The Myth of Morality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy) 1st Edition

This is, no doubt, a very dangerous, yet enlightening, book. Much of the structure of our society is built on a foundation of moral beliefs. For instance, our whole political system is based on moral claims like the "inalienable" rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. In the Myth of Morality, Joyce takes the sword of reason and with it, utterly destroys those foundations (with great skill, I might add). Then, lest everything come crashing down, he proposes a very plausible alternative foundation: fictionalism. If we act *as if* moral claims - like the right to liberty - were true, then social confusion and disintegration are avoided. And in no way is doing this illegitimate: as Joyce explains, we have practical reason to do so, and as long as we all understand that morality is hogwash, there need be no deception in make-believe.

This book is much more comprehensive and convincing than its predecessor, Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (you might want to read the first few chapters of that book before reading Joyce, but thats not necessary). The basic idea is similar: there is something mystical about the property of "ought-not-be-doneness." But whereas Mackie argues directly from morality's mysticality to its error (anything mystical doesn't belong in our ontology), Joyce takes a more sophisticated route. His basic argument is as follows:

1. Moral claims apply regardless of your desires

(when we condemn a criminal, do we change our minds if we learn it was in his self-interest to commit it?)

2. If we morally ought to do something, we have a reason to do it.

(If we ask "why am I morally required to vote?", we couldn't take seriously someone who had no other response than "well you simply *musn't*!)

3. So, if we morally ought to do something, we have to have a reason to do it that applies regardless of our desires.

4. Such reasons don't make sense.

(this requires a complicated defense, and I won't attempt to summarize it)

5. Therefore, moral claims make no sense.

This argument, while not exactly a proof of morality's error, is rock-solid when bolstered by Joyce's formidable defense of it. He goes in depth examining premises 1 2 and 4 (the others don't need defending), and his fairness, carefulness, and rhetorical skill in doing so are nearly unmatched.

As if this weren't enough, Joyce provides a natural, evolutionary explanation for why we have morality, making morality's falseness all the more plausible. I was skeptical that morality could be explained naturally at first - isn't it entirely a social construction? But Joyce answered all the objections I could think of. The particular claims of morality may be explained by culture, but our disposition to make moral claims in the first place is natural.

Finally, Joyce goes on to examine fictionalism. This section was very enlightening. Before I had assumed that if something people think is true is actually false, well *obviously* we should just replace it with the truth. Not so, as Joyce explains. Its not just silliness to make-believe something as serious as morality. It might require a change of attitude, but we can pull this off, and its very important that we do so, in order to avoid giving in to our irrational habit of acting on present desires to the detriment of long-term ones.

My one complaint about this book is that it doesn't describe how exactly we might get from here to there. How can we switch the foundation of our society without it collapsing in the meantime? In fairness, though, this is a very tough question that perhaps deserves a book of its own. Overall, I can't recommend the Myth of Morality highly enough - it is philosophically rigorous while maintaining popular accessibility (at least to generally well educated people), and its implications are nothing less than earth-shattering. This book should be on the shelf of anyone who has any serious interest in moral issues.

If you are already leaning towards an anti-realist position in ethics, this book will secure those leanings against any possible doubts. If you are a realist, well, you will have a lot of explaining to do after reading this book and should, for better or worse, take seriously to heart the arguments in this book. Joyce's main targets are the Moral Naturalists but he must also tackle the irrealists, e.g. the expressivists, in order to establish an error theory. One of the most interesting arguments draws from his take of the consequences of the evolution of morality. For more of his views on this, see his other book, "The Evolution of Morality."
I also recommend "The Moral Society" by Ian Hinckfuss, "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong" by Mackie and if you have access to JSTOR or other online scholarly journals I suggest you read other fictionalists (some moral, some modal or mathematical) like Daniel Nolan, Mark Eli Kalderon, and Stephen Yablo.

This book is a thought provoking book that has left indelible marks in my moral consciousness. I can say now that I can grasp the terrain of much of the battlegrounds where modern meta-ethical debates are fought (which I had difficulty understanding before). Often in philosophy, understanding that there is a real problem is the first and necessary step to grasping the discourse on which the problem is to be resolved. Joyce ably sets out the problems and the contemporary positions regarding meta-ethics.

Joyce then defends a fictionalist meta-ethics. That is, a position that claims moral discourse makes assertions about the world and that such assertions are not true because they lack truthmakers (moral facts) to make them either true or false. Fictionalism additionally claims that such discourse, though strictly speaking, not true, are nevertheless, important to human society and ought to be kept for pragmatic reasons.

Basically, Joyce argues that moral discourse necessarily commits to the existence of certain kinds of objective reasons (categorical reasons) but that such reasons don't exist. His argument here is very intricate. I thought it was the weakest part of the whole book because much of it was quite convoluted, opaque, and not very convincing. I do not think that morality commits one to categorical reasons and moreover I believe that there are robust moral discourse that make use of only "hypothetical reasons." Furthermore, I do not think Joyce's argument that there are no such categorical reasons convincing. Of course, Joyce disagrees but like I said, his argument here seems to be much weaker than other parts of the book.

I'm also skeptical of Joyce's recommendation that we can keep moral discourse for pragmatic reasons can be successfully implemented for I believe that acceptance of the lack of truth in moral discourse cannot be buffered very well by any fictionalist "pretend" talk even ones used with our best pragmatic intentions. People will likely simply see right through such talk as insincere and empty if they come to accept the lack of truth in morality.

Joyce's argument that evolution explains why we may have beliefs that there are these categorical reasons even though we are ultimately mistaken is much stronger and better articulated. Other parts of his argument such as his example employing the Polynesian concept of "tapu" (where we get the word "taboo") are interesting as well as the section making use of the distinction between objective and subjective reasons. Joyce also goes into much detail about what he means by fictionalism and why we may want to keep moral discourse and how that can be done even if we, strictly speaking, do not believe in what we are saying is also interesting and informative.

Even if you're not wholly convinced of Joyce's argument (and I wasn't), you might still really like this book because of its explanation of the basic meta-ethical problems (as I was) and you get a clearer understanding of the arguments put forth in the debate. That in itself is very valuable.