The title which I have chosen for these lectures embodies, as I am sure you will have noticed, an ambiguity of a familiar type, an act-object ambiguity. The title-phrase [The Conception of Value] might refer to the item, whatever it may be, which one conceives, or conceives of, when one entertains the notion of value; again, it might refer to the act, operation, or undertaking in which the entertainment of that notion consists, and of which the conception (or concept) of value, in the first sense, is the distinctive object.

My introduction of this ambiguity was not accidental: for the precise nature of the connection between, on the one hand, the kind of thinking or mental state which is found, at least in primary instances, when we make attributions of value, and, on the other, the kind of item (if any) which serves as the characteristic object of such thinking is a matter which I regard as quite central to a proper study of the notion of value; my concern with it, moreover, is not an idiosyncracy, but has been shared by very many of the philosophers who, throughout the ages, have devoted themselves to this topic. Indeed a full understanding of the relationship between this or that fundamental form of thinking and the item, or class of items, which is, or at least might claim to be, a counterpart in extra-mental reality of that form of thinking seems to me a characteristic end of metaphysical enquiry. So it will not, perhaps, surprise you when I suggest, first that one should be ready to payattention not merely to the special (peculiar) character of the central questions about value but also to their general character, that is, to their place on the map of philosophical studies and their connection with other questions which are also represented in that map; and second that we should be ready, or even eager, if we can, to provide any answers which may initially find favour in our eyes with a suitable metaphysical backing. To do this might be a way, and might even be the only way, to remove the bafflement of certain people (of whom I know several) who are extremely able and highly sophisticated philosophers, particularly in the region of metaphysics, but who say, nevertheless, that they

'really just don't understand ethics'. I suspect that what they are lacking is not (of course) any competence in practical decision-making, but rather a clear picture (if one can be found) of the nature of ethical theorizing and of its proper place in the taxonomy of the enquiries which make up philosophy.

To decide whether and to what extent the kind of global approach which I have in mind would be appropriate in a treatment of fundamental problems about the nature of value, it is obviously desirable to have a reasonably well-defined identification of those problems. To judge from the philosophical literature, prominent among such issues are questions about the objectivity of value (or of values) and questions about the possibility of defending or rebutting scepticism about value (or values); and no sooner has so much been said than it becomes evident that methodological uncertainties arise at the very outset of our investigations. For it is far from clear whether the two sets of questions to which I have just alluded are identical with one another or distinct; are questions about objectivity the same as, or different from, questions about the possible range of scepticism? And if the questions are the same, which way do the identities run? Is the case for scepticism to be equated with the case for objectivity, or with the case against objectivity?I myself, in these lectures, plan to pursue my investigation of the conception of value by addressing myself, in the first instance, to questions about objectivity in this region and to the relation of such questions to questions about scepticism. And since my own pre-reflective leanings are in the direction of some form or other of objectivism, I shall, with at least a faint hope of determining whether these leanings are defensible and (indeed) whether they are coherently expressible, begin (but I hope not end) by considering the ideas of two recent anti-objectivists. Today it is the turn of the late J. L. Mackie;' tomorrow I shall turn to Philippa Foot.?

'There are no objective values' says Mackie (p. 15). Let us try to outline the steps which he takes in order to elucidate and defend this 'bald statement' (as he calls it) of his central thesis concerning the status of Ethics. First of all, he makes it clear that in denying objectivity to values he is not just talking about moral goodness, or moral value (in the strictest sense of that phrase), but it referring to a considerable range of items which could be called "values"; to items which could be 'more loosely called moral values or disvalues, like 'rightness and wrongness, duty, obliga-tion, an action being rotten and contemptible, and so on'; also to an unspecified range of non-moral values, 'notably aesthetic ones, beauty and various kinds of artistic merit.

He suggests that, so far as objectivity is concerned, 'much the same considerations apply to aesthetic and to moral values, and there would be at least some initial implausibility in a view which gave the one a different status from the other'. I find myself in some uncertainty at this point about the extent of the range of values with the status of

' U. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, and New York: Penguin Books, 1977), esp. ch. 1. All the quotations from this book were taken without change, with one exception: when quoting from Mackie's p. 17 (p. 31 below), Grice underlined 'not'.)

