IS

MORALITY LIKE A PAIR OF SPECTACLES? ‘No, we can’t. In fact, we find your talk of “seeing wrongness” very odd.
We view certain things – people’s actions – as having moral value, as
being right or wrong. But according to many philosophers, this value is
not intrinsic to those actions. Rather, it’s rooted in our experience, in
how we react emotionally to what we observe. It’s as if we view the
world through morality spectacles: the value that we think is objectively
part of the world ‘out there’ is actually added by the emotional
spectacles through which we’re looking. If we could take off these
spectacles, we would find that the world as it is ‘in itself’ is really value-
free.
I call this the spectacles model of
morality. Many philosophers,
perhaps most famously David
Hume (1711–76), have been drawn
to some version of it. But others
remain strongly opposed: they
believe that the wrongness of, say,
an act of stealing is an objective
property of that act, a property that
attaches to such acts anyway,
whatever our view on stealing
might be. Which, if either, theory of
morality is correct?
How Do We Detect Wrongness?
Let’s take a closer look at the view that moral value is objective, that it’s
‘out there’ independently of us. This position is known as moral realism.
As we’re about to discover, moral realism faces a notorious difficulty: it
seems to make knowledge of right and wrong impossible. This is
because it appears unable to explain how we detect these moral
properties. To see why, consider the following story.
One morning, while Virtue is hanging out the washing, an alien
spacecraft lands in her back garden. The alien crew suggest that she
takes a flight with them over the city. Virtue accepts their offer, and they
are soon swooping above the rooftops. The aliens render their
spacecraft invisible so that they don’t disturb anyone in the streets
below.
We have five senses just like yours: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
But we can’t find this property you call wrongness. Where is it? By
which of your five senses do you detect it? You say you can see it?’
Virtue begins to understand why the aliens are confused. After all, it
seems that our five human senses provide our only window on to the
world around us. So, if wrongness is an objective property – if it’s part
of the world ‘out there’ – then how do we get to know about it? How do
we detect wrongness?
Virtue thinks she’s spotted a confusion.
Inferring that Something Is Wrong
‘Ah. I see your problem,’ says Virtue. ‘Wrongness isn’t a property that
you can directly observe, as you can, say, roundness. But that doesn’t
mean that there’s a problem about establishing its existence. After all,
the same is true of magnetism, isn’t it? We can’t see, hear, taste, touch
or smell magnetism, can we?
‘True.’
‘Yet we still know that magnetism is out there, don’t we? For we can
legitimately infer the existence of magnetism from what we can directly
observe: the effect it has on iron filings, for example.’
The aliens seem to be catching on.
‘So, you infer the wrongness of stealing from those features of stealing
that you can observe?’
‘Precisely.’
Is and Ought
To Virtue’s surprise, the aliens remain baffled.
‘You’re mistaken. The inference you say you make cannot legitimately
be made.’
‘Why not?’ asks Virtue.
‘To say that something is wrong is to say we ought not to do it. Correct?’
Virtue nods in agreement.

Then, as they pass low over a dark alley, Virtue spots a young man trying ‘Well, the facts about what we ought or ought not to do are an entirely
to steal a woman’s purse. She points this out to the aliens. ‘Look!’ she different sort of fact to the facts about what is the case.’
says. ‘We should help that woman. What that man is doing is wrong!’
Virtue is confused. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’
The aliens are mystified.
‘Well, to say that something ought not to happen is not to say anything
‘Ah. Wrong. We find your about what is happening. To say that this man ought not to steal that
earthling talk of things being purse is not yet to say that he is or isn’t stealing it, is it?’
morally “wrong” deeply
Virtue has to agree.
baffling. Most of your language
we understand. But this ‘Conversely, to say that something is the case is not yet to say that it
property wrongness remains a ought or ought not to happen.’
mystery to us. We can find no
Virtue is not so sure. ‘But what about the “is” fact that stealing causes
trace of it. We want a complete
suffering and makes people unhappy? Doesn’t that immediately provide
theory of the universe. We don’t
us with a rational case for not doing it?’
want to miss anything out.
Please point out the wrongness The aliens shake their green heads. ‘No, it doesn’t. Look, suppose
to us.’ someone delights in causing suffering and steals to make others
unhappy. They actually think that it’s something they ought to do. It
Virtue is confused. She points out of the window and says: ‘But can’t you
won’t do you one jot of good to point out to this person that stealing
just see that what that man is doing is wrong?’
causes suffering and unhappiness. They will happily agree with you
The aliens peer intently out of the window. Then they look back at about that. They just disagree with you about whether stealing is
Virtue. something they ought to go in for.’
