Difference Between Objectivism And Subjectivism

Dylan Rothanzl
PHIL-101
November 9, 2017
Objectivism vs. Subjectivism Is morality Subjective or Objective? This very question has been argued by philosophers for what seems like ages. Neither side ever proving they’re right or the other wrong. This back and forth battle occurred until John Leslie Mackie, or JL Mackie for short, came in and threw in his two cents. But first, let’s briefly discuss what moral objectivism and subjectivism are. First off, we have moral objectivism. Moral objectivism is moral values above and beyond individual subjective values, desires, and preferences. This basically means that there are certain values that are objectively right and wrong. These values are factual-based and are able to be observed. There are

He makes it clear that he is very against moral objectivism right from the get-go. Mackie believes that there are no such things as goodness, badness, duty, obligation, etc. Most ordinary people, and most philosophers, have believed in some sort of moral objectivism. But Mackie believes they are terribly mistaken. As Mackie says, “Moral subjectivism too could be a first order, normative, view, namely that everyone really ought to do whatever he thinks he should.” (PBF,778). This belief that everyone should do what he/she thinks they should do is known as a first-order moral theory. Even though Mackie admits that ordinary moral language and beliefs imply moral objectivism, he argued that objectivism is in fact false. His argument regarding queerness states that objective values do not exist. He wrote in “The Subjectivity of Values”, that “If there are were objective values, then they would be entities or quantities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe”. (PBF, 784). After reading his argument on queerness, I am able to support his claim of rejecting moral objectivism and supporting an error theory of moral subjectivism. The error theory being Queerness. He targets Plato for his views on objectivism with “Plato’s Forms give a dramatic picture of what objective values should be.” (PBF, 785). Here he expresses that objectivism is

The whole premise of moral objectivism is factual and for someone to come in and say it’s wrong just because he thinks it is, can be and has been disagreed with. Mackie strongly believes that we cannot have knowledge of morality because of moral skepticism, or subjectivism. His belief that each culture has a different level of morality and that they all differ. This is seen as malarkey to many people. Objectivists believe that one culture cannot be more moral than another nor righter than another culture. This belief is very similar to relativism and how morality is good or bad depending on what that person/culture believes is good or bad. Mackie believes that a value is good if it is seen as right within a culture. So if this is true, then the Nazi’s believing they were the superior race and that Jewish people were not is seen as correct. This is proof of how false his theory was since we all know how morally wrong this example is. Another example of this cultural rightness is considering how slavery was seen as a good value within the pre-modern era. The cultural belief of the selling of African Americans for slavery is deemed “good” according to how Mackie see’s subjectivism. Cultural beliefs should be morally right based on how people are treated as well as how other cultures are affected by their beliefs. Not by how if one specific culture deems their