2 [Especially 'Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives' in Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosoph:

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).which Mackie is concerned, and perhaps partly in consequence of this uncertainty I am not sure whether his suggestion is that, so far as relates to objectivity, it is implausible not to assign the same status to moral and to aesthetic values, or whether it is the seemingly much stronger suggestion that, so far as relates to objectivity, plausibility calls for the assignment of the same status to all values. I shall return to this question.

Mackie envisages three very different reactions to his initial 'bald statement': that of those who see it as false, pernicious, and a threat to morality; that of those who see it as a trivial truth hardly worth mentioning or arguing for; and finally that of those who regard it as meaningless or empty', as raising no real issue. Before going further into his elaboration and defence of his anti-objectivist thesis, I shall find it convenient to touch briefly on his treatment of the last of these reactions. Mackie (pp. 21-2) associates this reaction with R. M. Hare, who claimed not to understand what is meant by "the objectivity of values" and not to have met anyone who does. Hare's position is (or was) that there is a perfectly familiar activity or state called "thinking that some act is wrong" to which subjectivists and objectivists are both alluding, though the subjectivist calls this state "an attitude of disapproval" while the objectivist calls it "a moral intuition"; these are just different names for the same kind of thing and neither can be shown to be preferable to the other. As I understand Mackie's understanding of Hare, this stand-off is ensured by the fact that the subjectivist has at his disposal a counterpart move within his own theory for every move which the objectivist may try to make in order to provide a distinguishing, and justifying, mark for his view of values as objective. The objectivist, for example, may urge that if one person declares eating meat to be wrong and another declares it to be not wrong, they are, both in reality and on his theory, contradicting each other: to which the subjectivist may retort that though on some subjectivist accountsthey cannot, perhaps, be said to be contradicting each other, they can be said to be negating (or disagreeing with) one another: if, for example, one (A) is expressing or reporting the presence of disapproval of meat-eating in himself (A), and the other (B) its absence in himself (B), this would be a case of disagreement or negation; and who is to say that contradiction rather than "negation" is what the facts demand? Again, suppose the objectivist claims, with respect to the persons A and B, one of whom thinks meat-eating wrong and the other of whom thinks it not wrong, that he alone (not the subjectivist) is in a position to assert (as we should wish to be able to assert) that one of them has to be wrong; Hare's subjectivist, it seems, replies as follows:

1. Someone (x) thinks that A judges wrongly that meat-eating is wrong
   = x disapproves A's judgement that meat-eating is
   wrong
   = x disapproves A's disapproval of meat-eating = x non-disapproves meat-eating
   (→3
2. Someone x thinks that B judges wrongly that meat-eating is not wrong
   = x disapproves B's judgement that meat-eating is
   not wrong
   = x disapproves B's non-disapproval of meat-eating = x disapproves of meat-eating (→)
3. Any person x must either disapprove or non-disapprove of meat-eating [disapproval might be either present or absent in him]. So,

3 [The arrow appears to be Grice's shorthand way of saying that Hare's subjectivist could hold all the above assertions to have the same force, or that some are successively weaker than their predecessors. No matter what the subjectivist holds on this point, the move from (1), (2), (3), to (4) is invalid.]

* [Grice took full advantage of the convention of parentheses and apparently used square brackets for his more important parenthetical remarks.]4. Any person x must judge that either A or B judges wrongly.

Hare adds the following further consideration (quoted by Mackie):

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 ir hem 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 answer be given except 'None whatever'?

Mackie seems to me not to handle very well this attempt at the dissolution of debates about objectivity. He concentrates on the final invocation of the indistinguishability of the two worlds, the one with and the one without objective values; and he makes three points against Hare. His first comment is that Hare's appeal to the two allegedly indistinguishable worlds does not prove what Hare wants it to prove; all that it does is to underline the point (made by Mackie himself) that it is necessary to distinguish between first-order and second-order ethics, and that the judgements or other deliverances which fall within first-order ethics may be maintained quite independently of any judgement for or against the objectivity of values, which will fall within second-order ethics; it does not show, as Hare would like it to, the emptiness or undecidability of such questions about objectivity. That such questions are not empty is, according to Mackie, indicated by his two further comments; first, that were beliefs in the objectivity of values admissible, they would provide us with a justificatory backing for our valuations, which we shall otherwise be without; and second, that were the world stocked with objective values, we would have available to us a seemingly simple way of acquiring or changing our directions of concern; one could simply let the realities of the realm of values influence one's attitudes, by 'lettingone's thinking be controlled by how things were'. Hare's failure to allow for such considerations as these is laid by Mackie at the door of Hare's "positivism", which is comparable with that of a Berkeleian who insists that appearances might be just as they are whether or not a material world lies behind them (or under them).

