In this comment I was going to quote the following from R. M. Hare:
“Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things—there is no difference in the ‘subjective’ concern which people have for things, only in their ‘objective’ value. Now I ask, What is the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds? Can any other answer be given except ‘None whatever’?”
I remember this being quoted in Mackie’s Ethics during my undergraduate degree, and it’s always stuck with me as a powerful argument against moral non-naturalism and a close approximation of my thoughts on moral philosophy and meta-ethics.
But after some Google-Fu I couldn’t actually track down the original quote. Most people think it comes from the Essay Nothing Matters in Hare’s Applications of Moral Philosophy. While this definitely seems to be in the same spirit of the quote, the online scanned pdf version of Nothing Matters that I found doesn’t contain this quote at all. I don’t have access to any of the academic institutions to check other versions of the paper or book.
Maybe I just missed the quote by skimreading too quickly? Are there multiple versions of the article? Is it possible that this is a case of citogenesis? Perhaps Mackie misquoted what R.M. Hare said, or perhaps misattributed it and and it actually came from somewhere else? Maybe it was Mackie’s quote all along?
Help me EA Forum, you’re my only hope! I’m placing a £50 bounty to a charity of your choice for anyone who can find the original source of this quote, in R. M. Hare’s work or otherwise, as long as I can verify it (e.g. a screenshot of the quote if it’s from a journal/book I don’t have access to).
In this comment I was going to quote the following from R. M. Hare:
I remember this being quoted in Mackie’s Ethics during my undergraduate degree, and it’s always stuck with me as a powerful argument against moral non-naturalism and a close approximation of my thoughts on moral philosophy and meta-ethics.
But after some Google-Fu I couldn’t actually track down the original quote. Most people think it comes from the Essay Nothing Matters in Hare’s Applications of Moral Philosophy. While this definitely seems to be in the same spirit of the quote, the online scanned pdf version of Nothing Matters that I found doesn’t contain this quote at all. I don’t have access to any of the academic institutions to check other versions of the paper or book.
Maybe I just missed the quote by skimreading too quickly? Are there multiple versions of the article? Is it possible that this is a case of citogenesis? Perhaps Mackie misquoted what R.M. Hare said, or perhaps misattributed it and and it actually came from somewhere else? Maybe it was Mackie’s quote all along?
Help me EA Forum, you’re my only hope! I’m placing a £50 bounty to a charity of your choice for anyone who can find the original source of this quote, in R. M. Hare’s work or otherwise, as long as I can verify it (e.g. a screenshot of the quote if it’s from a journal/book I don’t have access to).