‘I see.’
The aliens continue. ‘Now, there’s nothing remotely irrational about this
cruel person’s position, is there? You might think it immoral. But there’s
nothing you can point to by way of “is” facts that supports your
contention that causing suffering is not something one ought to do over
this person’s contention that it is something one ought to do. You can’t,
simply by pointing to the “is” facts, provide any grounds for supposing
that you’re correct and they’re mistaken.’
‘H’m. Perhaps.’
‘But then you can’t rationally infer what ought or ought not to happen
from a description of what is happening, can you?’
‘Why not?’
Observation reveals only ‘is’ facts. It reveals only what ‘is’ happening.
You can’t directly observe the ‘ought’ facts. You have already admitted
that the wrongness of an act of stealing is not itself directly observable.
The aliens went on. ‘But we’ve just seen that neither can you
legitimately infer the wrongness of stealing from the “is” facts that you
can observe.’
‘I guess you’re right. They would require that I infer an “ought” from an
“is”. And that cannot legitimately be done.’
‘Exactly.’
A Puzzle
The aliens sum up their bewilderment about this property – wrongness
– that Virtue thinks is out there on the other side of the glass. ‘But then
how do you establish the existence of this strange property? You can’t
directly see it, smell it, touch it, taste it or hear it. But neither can you
infer its presence from what you can observe as you can, say,
magnetism. Yet you say you know it’s there?’
The aliens look out of the window and raise their eyebrows. ‘So how do
you earthlings detect this “wrongness”? If it really is out there, please
point it out to us.’
Virtue scratches her head and peers intently at the man still struggling
to take the woman’s purse. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. I feel sure it’s
out there. I feel sure that what that man is doing has the property of
being wrong. But I just don’t know how I detect this property.’
The aliens appear to be right: we can’t directly observe wrongness. But
neither can we legitimately infer its presence from what we can
observe. So if the property for which the aliens are looking really is ‘out
there’ on the other side of the glass porthole, how does Virtue detect it?
Hume’s Solution community approves.
The spectacles model, on which moral value is added by the viewer,
provides a satisfying explanation of why the aliens can’t find the
property for which they’re looking. According to the spectacles model,
by describing what the man on the other side of the glass is doing as
‘wrong’, Virtue is merely describing or expressing how she feels about
what she sees. So, the aliens are looking in the wrong place. To find the
wrongness, the aliens need to turn around and examine Virtue herself.
This is precisely the view of the eighteenth-century philosopher David
Hume (in fact, it’s essentially Hume’s argument that the aliens have just
presented to Virtue). As Hume points out, a major difficulty for moral
realists is to explain how we come by our knowledge of objective moral
properties. If morality really were ‘out there’, it seems we wouldn’t be
able to get to know about it. Hume concludes that moral value has its
origins in ourselves – in our emotions:
Take any action allowed to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance.
Examine it in all its lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or
real existence, which you call vice … You can never find it, till you turn
your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of
disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. (David Hume,
Treatise on Human Nature [1740])
In Hume’s view, the ‘vice’ is added by the observer.
Moore and ‘Intuition’
G. E. Moore (1873–1958) was a moral realist who recognized the
difficulty for realism raised by Hume and proposed the following
solution. Our five senses don’t provide our only window on to the
external world. We don’t recognize the immorality of an action by
ordinary observation. Rather, we are equipped with an additional, sixth
sense – Moore called it ‘intuition’ – that allows us to discern the external
moral properties. Just as you might use a radar dish to detect ships and
aircraft hidden from sight, so you can use the faculty of ‘intuition’ to
detect the moral properties that cannot be detected with your other five
senses.
The reason that the aliens cannot detect the wrongness is that, unlike
Virtue, they do not possess this additional, sixth sense.
Has Moore solved the puzzle of how we come by moral knowledge? Not
really. For it remains utterly mysterious how our additional faculty of
‘intuition’ is supposed to work. Moore has dealt with one mystery only
by introducing another that is no less baffling. So, Hume’s objection to
moral realism remains—it still seems that only the spectacles model is
able to account for moral knowledge.
Three Versions of the Spectacles Model
We have seen that the spectacles model of morality provides a satisfying
explanation of why the aliens are unable to find the wrongness. So
should we embrace the spectacles model?
