Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977) challenges the idea that moral judgments are objective truths about the world. Mackie argues that moral language mistakenly assumes it describes objective features, making moral judgments true or false. He draws on David Hume's idea that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is," meaning moral rightness or wrongness cannot be derived from factual matters alone.12

Mackie contends that if morality is to be accepted, it must be understood as based on individual desires and feelings, rather than objective facts. This perspective aligns with moral subjectivism, suggesting that right and wrong are invented rather than discovered. Mackie's work critiques theories like R.M. Hare's universal prescriptivism, arguing that it overextends the concept of universalizability and that common moral language might be mistaken in its assumptions.12