The End of Morality is a book which, presupposing belief in objective norms and values involves normal agents in massive error (hence the position: error theory), discusses the what’s next problem; put basically, this problem comes to deciding on the right way to proceed given the truth of error theory—do we jettison the practice of moral thought and talk, or do we preserve/use it? The papers in this book are specifically aimed at considering the position known as abolitionism—the view that we would be better off turning the page on moral thought and talk all together. Below, I will briefly outline the structure of the book, and comment on where I think the book leaves us dialectically in the debate over abolitionism.

The book is structured in four parts. The first section provides a general motivation for accepting the error theory and abolitionism. These would be good to read as companions to full-length treatments of error theory (like Hinckfuss (1987); J. L. Mackie (1990)). The second and third sections provide a view of the dialectic on the what’s next problem and contain samplings/first appearances of what I think are extremely significant developments in the literature (see especially chs. 6, 7, and 8). The final section takes a look at abolitionism and its prospects for being applied to particular cases. These narrow studies extend the dialectic formed in the second and third sections nicely such that the whole book works together in excellent fashion. I think the final section should also be of interest to anyone working on morality and the public sphere—even if that person is not convinced of the error theory. In general, this book is excellent as a companion to any error theoretic writing and as a stand along piece to those interested in in-house debates amongst error theorists.

A common theme in the book are arguments from history (AFHs), or, equivalently, reflections on the disutility of the institution of morality (see chs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) and are roughly considerations pulled from the historical record and used against the institution of morality. While the dubiousness of this argumentative strategy was pointed out by Jessica Isserow (ch. 8), it is worth reflecting on here. The main point of Isserow’s chapter was to show that the weak role admitted for moral beliefs in historical evils was perhaps not even the main reason those atrocities were carried out; indeed, psychologically forceful factors like religion, ideologies (like that of the Nazis), ignorance, and lack of empathy seemed to play the primary roles. What I want to say in addition to this is that the more basic explanation underlying all of these is our dispositions toward tribalism—we are disposed to believe those who look like us are more worthy (or worthy at all) of respect over and above those who look and believe differently than we do. Indeed, and as is pointed out by Isserow and Caroline West (ch. 11), the flip side of AFHs against retaining morality is that we have strong reason to think it was specifically moral beliefs that drove the reforms against antisemitism, slavery, women’s suffrage, and intolerance. Dispensing with such psychologically forceful language as morality provides to mitigate especially bad manifestations of tribalistic tendencies could be very dangerous.

But, and importantly, it is enough for the abolitionist to show the psychological untenability of retaining moral thought and talk once it is (purportedly) shown to be false (as with Russell Blackford, ch. 4). This is where I think abolitionism is on the best footing. The thing to say here is that the alternatives fare no better than abolitionism, and perhaps loose points against abolitionism. This book witnesses (in ch. 7) a development in Jonas Olson’s (2014) view that we should conserve moral thought and talk; that is, we should carry on believing in morality even though it is false. Bjorn Eriksson and Olson argue we should take up a negotiationist stance: We should be reflective about when we should moralize and how intensive the moralizing should be. This stance seems to grant the abolitionist that moral practices can sometimes be harmful, and we should therefore curb our moralizing. This development, however, seems to make conservationism more untenable in the end. One might think part of believing in the institution of morality is that one be disposed to moralize in run-of-the-mill circumstances in which the folk moralize; but, if negotiationism is to be taken up, then we are left with warring dispositions. On the one hand, we should believe in morality in the regular sense of ‘believe’; on the other hand, we should be ready to dispense with moral thought and talk if it would better serve our (i.e., humanity’s) purposes. In other words, Eriksson and Olson’s view seems to require that we, while believing in morality, maintain a critical distance from the dispositions such a belief would bring about in order to assess whether we should implement moral language into the situation. If we accept negotiationism, then, we will not be in the grip of morality contra what Eriksson and Olson require for the institution of morality to be effective.

But if that is right, and supposing fictionalism runs into sufficiently difficult issues account for the force of moral thought and talk, then we seem to be left with abolitionism. The final thing to comment on is that taking up abolitionism is consistent with replacing the cognitivist, strongly stance independent semantics with another. Joel Marks (ch. 6, as well as in other works) attempts this, but I think the strategy is wrong-headed. His replacing moral talk with desire talk seems to saddle the error theorist with licensing people to act in accord with their baser desires (as I speculated above). An alternative would be to replace the cognitive semantics with an antirealist constructivist or expressivist semantics. If error theory were true, only time would tell if this would be psychologically forceful, but I suspect it has a better shot than aligning all our vaguely moral thought and talk with desires. This, I think, is where the dialectic after The End of Morality rests.

References

Hinckfuss, Ian. 1987. The Moral Society: Its Structure and Effects. Canberra: The Australian National University.

Mackie, J. L. 1990. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin.

Olson, Jonas. 2014. Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

N. D. Cannon, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Philosophy, Division of Arts and Humanities, University of Kent, UK