The possible moral worlds of Mackie and MacIntyre

Abstract

We analyze in this article the mais philosophical characteristics of the moral skepticism of Mackie and the moral contextualism of MacIntyre. From the ontological point of view, we claim that Mackie and MacIntyre adopt different ontologies. Mackie takes a physicalist ontology or materialistic and MacIntyre a social and cultural ontology. For this reason, Mackie concludes that moral values are not objective, whereas MacIntyre concludes, on the contrary, that moral values are objetive. From the linguistic point of view, Mackie’s theory of ‘error’ postulates that the use of Western moral language is based on a (false) belief in the objectivity of moral values, whereas MacIntyre’s theory of contemporary moral disagreement proposes, unlike, that the use of moral language in postmodern society is based os a (false) belief in the subjectivity of moral values.