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4. What is moral nihilism and how might one construct a case in favour of moral nihilism?
Answer with reference to A. J. Ayer and J. L. Mackie.

The word Nihilism stems from the Latin word nihil meaning nothing. In this vein, moral
nihilism can be defined as the negative meta-ethical view that nothing is intrinsically immoral as there
are no moral properties or moral facts. Moral nihilism stems from logical positivists who in general
believed that metaphysical subjects such as ethics should be examined in the same rational manner
similar to the sciences. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004)

In Language, Truth and Logic (1936) Ayer argues that moral judgements are not true
because they are neither true not false. On the other hand, in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
(1977) Mackie contends that there no moral truths. In this paper, I will discern the reasoning behind
these claims and argue that a moral nihilist needs to combine components of both non-cognitivists and
cognitivists to make a compelling claim for his stance.

Let us examine the case for nihilism from an emotivists point of view first. Ayer starts off by
rejecting naturalistic philosophies1 leaving only the absolutist view of ethical terms. In the
absolutist view, statements of values are not in any way empirical but only based on a mysterious
intuition. This means that statements of value are inherently unverifiable. However, Ayer shows that
he stands apart from traditional absolutists as he thinks that moral views are pseudo-concepts with no
actual meaning.

The argument can be summarised as follows: Ayer contends that statements of value are
simply expressions of emotions which can be neither true or false and are simply pseudo concepts
as there are no substantial truth conditions to moral statements. Ayer questions the truth-aptness of
moral utterances - that ethical concepts are unanalysable [and the] addition of an ethical symbol
in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content and merely express the feelings of the utterer. For
example, if a person utters that Torturing babies is morally wrong! he means Boo to torturing
babies! and is merely expressing his disapproval. Ayer bases this on the verification principle that
any statement which cannot be verified is strictly meaningless. An example of a verifiable sentence
would be A bird has two legs as it can be proven by empirical evidence. Since we are unable to
verify moral values using empirical evidence as per to the absolutist view we will find these
utterances to be meaningless.

1 Naturalistic philosophies such as utilitarianism and subjectivism were rejected by Ayer.

He believes that the former cannot be reduced to a comparison of empirical facts such as
pleasure or happiness by raising arguing that it is not contradictory to say that some
pleasant things are not good. For the latter, Ayer contends that ethical terms cannot be
simplified to become mere psychological states as it is not contradictory for a person to
say that it is not contradictory for a person to say that he disapproves of something
which he things is good.
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By claiming that all moral statements are not truth-apt and merely expressions of feelings and
sentiments, we can see how this can form the basis of nihilism. By refusing to engage in an
epistemological process of examination or analysis into the actual truth value of any moral statement
which will lead to a value judgement, Ayers undermines moral cognitivism which is an essential
ingredient of moral epistemology; this means that there cannot be moral beliefs or truths, and because
there cannot be justified true moral beliefs, there cannot be moral knowledge. (Tramel, 2017)

However, the cracks in Ayers non-cognitivist approach come to light the Frege-Geach
problem. Essentially, expressivism is unable to take a simple moral sentence, embed it in a complex
one and explain that the meaning of the complex sentence comes from the meaning of the simple one.
By saying that (1)Murder is bad essentially means boo to murder!, the following sentence (2)if
murder is bad then hiring an assassin is bad is meaningless we cannot identify the meaning of the
phrase murder is bad in the second sentence. This comes from the compositionality constraint of
language where the meaning of a sentence comes from its parts for example if the meanings
individual words in the sentence the cat jumps over the dog can be identified, the full meaning of the
sentence thusly. However, if any of the words, such as cat, is meaningless then we are unable to
understand the full meaning of the sentence.

This can be seen more clearly in a Moden Tollens example:

P1: If murder is bad, hiring an assassin is bad
P2: Murder is bad
C: Therefore, hiring an assassin is bad

However, an emotivist would equivocate the assertion that murder is bad with the conative
state of disapproval (boo to murder!) and we will be unable to derive the appropriate conclusion
from the logical inference. Hence, P2 cannot be non-truth-apt and must instead the question must be
about the truth-value of P2.

