Nihilism

Question 1

what is nihilism?

Answer 1

all positive moral statements are false since there are no moral facts.

Question 2

why prefer nihilism? what are the motivations for it?

Answer 2

captures the advantages of non cognitivism and antirealism
naturalistic (al things do exist in the world)
captures benefits of cognitivism
avoids frege geach problem, because our semantics are just as you would think they would be

Question 3

What feature of nihilism seems less naturalistic?

Answer 3

the claim that moral language is not naturalistic, so how do you give a naturalistic explanation for something that’s not naturalistic

Question 4

What is the disagreement argument for nihilism? (*note, there are three steps)

Answer 4

Step 1: The disagreement argument for relativism
P1: there is vast disagreement about morality (metaphysical thesis)
P2: the disagreement is best explained if there are no objective moral facts (only relative facts about what one’s culture approves of)
C: there are no objective moral facts (only relative facts about what one’s culture approves of)

Step 2: The disagreement argument for non-naturalism (against relativism semantic claims)
P1: Only a commitment to moral non-naturalism makes sense of what people mean when they morally disagree
P2: If only a commitment to moral non-naturalism makes sense of what people mean when they morally disagree then moral thinking and language is non-naturalist
C: moral thought and language is non-naturalist

Step 3:
P1: (from step 1 and step 2) there are no objective moral facts and moral thought and language is non-naturalist
P2: If there are no objective moral facts, and moral thought and language is non-naturalistic, then moral nihilism is true
C: Moral nihilism

Question 5

What does Mackie mean by ‘queerness’?

Answer 5

would morality be too weird to believably be?

Question 6

What is the queerness argument?

Answer 6

P1: Moral properties would be queer (objective, intrinsically and unconditionally prescriptive moral facts that naturally motivate us, would be queer)
P2: If moral properties are queer then there are no moral properties
C: there are no moral properties

Question 7

What is Huemer’s response to Mackie’s queernees argument?

Answer 7

huemer: there are a lot of weird things!
I.e.: morality, time, space, numbers, properties, mental states, physical states, quantum states, the past, the future
but if there are no queer moral properties, where do we get our ideas about them from?

Question 8

What is Mackie’s naturalistic explanation of our moral concepts?

Answer 8

related to error theory— we think that moral beliefs can be understood by the world around us, but we get that wrong, because no moral facts exist.
we get confused about whether the attitudes inside of us are in the world. we feel disgust and think that this disgust must be out of the world