[lit-ideas] The genius of Mackie
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 16:37:39 EDT
Donal:
"then perhaps Mackie is capable of some headlong logical blunder such as
Dworkin seemingly implies."
No way.
Grice proposed the 1982 Carus lecture to be 'dialogical'. "The idea is to
have Mackie commenting on my comments." Alas, Mackie died in 1981, which
somewhat challenged Grice. "I will have to do without his comments," he
surmised.
----
Grice considered himself (or hisself) a Megarian:
"If it rains, I make love."
------ "We'll make hay when the sun shines, we'll make love when it
rains."
---
Mackie counterargued that a Megarian view of 'if' was "alright' when it
comes to 'indicative' conditionals.
He proposed a subjunctive conditional:
"If my parents had not made love back in the day, this conditional would
have been false."
---- Grice was irritated enough to _burp_ in public.
Cheers.
Speranza
---- for the Swimming Pool Library
From wiki:
"John Leslie Mackie (25 August 1917–12 December 1981) was an Australian
philosopher, originally from Sydney."
but not originally from Oxford. I hate that phrase, 'originally from'.
Surely Mackie's ancestors were originally from Scotland. So there.
----
"He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion,
metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his
views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism."
"He authored six books" -- and then he died.
"His most widely known, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), opens by
boldly stating that "There are no objective values". It goes on to argue
that because of this ethics must be invented, rather than discovered."
----- "I was influenced by that irritation provoked in me when they say
such things as Captain Cook invented, rather than discovered, Australia."
---
"Leslie Mackie was born 25 August 1917 in Sydney."
"His mother, Annie Burnett Duncan, was a schoolteacher,[1] and his father,
Alexander Mackie, was professor of education at the University of Sydney as
well as the principal of the Sydney Teachers College, and was influential
in the educational system of New South Wales.[2]"
His uncle was _not_ famous. (His name was Douglas Mackie).
---
"Mackie graduated from the University of Sydney in 1938 after studying
under John Anderson and received the Wentworth Travelling Fellowship to study
Greats at Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first in 1940."
----- "I recall those years wildy. Oxford was closed for the duration of
the war. Yet we did not really 'have' loads of fun."
---
"During World War II he served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical
Engineers in the Middle East and Italy."
---- "I loved the weather; but of course the Italians were our enemies."
---
"He was professor of philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand
from 1955 to 1959 and at the University of Sydney from 1959 to 1963. In 1963
he moved to the United Kingdom, becoming the inaugural holder of the chair
of philosophy in the University of York, a position he held until 1967
when he was instead elected a fellow of University College, Oxford, where he
served as praelector."
---- "The role of the praelector was to praelect. I did it early in the
morning, which allowed me to philosophise during the rest of the day."
---
"In 1974 he became a fellow of the British Academy. On 12 December 1981 he
died of cancer in Oxford.[2]"
------ Grice had designed the Paul Carus lectures as a tribute to Mackie --
"I hope he may be able to interperse the occasional witty comment." As
things were, this was not possible.
---
"Mackie is said to have been capable of expressing total disagreement in
such a genial way that the person being addressed might mistake the comment
for a compliment.[3]"
-----
"He was particularly good at disagreeing _in French_."
---
"This personal style is exemplified by the following words from the preface
to Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977, p. 3):
“ ...I am nowhere mainly concerned to refute any individual writer. I
believe that all those to whom I have referred, even those with whom I disagree
most strongly, have contributed significantly to our understanding of
ethics: where I have quoted their actual words, it is because they have
presented views or arguments more clearly or more forcefully than I could put
them
myself. ”
"One of Mackie's daughters, Penelope Mackie, also became a philosopher."
"I called her "Penelope" after Homer."
"Penelope Mackie lectured in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham
from 1994 to 2004, and became Head of the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Nottingham in 2007."
"Mackie was most well known for his contributions to the fields of
meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics."
"In meta-ethics, he took a position which relates to that of Geary, that
he called moral skepticism (though, arguably, it would be better termed
"moral nihilism"), arguing against the objective existence of right and wrong
as
intrinsically normative entities on fundamental grounds unsure what kinds
of things such entities would be, if they existed."
(Geary applies this to Memphis).
---
"His perhaps most widely known work,[1] Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong,
bluntly begins with the opening sentence "There are no objective values".