A non-cognitivist such as Blackburn (1977) might claim respond that we should be able to
distinguish between higher-order and lower-order conative judgements and that P1 is a higher-order
conative judgement as it is a commitment to an expression of disapproval over an involvement of
commitments. However, this is problematic as well as it does not solve the identity of meaning of the
antecedent to P1 which is descriptive and P2 which is normative.

Having seen the limitations that non-cognitivism has in the form of the Frege-Geach problem,
we will look for an alternative meta-ethical point to construct our case for nihilism. We can do this by
examining error theory which is a cognitivist stance.

Mackie (1977) defends the global falsity form of error theory that moral facts do not exist
and moral beliefs and assertions that they exist are false. Unlike Ayer, Mackie is a cognitivist and
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argues that ethical sentences can be truth-apt and the propositions of these ethical sentences refer to
the moral judgements made by people.

Mackie states that there are no such properties or facts and all moral statements are false as
they attempt to predicate properties or describe facts that do not exist. Mackie provides a number of
arguments in favour of his claim such as the argument from queerness and the argument from
relativity. This essay will look into the argument from queerness as it is more generally applicable
and important.

The argument from queerness states that facts identified by moral objectivists are queer in
both a metaphysical and an epistemological sense. Mackie starts off the argument by identifying an
aspect of moral motivation which can be termed as existence internalism - that that a necessary
connection exists between having a certain normative status and motivation. (Darwell, 1983) This
means that by having knowledge of these moral values we would be compelled to fulfil them
irrespective of our psychological states. From this, we can see that if these moral facts and properties
which provide such a motivational force exist they would be queer.

Moral facts are essentially metaphysically queer as their existence and effects cannot be
empirically observed. Mackie states that if there were objective values, then they would be entities or
qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from everything else in the universe. This
problem is further compounded epistemologically when we realise that even if moral facts do exist,
we will not be able to fully discern and understand them as we would need some special faculty of
moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.
Since we are unable to deduce any analytic truth of different moral values our moral
judgements are incorrect even though they attempt to be objective in nature. Since we have reason to
believe that all moral judgements are incorrect, we are not justified in believing any moral judgements
at all.
By disproving the existence of moral values through a lack of empirical evidence and
showing that we have no reason to hold these moral values as we do, Mackie has effectively made a
case for moral nihilism.

However, an objection which can be raised against error theory would be the persistence of
moral discourse despite its fundamental flaws. Some entire discourses such as that of the phlogiston
theory2 have been discarded in prompt fashion after being identified as erroneous. However moral

2 Phlogiston theory postulates that a fire-like element called phlogiston is

contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. This
theory was dominant till 1980 when Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier showed that
combustion requires a gas (oxygen) and does not require phlogiston at all.
Phlogiston theorists were unable to formulate an effective response to this
experiment leading to the overall demise of the theory. (Aaron, 1964)
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utterances continue to receive widespread use which is odd even though they have been identified as
components of a fundamentally failed discourse. (Svoboda, 2011) Even though this oddity does not
refute error theory it provides strong circumstantial evidence against error theory.

Mackie counters this objection by appealing to patterns of objectification that naturalistic

desires define what is good and we are projecting these subjective desires psychopathically onto what
an objective good. (Joyce, 2010) This reasoning for the pattern of objectification can also be found
in the works of existential nihilists such as Jean-Paul Sartre who argued that both religion and
metaphysics are simply results of a fear of death. (Storey, 2011)

Having explained the phenomenon of persistent moral discourse in society, it will then be
possible to reject the existence of mind-independent moral facts through Occams razor. Occams
razor suggests that if there exists multiple explanations for an occurrence the simpler one is more
likely to be true. If our moral practices and beliefs can be explained without appeal to irreducibly
normative properties and facts, a theory that dispenses with such properties and facts will have the
advantage of being in this respect the more ontologically parsimonious theory. (Olsen, 2014) This
means that faced with the two alternatives of queer metaphysical moral facts or moral facts reached
through patterns of objection we should prefer the latter.

