In section eight of J.L. Mackie’s Inventing Right and Wrong, Mackie dismisses moral objectivism by citing the existence of varying moral codes in different societies.  This essay will summarize Mackie’s relativity argument and his response to a common objection to this argument. I hope to strengthen the common objection he presents.

It’s well known that different societies have very different moral codes. Ancient Sparta famously executed weak babies by way of cliff-tossing. Mackie says that these disparities show it is implausible that an objective morality exists. He explains that while disagreements in scientific conclusions result from inadequate evidence, disagreements in morality cannot result from this. This fact makes it more likely that there are different moralities than any other explanation. These different moralities result from the normal way of life of these societies. The society’s way of life determines the moral code rather than their perceptions of morality determining their way of life. This must be true otherwise there would not be such a large percentage of societies with extremely inadequate moral values.  The two facts that there are different societies with very different moral codes and that these moral codes arise from circumstances strongly suggest that there is no objective morality.

The objection that Mackie includes states that there are objective moral principles that all societies adhere to. These principles applied in different circumstances will provide different moral codes. For example, In sparta it was thought that killing the weak babies would drastically improve overall well being. In the circumstances of a military centric society in ancient greece, an agreeable principle like “Don’t kill unless it results in the most good” could result in babies being rightfully killed.

Mackie’s rebuttal is that if these objective principles exist, moral judgements are still contingent on circumstances. Further, moral judgements are contingent on the application of these principles to the given circumstances. Mackie introduces Hare’s ‘ideals’ here to show that the objective principles do not affect our moral judgements. The argument is that moral judgements depend on intuition instead of a reasonable interpretation of principles. It is implied that Intuition is dependent on circumstances. If this is true, moral rules of different societies have no connection to objectivity which makes the morality of any action completely relative to the context of that action.

To strengthen the ‘principles’ objection I will attempt to show that during the formation of a society, objective principles are considered and moral judgements can be linked to these principles. Sticking with sparta, consider the first weak baby to be thrown off a cliff. It is implausible that the spartans simply thought it seemed right to kill that baby. There was likely deliberation about how the baby would not be able to contribute to society, the resources needed to provide a decent life for the baby, and how everyone would be better off if the baby was dead. This is a moral judgement from a reasonable application of an objective principle in those circumstances. After this first decision, maybe it was intuition that caused people to believe it right to kill weak babies. Mackie is right that most moral judgements are from intuition but he fails to see that intuition is often dependent on an objective principle that was originally applied.

Mackie does well arguing that morality is relative to different circumstances. Objectivists would mostly agree with this but would say that objective moral principles exist and are influential in the moral decisions of all societies. I think that the principles objection is a devastating one because objective principles do shape what any society thinks is right or wrong.