I am unimpressed. Mackie's first point relies crucially on a deployment of a distinction between first- and second-order ethics which is a central part of this theoretical armament, but whose nature and range of legitimate employment I find exceedingly obscure. I shall postpone further comment until I return to this element in Mackie's apparatus. As for Mackie's other points, "positivism" is, I agree, a bad word, and accusatory applications of it are good for an unreflective giggle. But I suspect that many would regard an unverifiable backing for the propriety of our concerns as being little better than no backing at all.

And while it might be held that objective values, should they exist, might exercise an influence on our subjective states, it is by no means clear to me that this is an idea which an objectivist would, or even should, regard with favour. Mackie seems to me, moreover, to have missed the real weakness in Hare's argument (at least, as presented by Mackie). The execution of the second stage of Hare's

"duplication procedure' relies essentially, but not quite explicitly, on the idea that with regard to any particular

"content" , anyone must either disapprove @ or not disapprove . This is indeed, as Hare says, a tautology, but unfortunately it does not entail the premiss which he needs so that his argument will go through; that premiss is that for any @, anyone either has an attitude of disapproval with respect to @ or an attitude of non-

disapproval with respect to . This is not a tautology, since absence of disapproval only amounts to an attitude of non-disapproval if some further condition is also fulfilled, e.g. that the person concerned has considered the matter.The upshot of this discussion is that I am prepared to concede that Mackie is right, though not for the right reasons, when he claims that Hare's attempt to establish that there is no real issue between objectivists and their opponents fails. To make this concession, however, is to condemn only Hare's attempt to show that there is no real issue; I remain perfectly free, should further argument point that way, to revive a "dissolutionist" position in a new or modified form. I turn now to the task of trying to identify more precisely the thesis about which objectivists and anti-objectivists are to be supposed to disagree; and I shall start by trying to get clear about what Mackie regards as the thesis which, as an anti-objectivist, he is concerned to maintain. First of all, it is an important part of Mackie's position to uphold the existence of a distinction between first-order and second-order topics (questions, ethical judgements) and to claim that, though both first-order and second-order questions may fall within the province of ethics, his anti-objectivist thesis, like all questions about the status of ethics, is of a second-order rather than a first-order kind. First-order ethical judgements are said to include both such items as evaluative comments about particular actions, and also broad general principles, like the principle that everyone should strive for the general happiness or that everyone should look after himself. By contrast, 'a second-order statement would say what is going on when someone makes a first-order statement, in particular whether such a statement expresses a discovery or a decision, or it may make some point about how we think and reason about moral matters, or put forward a view about the meanings of various ethical terms' (p. 9).

Mackie holds there to be a considerable measure of independence between the two realms (first-order and second-order); in particular, "moral scepticism" may belong to either of the two realms and 'one could be a second-order moral sceptic without being a first-order one, or again the other way round. A man could hold strongmoral

views, and indeed ones whose content was thoroughly conventional, while believing that they were simply attitudes and policies with regard to conduct that he and other people held. Conversely, a man could reject all established morality while believing it to be an objective truth that it was evil and corrupt' (p. 16).

A second salient feature of Mackie's version of anti-objectivism (or moral scepticism) is that it is a negative thesis. 'It says that there do not exist entities or relations of a certain kind, objective values or requirements, which many people have believed to exist' (p. 17). On some views which have been called objectivist, an objectivist position, despite its positive guise, would turn out to be intelligible only as the denial of some position which would bear the label of "subjectivist" , e.g. as the denial of the contention

that value statements are reducible to, or really amount to, the expression of certain attitudes like approval or

disapproval. On such an interpretation, of the pair of terms,

"objectivism"

