There are at least three philosophy papers whose titles ask this question. They all argue that ethics does rest on a mistake. However, they disagree about the mistake and, therefore, about the solution. Below I’ll give a very brief overview of each paper.
Prichard, H. A. (1912). Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? Mind, 21(81), 21–37. [HTML, open access]
- Answer: yes.
- The mistake: thinking that philosophical reasoning confers the motivating force of moral obligation.
- Solution: intuitionism — in the same way that we “know” or “have access” to the deductive force of logical entailment or mathematical proof, we have the ability to “know” or “have access” to motivational force of moral obligation.
Gettner, Alan. (1976). “Does moral philosophy rest on a mistake?” The Journal of Value Inquiry, 10(4), 241–252. [Online, behind paywall]
- Answer: yes.
- The mistake: the method of trying to find moral laws (or treating ethics as a science).
- The solution: challenge and supplant this method.
Jones, William Thomas. (1988, March). Does moral philosophy rest on a mistake? Humanities Working Paper, 132. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA [Online, open access]
- Answer: yes.
- The mistake: thinking that ethics is not fundamentally different from psychology, economics, and anthropology. (Error theory: our philosophical vocabulary led us to make this mistake.)
- Solution: treat ethics as co-extensive with psychology, economics, and anthropology.
What Do you think?
- Does ethics rest on a mistake? If not, then where did these papers go wrong?
- If ethics rests on a mistake, what is the mistake?
- Is there a solution? If so, what is it?
