything would be much tidier.

What is irreducible normativity even supposed to be? What he calls "reducible normativity" is not normative, by almost all accounts of normativity. He becomes a revisionist on hypothetical imperatives and argues that we should read them as purely descriptive, like 5 pages after criticising Finlay for doing the same exact thing for categorical imperatives.