and "subjectivism" (or

"non-

objectivism", if you like), it would be the latter term which would be, perhaps despite a negative garb, what used to be called in Oxford (with typical artless sexism) the "trouser-word". But, for Mackie, "objectivist" is not a crypto-negative term. A third salient feature is closely related to the foregoing; the assertion or denial of objectivism is not, like some second-order ethical theses, a semantic thesis (about the meaning of value terms or the character of value concepts), nor is it a logical thesis (e.g. about the structure of certain types of argument), but it is an ontological thesis; it asserts (or denies) the existence of certain items in the world of reality. Fourth and last, since Mackie's moral scepticism is proclaimed by him not to be a thesis about the meaning of what moral judgements or value statements assert, but rather about the non-presence of certain items in the real world, it seems to be open to him to hold that the real existence of values is implied by, or claimed in, what ordinary people think and say, but is nevertheless notin fact a feature of the world, with the result that the valuations spoken or thought by ordinary people are systematically and comprehensively false. This is in fact Mackie's position; his view is what he calls an "error-view": 'I conclude, then, that ordinary moral judgements include a claim to objectivity, an assumption that there are objective values in just the sense in which I am concerned to deny this' (p. 35). He compares his position with regard to values with that adopted by Boyle and Locke with regard to colours. The suggestion is (I take it) that Boyle and Locke regarded it as a false, vulgar belief that things in the real world possess such qualities as colour; real things do indeed possess certain dispositions to give us sensations of colour, and also possess certain primary qualities (of shape, size, etc.) which are the foundations of these dispositions. But neither of these types of item, which provide explanations for our sensations of colour, is to be identified with particular colours, or colour; indeed, nothing is to be identified with a particular colour. And the situation with values is analogous.

This leaves us with two questions calling for answers:

(1) Why does Mackie hold that claims to objectivity are incorporated in ordinary value judgements? (2) Why does he hold that these claims are false? With regard to the first question, one should perhaps first produce a bit of preliminary nit-picking. Mackie himself wants to hold that a claim to objectivity is incorporated in the ordinary value judgement; such a claim is therefore presumably part of the meaning of such value judgements (or the sentences in which they are expressed); and it does not seem to be, or to be regarded by Mackie as being, a platitude that such a claim is included. Mackie cannot therefore consistently assert that his anti-objectivism is not a thesis about the meaning of value averrals; the most he can claim is that though it contains a thesis about meaning, it is not restricted to a thesis about meaning. More importantly, his view that a claim to objectivity is incorporated in anordinary value judgement seems to rest, perhaps somewhat insecurely, on his suggestion (pp. 32-4) that there are two leading alternatives to the supposition that it is the function of ordinary value judgements to introduce objective values into discourse about conduct and action: non-cognitivism, which (broadly speaking) characterizes value averrals not as statements but rather as expressions of feelings, wishes, decisions, or attitudes; and naturalism, which treats them as making statements about features which are objects of actual or possible desires. Both analyses leave out, and are thought by the ordinary user of moral language to leave out, in one way or another 'the apparent authority of ethics'. The ordinary man's discomfort is relieved only if he is allowed to raise such questions as 'whether this course of action would be wrong in itself. Something like this is the everyday objectivist concept of which talk about non-natural qualities is a philosopher's reconstruction' (p. 34).

Mackie has two arguments, or bundles of argument, on which he relies to support his thesis that the objectivist elements, which according to him are embedded in ordinary value judgements, and in consequence the value judgements which embed them, are false. He calls these arguments the argument from relativity and the argument from queerness, and considers the second more important than the first. The premiss of the argument from relativity is the familiar range of differences between moral codes from one society to another, from one period to another, and from one group or class to another within a complex community. That there exist these divergences is, according to Mackie, just a fact of anthropology which does not directly support any ethical conclusion, either first-order or second-order. But it may provide indirect support for such conclusions; Mackie suggests that it is more plausible to suppose that moral beliefs reflect ways of life than the other way around: people (in general) approve of monogamy because they live monogamously, rather thanlive monogamously because they approve of monogamy.

This makes it easier to explain the divergences actually found as being the product of different ways of life than as being in one way or another distorted perceptions of objective values. The counter-suggestion that it is open to the objectivist to regard the divergent beliefs as derivative, as the outcome of the operation of a single set of agreed-upon, very general principles on diverse circumstantial assumptions, is dismissed on the grounds that often the divergent beliefs do not seem to be arrived at by derivation from general principles, but seem rather to arise from

'moral sense' or 'intuition'.

The second argument, the 'argument from queerness' consists in an elaboration, along not wholly unfamiliar lines, of the contention that the objectivist, in order to sustain his position, is committed to 'postulating value-entities and value-features of quite a different order from anything with which we are acquainted' and also to attributing to ourselves, in order to render these entities and features accessible to knowledge, a special faculty of moral intuition, a faculty utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing anything else. In this connection he focuses particularly on the so-called relation of supervenience, which has to be invoked in order to account for the connection of non-natural features with natural features, and the dependence of non-natural features upon natural features. The presence of super-venience in particular cases involves the application of a special sort of "because"; 'but just what in the world is signified by this "because"?'