He uses several arguments to support this claim that objective values are
false. He argues that some aspects of moral thought are relative, and that
objective morals require an absurd intrinsic action-guiding feature. Most of
all, he thinks it is very unclear how objective values could supervene on
features of the natural world (see the Argument from Queerness). Fourth, he
thinks it would be difficult to justify our knowledge of "value entities"
or account for any links or consequences they would have. And, finally, he
thinks it is possible to show that even without any objective values, people
would still have reason to firmly believe in them (hence, he claims that
it is possible for people to be mistaken or fooled into believing that
objective values exist). The Times called the book "a lucid discussion of
moral
theory which, although aimed at the general reader, has attracted a good
deal of professional attention."[2]"
----
"Mackie was a supporter of the compatibilistic interpretation of free
will."
"Surely if I don't want any more tea I don't need to drink it."
----
"Concerning religion, he was well known for vigorously defending atheism,
and also arguing that the problem of evil made untenable the main
monotheistic religions (see, for example, Mackie 1982)."
"His criticisms of the free will defence are particularly significant."
"He argued that the idea of human free will is no defense for those who
wish to believe in an omnicompetent being in the face of evil and suffering,
as such a being could have given us both free will and moral perfection,
thus resulting in us choosing the good in every situation. Thus, Mackie's
critique of free will theodicies was based on his support for compatibilism.
In
1955 he published one of his most reprinted articles,[4] "Evil and
Omnipotence", summarizing his view that the simultaneous existence of evil and
an
all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God was "positively irrational".[5]
Mackie's views on this so-called logical problem of evil prompted Alvin
Plantinga to respond with his version of the Free Will Defense."
"In metaphysics, Mackie made significant contributions relating to the
nature of causal relationships, especially regarding conditional statements
describing them (see, for example, Mackie 1974) and the notion of an INUS
condition."
"Upon being given a copy of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene as a
Christmas present,[1] he in 1978 wrote an article in the journal Philosophy
praising the book and discussing how its ideas might be applied to moral
philosophy.[6]"
Oddly Grice received the same book as a Christmas present, "but I never got
to read it -- it bored me. Perhaps Dawkins's style is not _Griceian_
enough."
---
"Philosopher Mary Midgley responded in 1979 with "Gene-Juggling," an
article arguing that The Selfish Gene was about psychological egoism, rather
than evolution.[7] This started a dispute between Mackie, Midgley and Dawkins
that was still ongoing at the time of Mackie's death."
References
Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973), Oxford University Press, ISBN
0-19-824402-9.
--------------- the first account of conversational impliatures of
'non-indicative' conditionals.
The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (1974), Oxford University
Press, ISBN 0-19-824642-0.
Problems from Locke (1976), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824555-6.
Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), Viking Press, ISBN 0-14-013558-8.
---------- discussed at length by Grice, "Conception of Value", Oxford,
1991.
Hume's Moral Theory (1980), Routledge Keegan & Paul, ISBN 0-7100-0525-3.
The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and Against the Existence of God
(1982), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824682-X.
Anthologies
Logic and Knowledge: Selected Papers, Volume I (1985), Oxford University
Press, ISBN 0-19-824679-X.
Persons and Values: Selected Papers, Volume II (1985), Oxford University
Press, ISBN 0-19-824678-1.
[edit] References and further reading^ a b c
McDowell, John. (2004) Mackie, John Leslie (1917–1981), Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography, Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65648
^ a b c Obituary, The Times, December 15, 1981
^ Obituary notice, University College Record, 1982
^ Department of Philosophy, University of Otago
^ Mackie, J. L. (April 1955). "Evil and Omnipotence". Mind 64 (254): 200–
212. doi:10.1093/mind/LXIV.254.200. JSTOR 2251467.
^ Mackie, J. L. (October 1978). "The Law of the Jungle". Philosophy 53
(206): 455–464. doi:10.1017/S0031819100026322. JSTOR 3749875.
^ Midgley, Mary (October 1979). "Gene-Juggling". Philosophy 54 (210): 439–
458. doi:10.1017/S0031819100063488. JSTOR 3751039.
Franklin, James. (2003) Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in
Australia, Macleay Press, ISBN 1-876492-08-2.
Honderich, Ted (ed). (1985) Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L.
Mackie, Routledge Kegan & Paul, ISBN 0-7100-9991-6.
Stegmüller, Wolfgang. (1989) Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie (Bd.
IV, Kapitel II, Teil A. Moralphilosophie ohne Metaphysik; Teil B. Mackies
Wunder des Theismus), Alfred Kröner Verlag, ISBN 3-520-41501-1.
K. Campbell, 'Mackie, J.L.' in A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and
New Zealand
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