Realists might object to a morally nihilist stance by bringing up its practical uselessness.
(Crosby, 1988) It is not useful in the context of our daily life to adhere to a morally nihilistic view as
it will prevent us from taking any practicable action. However, Mackie allows for a more nuanced
stance for the moral nihilist as well as he stressed the logical independence of a first-order and
second-order ethics. A moral nihilist may be an anarchist who rejects the current moral and social
norms, but may also well be a moral fictionalist who recognises the practical use of moral judgements
and that it is useful even though they are systematically false. A moral nihilist does not necessarily
need an internal form of moral motivation to drive his acts but he can instead drive his acts with his
own free will. In the words of Sartre, man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
world - and defines himself afterwards. (Sartre, 1956) With moral nihilism, a person will have the
ability to define his motivations to guide his actions without any metaphysical connotations clouding
his judgements.

Even with these arguments, one problem of error theory would be that it treats all moral
utterances as expressions of false beliefs and thus have difficulty accounting for moral utterances that
seem to be used to express attitudes rather than beliefs. Consider the scenario the relative of a
soldier killed in a military conflict shouts Down with war!. This moral utterance seems to be used to
express a disapproving attitude about war rather than any moral belief about war, because the
utterance has the grammatical form of an imperative rather than an assertion and that it is spoken by
somebody who has an especially strong reason to disapprove of war. (Svoboda, 2011) Error theorists
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must claim that the appearance is misleading and that the relative is actually claiming that war is
wrong. This is implausible due to the grammar and the contextual evidence suggesting that the
utterance is used to express an attitude rather than a belief.

Even though a cognitivists meta-ethical stance is stronger in formulating a case for nihilism
than that of a non-cognitivists, both cases have their own forms of error as pure emotivism and pure
error theorists face their own problems with the Frege-Geach problem and the possibility of moral
utterances being an expression of attitudes for the latter. I propose using a hybridised form of moral
emotivism and error theory to form a stronger case.

An hybridised emotivism-error theory will treat any moral utterance as an expression of a

speakers attitude or an expression of a false belief. According to a hybrid theorist, some but not all
moral utterances are used to express the attitudes of their speakers, and all such utterances are neither
true or false; some but not all moral utterances are used to express the beliefs of speakers, and all such
beliefs are false; and no moral utterance is used to express a true belief of a speaker. (Svoboda, 2011)
A hybrid emotivist-error theorist will then still hold that there are no moral facts that could make
moral utterances true but allows that some moral utterances are used to express attitudes of the
speaker. Like both emotivists and error theorists a hybrid theorist would reject the existence of moral
facts.

What makes a hybridised theory more compelling would be the avoidance of the Frege-Geach
problem. Hybrid theorists can account for that by treating some moral utterances as propositions
rather beliefs in propositions, such as those in the Frege-Geach problem hence avoiding a solution.
Furthermore, a hybridised theory will be able to effectively account for utterances such as Down
with war! by identifying it as an expression of attitude rather than beliefs. By uniting both emotivism
and error theory we can cater to problems which each theory is unable to solve by itself.

A qualm of a hybrid emotivist-error theory would concern questions about its unity.
(Svoboda, 2011) Since this theory combines aspect of both emotivism and error theory it begs the
question as to when and how each aspect of the hybridised theory should be applied. What might be
the principle behind the application of the components? This issue can be resolved by closely
observing the nature of different moral utterances. For example, if that utterance is used to express a
belief then it requires error-theoretic treatment, and vice versa. With this, a hybrid theorist will be able
to effectively apply the emotivist and error-theoretic aspects in principled manner.

Having understood the argument for moral nihilism from both the perspectives of non-
cognitivists and cognitivists, I can conclude that a moral nihilist would have to rely a hybridised form
of both cognitivist and non-cognitivist arguments to create a compelling case for nihilism as the
former lacks an effective answer to the Frege-Geach problem while the latter is unable to account for
moral utterances that is used to express attitudes rather than beliefs.
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