Before I try to estimate the merits and demerits of Mackie's position and of the arguments by which he seeks to support it, there seem to me to be two directions of enquiry which are important in themselves, and which could be conveniently attended to at this point, particularly as consideration of them might help to give shape to an evaluation of Mackie. First of all, there are (as Mackieobserves) several different possible interpretations of the notion of objectivity, most of them mentioned by him at least in passing, but not all of them ideas which he is concerned to develop or apply. I think it might be useful to enquire what kind or degree of unity, if any, exists between these different readings of the notion of objectivity.

Second, I find myself in considerable uncertainty about the connection or lack of connection between attributions (or denials) of objectivity and the adoption (or rejection) of scepticism in one or other of its forms. Does scepticism reside in the camp of the non-objectivist (e.g. Mackie) or in that of the objectivist, or (perhaps) sometimes in one and sometimes in the other?

As regards the notion of objectivity, we have first the interpretation which seems to be the one singled out by Mackie, according to which to ascribe objectivity to a class or category of items is to assert their membership in the company of things which make up reality, their presence in the furniture of the world. We might call this sort of objectivity, metaphysical objectivity, and it is the kind of objectivity most commonly supposed to be claimed by realists for whatever it may be that they are realists about.

A main trouble with this kind of objectivity is the difficulty in seeing what it is that the objectivist could be claiming; whether, for example, in attributing objectivity to numbers or to material things he is doing anything more than shouting and banging the table as he says 'numbers exist' or 'material things are real' If the proposition that numbers exist is a consequence of the proposition that there is a number between three and five, what is the objectivist asserting that anyone would care to deny? That numbers (or values) do not just exist, they really exist?

And what does that mean? To escape this quandary, it is not uncommon to take the course which Mackie rejects, namely, to understand 'values (or numbers) are objective' as really negative in character, as a denial of the suggestion that values (or numbers) are reducible, by means of one oranother of the possible varieties of reduction, to members of some class of items which are not values (or numbers), to (for example) natural features which find favour, or to classes. Or, maybe, not any and every form of reducibility would be incompatible with objectivity, but only the kind of reducibility whose direction is to states of mind, attitudes, or appearances, to subjective items like approvals or seeming valuable. An objectivist would now be a resister, an "anti-dissolutionist", one who seeks to block certain moves to reach a theoretical simplification or economy with regard to the constituents of the world. The objectivist's prime opponent may however be a dissolu-tionist not in this commodious sense, but in a different and perhaps even more commodious sense. This opponent may be one who seeks not to dissolve the target notion (value, number, material thing, or whatever) into some one or more different and favoured items or categories of item, but rather, in one or other of a multitude of diverse ways, to dissolve the target notion altogether, to dissolve it into nothing; he may be a nihilistic dissolutionist. He may suggest that belief in the application of the target notion is a mistake, one which characteristically or inevitably grips the unschooled mind; or that such beliefs can claim only some relativized version of truth (like truth relative to a set of assumptions, or to a set of standards), not absolute truth. Mackie himself allows to some value judgements

'truth relative to standards', even though by implication he seems to deny to them "absolute" truth [whatever the ordinary man may think]. Again, the anti-objectivists may wish to suggest not that attributions of the target notion are mistakes but rather that they are inventions, or perhaps myths (that is to say, inventions which are backed by practical motivation, perhaps derived from the utility of such inventions towards the organization of some body of material; in the case of values (perhaps) the body of material might be rules or principles of conduct). As myths (or as the stuff of which myths are made) they might havefictive reality, or be "as if" real, without possessing reality proper. Or again, the target notion might be held by the anti-objectivist to be a construct (or a construction:

though possessing (or belonging to) reality, values might be held to lack (or fail to inhabit) primary or original reality; they would belong to an extension of reality provided by us. By contrast, an objectivist about values would attribute to them primary or original reality. [I should say at this point that in my view such ideas as are now being raised, that is, distinctions between "as if" or fictive entities, real but constructed entities, and primary or original reality, are among the most important and also the most difficult problems of metaphysics. The obscurity in this area is evidenced by the fact that constructed (non-original) reality might be conceived by some as possessing objectivity and by others as failing to possess objectivity; for some, deficiency in objectivity precludes truth (at least unqualified truth); for others, value claims might be true (in some cases) even though values (as constructed items) lack objectivity.]

