1 The Error in the Error Theory*

ABSTRACT: Moral error theory of the kind defended by J.L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, because the assumption does not contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral judgements and motion judgements. As a New Zealander, my earliest forays into metaethics drew me inexorably towards error theory, that characteristically antipodean view.1 (One might idly speculate that this tendency explains why another New Zealander, Arthur Prior, introduced into philosophical lore the proposition that all New Zealanders ought to be shot!) It seemed to me that John Mackie, a philosopher from ‗across the ditch‘, had got matters right in the notorious first chapter of his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [1977]; when people make moral assertions, they are ordinarily uttering falsehoods, because these assertions mistakenly suppose the instantiation of fantastical moral properties. But I am not any longer an error theorist, and I no longer believ