It might seem that the wheel, in turning, has now reached the point from which its turning began; for the notion of primitive (unconstructed) reality might be regarded as the same notion as the hazy notion of "out-thereness" or of "being really real" which typified the metaphysical objectivist. It might also seem that the new

'interpretation' of objectivity is scarcely if at all less hazy than the earlier one. In an attempt to dispel the mists a little, one might offer the notion of causal efficacy as an index of metaphysical objectivity. Items might be accorded the ribbon of metaphysical objectivity just in case they were capable of acting upon other items, and attributes or features might be regarded as objective just in so far as they were attributes or features in virtue of the possession of which one item would causally influence another, in so far as they helped to explain or account for the operation of such causal influences. A special case of the fulfilment ofthis condition for objectivity would, in my view, be the capacity, possessed by some objects and some of their attributes, for being perceived, or exercising causal influence on a percipient qua percipient. Now the idea of connecting objectivity with causal efficacy seems to me one which has considerable intuitive appeal, indeed much the same kind of appeal as that which may have sustained Dr Johnson in his violent and protracted, though vicarious, assault on Bishop Berkeley. The adequacy, however, of this criterion of objectivity would be seriously, if not fatally, impaired should it turn out that the distinction between what is primitive and what is constructed applies within the scope of causal efficacy—if, that is to say, causal efficacy itself were to be sometimes primitive and sometimes constructed. It is my suspicion that this would indeed turn out to be the case. There would then, perhaps, be no quick recognition-test for objectivity; there would be no substitute for getting down to work and building the theory or system within which the target notion would have to be represented, and seeing whether it, or its representation, does or does not occupy in that theory an appropriate position which will qualify it as objective.

On the approach just considered, then, decisions about the objectivity of a given notion would involve the examination and, if necessary, a partial construction of a theory or system in which that notion (or a counterpart thereof) appears, to see whether within such a system the notion in question (or its counterpart) satisfies a certain condition. The operation of such a decision-procedure would be torpedoed if the requisite theory or system could not be constructed, if the target concept were not theory-amenable. The merits of an allegation that a given notion was not theory-amenable might depend a good deal on what kind of a theory or system was deemed to be appropriate; it would be improper (taking heed of Aristotle) to expect a moralist to furnish a system which allowed for the kind of demonstration appropriate to mathematics.But one kind of anti-objectivist (who might also be a sceptic) might claim that for some notions no kind of systematization was available; in this sense, perhaps, values might not be objective. It may be (as I think my colleague Hans Sluga has argued) that Wittgenstein was both sceptical and anti-objectivist with regard to sensa-tions. In this sense of objectivist, an objectivist would only have to believe in theory-amenability; he would not have to believe in the satisfaction, by his target notion, of any further condition within the appropriate systematization.

One further interpretation of objectivity noted by Mackie is one which I shall not pursue today. It connects objectivity with (so-called) categorical imperatives as distinct from hypothetical imperatives, and with the (alleged) automatic reason-giving force of some valuations.

Since this idea is closely related to Miss Foot's theories, I shall defer consideration of it.

I have listed a number of different versions of the idea of objectivity, and have tried to do so in a way which exhibits connections between them, so that the different versions look somewhat tidier than a mere heap. But many of the connections seem to me fairly loose [*such-and-such a notion might be taken as an interpretation of so-and-so'], and I see little reason to suppose many tight, logical connections between one and another version of objec-tivity.

So much for the panoply of possible interpretations of the notion of objectivity. I turn now to the second of the general directions of enquiry with regard to which I expressed a desire for enlightenment. How is objectivity related to scepticism? Speaking generally, I would incline towards the idea that scepticism consists in doubting or denying something which either is a received opinion, or else, at least on the face of it, to some degree deserves to be a received opinion. In the present context we are of course concerned only with philosophical scepticism; and, without any claim to originality, I would suggest that philosophicalsceptics characteristically call in question some highly general class of entity, attribute, or kind of proposition; what they question are categories, or what, if we took ordinary language as our guide, would be categories. To adduce more seeming platitudes, the objectivist is, compared with the anti-objectivist, a metaphysical infla-tionist; there are more things in his heaven and earth than an anti-objectivist Horatio would allow himself to dream of. And so, it is standardly thought, it is Horatio who is the sceptic and the objectivist who is the target of scepticism; and (often Horatio remedies his own initial scepticism by

'reducing' the suspect items to their appearances or semblances: he takes the phenomenalist cure. But here the issue becomes more complex than is ordinarily supposed: for there are to my mind not less than two forms of scepticism, which I will call "Whether?" scepticism and

"Why?" scepticism. It may be true that the run-of-the-mill objectivist, on account of his inflationary tendencies, provokes "Whether?" scepticism, and that the sceptic who seeks to remedy his own initial scepticism by taking a dose of phenomenalism is not himself open to "Whether?" scepticism. But it may also be true that the phenomenalist is a proper target for "Why?" scepticism; for he, has left himself with no way of explaining the phenomena into which he has dissolved the entities or attributes dear to the objectivist. And it may be that the objectivist, if only his favoured entities or attributes were admissible and accessible to knowledge, would be in a position to explain the phenomena; and, further, that this capability would be unaffected by the question whether the phenomena are related to possible states of the world (like sensible appearances) or to possible action (like approvals). If only he could be allowed to start, the objectivist could (under one or another interpretation) 'explain' in the one area why it seems that so and so is the case, and in the other why do so and so (eg. why pay debts).

The foregoing message, that both the true-blue, con-servative, and inflationary objectivist and the red, radical, and deflationary phenomenalist or subjectivist run into a pack of sceptical trouble, of one kind or another, and that more delicate and refined footwork is needed seems to me to be the front-page news in the work of Kant. It also seems to me that Mackie, by being wedded to if not rooted in the apparatus of empiricism, has cut himself off from this lesson. Which is a pity.

However, I must move to somewhat less impressionistic comments on Mackie's position. These comments will fall under three heads:

1. The alleged commitment of 'vulgar valuers', in their valuations, to claims to objectivity.
2. The separation of value judgements into orders, with the assignment to the second order of questions or claims about the status of ethics; and the remedi-ability of an apparent incoherence in Mackie.
3. The alleged falsity of claims of objectivity.

I should say at once that though I think that the considerations which I am about to mention show that something has gone wrong (perhaps that more than one thing has gone wrong) in Mackie's account, the issues raised are so intricate, and so much bound up with (so far as I know) unsolved problems in metaphysics and semantics, that I simply do not know what prospects there might be for refurbishing Mackie's position.

1. It seems to me to be by no means as easy as Mackie seems to think to establish that the 'vulgar valuer', in his valuations, is committed to the objectivity of value(s). It is not even clear to me what kind of fact would be needed to establish such a commitment. Perhaps if the vulgar valuer, when making a valuation, (say) that stealing is wrong, were to say to himself "and by "wrong" I mean objectively wrong', that would be sufficient (at least if he added a specification of the meaning of "objective"). But nobody, not even Mackie would suppose the vulgar valuer to dothat. Mackie relies, in fact, on the alleged repugnance to the valuer of the two main rivals to an objectivist thesis about value. But even if this were sufficient to show that the vulgar valuer believes in an objectivist thesis about value, it would not be sufficient to show that an objectivist interpretation is built into what he means when he judges that stealing is wrong. There are other ways of arguing that a speaker is committed to an interpretation, for example, that he has it subconsciously (or unconsciously) in mind, or that what he says is only defensible on that interpretation. But the first direction seems not to be plausible in the present context, and Mackie is debarred from the second by the fact that he holds that what the vulgar valuer says or thinks is not defensible anyway.

To illustrate the fiendish difficulties which may arise in this region, I shall give, in relation to the valuation that stealing is wrong, four different interpretative supposi-tions-each of which would, I think, have some degree of philosophical appeal-and I shall add in each case an estimate of the impact of the supposition on the assignment of truth value to the valuation.

1. There is a feature W which is objective but provably vacuous of application; a vulgar valuer, when he uses "wrong", is ascribing W. Conclusion: vulgar valuation 'stealing is wrong' invariably false.
2. A vulgar valuer thinks (wrongly) that there is a particular feature W which is objective, and when he uses "wrong" he intends to ascribe this feature, even though in fact there is no such feature. Conclusion: obscure, with choice lying between false, neither true nor false but a miscue, and meaningless (non-significant).
3. A vulgar valuer is uncommitted about what feature "wrong" signifies; he is ascribing whatever feature it should in the end turn out to be that "wrong" signifies. Conclusion: assignment of truth value must await the researches of the semantic analyst.(d) A vulgar valuer is uncommitted about what feature "wrong" signifies; truth value is assigned in advance of analysis by vulgar methods, and such assignment limits the freedom of the semantic analyst.

   Conclusion: truth value assigned (as stated) by vulgar methods.

   2. The idea, to which Mackie subscribes, of separating valuations into orders as a step towards the elucidation of an intuitive distinction between "substantive" and "formal" questions and theses in ethics plainly has considerable appeal; it seems by no means unpromising to regard

   "substantive" theses about values as being first-order valuations (statements), and to regard "formal" theses in ethics, like theses about the logic of value, or the meaning of value terms, as being a sub-class of second-order theses, and to regard theses about the status of ethics as also falling within this subclass—to treat them, that is to say, as theses about first-order valuations. [Such second-order theses, of course, though necessarily about valuations, may or again may not themselves be valuations.] But Mackie's deployment of this idea plainly runs into trouble. For according to Mackie, vulgar valuations incorporate or entail claims to objectivity; claims to objectivity, according to him, since they fall within, or imply theses belonging to, the class of claims about the status of ethics, are second-order claims; and so, since (presumably) what incorporates or entails a second-order thesis is itself a thesis of not lower than second-order, vulgar valuations are of at least second-order. But vulgar valuations, as paradigmatic examples of substantive value theses, cannot but belong to the first order, which is absurd. Now I can suggest an explanation for the appearance on the scene of this incoherence. As I mentioned earlier, among the possible versions of the notion of objectivity are what I called a positive version and a negative version. The positive version, that to attribute objectivity to some item is to proclaim that itemto 'belong to the furniture of the world', is firmly declared by Mackie to be his version; and it is, as I have remarked, obscure enough for it to be possible (who knows?) for attributions of objectivity to belong to the first order. The negative version, that to attribute objectivity to something is to deny that statements about that thing are in this or that way eliminable or "reducible",

   , is plainly of second (or

   higher) order; and despite his forthright assurances, Mackie may have wobbled between these two versions.

   But to explain is neither to justify nor to remedy: and I have the uneasy feeling that Mackie's troubles have a deeper source than unclarities about application of the notion of order. His "error-view" about value has an Epimenidean ring; it looks a bit as if he may be supposing vulgar valuations to say of themselves that the value which they attribute to some item or items is objective; and I feel that it may be that such self-reference, though less dramatic, is no less vitiating than would be saying of themselves that they are false. It is true that Mackie regards vulgar valuations as being, in fact, comprehensively false; but it is evident that he expects and wants that falsity to spring from the general inapplicability of the attribute being ascribed by such valuations to themselves, not from a special illegitimacy attending a valuation's ascription of the attribute to itself.

   3. I find myself quite unconvinced (indeed unmoved) by the arguments which Mackie offers to support his claim that values are not objective or (should one rather say?) that there are no objective values. The first argument from relativity he regards as of lesser importance than, and indeed as ultimately having to appeal to, the second argument, the argument from queerness. This argument (so it seems to me) seeks to make mileage out of two bits of queerness: first, the queerness of the supposition that there are certain "non-natural" value-properties which are in some mysterious way "supervenient upon" more familiar natural features; and second, the queerness of the supposi-tion that the recognition of the presence of these non-natural properties motivates us, or can motivate us, without assistance from any desire or interest which we happen to have. What strikes me as queer is that the queernesses referred to by Mackie are not darkly concealed skeletons in objectivist closets which are cunningly dragged to light by him; they are, rather, conditions proclaimed by objectivists as ones which must be accommodated if we are to have a satisfactory theoretical account of conduct, or of other items qua things to which value may be properly attributed. So while these queernesses can be used to specify tasks which an objectivist could be called upon, and very likely would call on himself, to perform, and while it is not in advance certain that these tasks can be successfully performed, they cannot be used as bricks to bombard an objectivist with even before he has started to try to fulfil those tasks. It is perhaps as if someone were to say, 'I seriously doubt whether arithmetic is possible; for if it were possible it would have to be about numbers, and numbers would be very queer things indeed, quite inaccessible to any observation'; or even as if someone were to say, 'I don't see how there can be such a thing as matrimony; if there were, people would have to be bound to one another in marriage, and everything we see in real life and on the cinema-screen goes to suggest that the only way that people can be bound to one another is with ropes. H. P. Grice