In fact, there are several different versions of the spectacles model of
morality from which we might choose. I shall outline three.
 Subjectivism. This is the simplest version of the spectacles model.
According to subjectivism, to say that something is wrong is to claim
that you personally disapprove of it. Similarly, to say that something
is right is to claim that you approve.
 Intersubjectivism. According to intersubjectivism, to say that
something is wrong is to claim that your community disapproves of
it. Similarly, to say that something is right is to claim that your
Notice that on both these theories, to make a moral judgement is to
make a claim. The claim, if true, is made true by a fact. Only the fact that
makes the claim true is not ‘out there’ independently of us. The fact is a
fact about ourselves.
But not all versions of the spectacles model maintain that moral talk is
fact-stating. Consider a third version of the spectacles model:
 Emotivism. According to emotivism, to say that something is wrong
is not to make a claim at all. Rather, it is to express disapproval of it.
Similarly, to say that something is right is to express approval of it.
Suppose I go to a football match. My team, Wormington Rovers,
scores, so I say ‘hoorah for Wormington Rovers’. Do I make a claim
when I say this? No. ‘Hoorah for Wormington Rovers’ involves no
 claim. It is neither true nor false. Notice that I am not even making a
claim about how I feel. Rather I am expressing how I feel. Now,
according to emotivism, something similar happens when I say
‘killing is wrong’. To say that killing is wrong is, in effect, to go ‘boo
to killing’. So ‘killing is wrong’ is neither true nor false. For, of course,
‘boo to killing’ is neither true nor false. But then no fact is required
to make ‘killing is wrong’ true. Leading emotivist philosophers
include A. J. Ayer (1910–89) and C. L. Stevenson (1908–79).
All these theories are versions of the spectacles model, because all three
say that moral value is not a feature of objective reality, but rather is
grounded in our subjective reactions to it. Morality has its roots in how
we individually or collectively feel about certain actions. We
individually or collectively create moral value by feeling as we do.
Why the Aliens Can’t Find the Wrongness
All these three theories explain why the aliens can’t find the wrongness,
though they do so in slightly different ways.
According to subjectivism, when Virtue says ‘stealing is wrong’, she says
that she personally happens to disapprove of it. In order to find the fact
that makes her judgement true, the aliens need to turn around and
examine Virtue.
According to intersubjectivism, when Virtue says ‘stealing is wrong’, she
says that her community disapproves of it. So, in order to discover
whether what Virtue says is true, the aliens need to stop examining
what the thief is doing and to start investigating how both Virtue and
the rest of her community feel about stealing.
According to emotivism, Virtue makes no claim at all. But then no fact is
required to make what she says true. There simply is no such fact as the
‘fact’ that stealing is wrong. So, in searching for this ‘fact’ the aliens are
on a wild-goose chase.
But while the spectacles model does sidestep the problem of explaining
how we come by moral knowledge, there is a feature of our moral talk
to which it seems it cannot do full justice. It appears that each version
of the spectacles model, no matter how sophisticated, inevitably rules
out the possibility of certain sorts of moral mistake – mistakes of a sort
that we can in fact make.
Think, for example, about subjectivism. According to subjectivism,
when I say ‘killing is wrong’, I claim that I personally disapprove of
killing. But then there’s no possibility of my being mistaken about
what’s wrong (other, of course, than because I am out of touch with my
feelings). If I feel that killing is wrong, that makes it wrong (for me, at
least). Similarly, if Max feels that killing is right, then he, too, is correct:
for him killing is right. According to subjectivism, we’re both correct.
But this is absurd, surely? It is at least possible for individuals to be
mistaken about what’s right and what’s wrong. In using the moral
vocabulary of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ we take ourselves to be referring to
properties that are ‘there anyway’, independently of how things might
happen to strike us. But then the mere fact that we feel something to be
wrong provides no guarantee that we are correct.
Intersubjectivism also rules out certain sorts of mistake. According to
intersubjectivism, if I say ‘killing is wrong’, what I say is true when my
community collectively feels killing to be wrong. This allows for the
possibility of me being mistaken (I might be mistaken about what my
community disapproves of), but it rules out the possibility of my
community being mistaken. If my community feels that killing is wrong,
that makes it wrong (for them at least).
Again, this is implausible. Surely even an entire community can be
morally mistaken? The fact that the ancient Romans felt that watching
a slave being torn apart by wild animals for their own amusement was
morally acceptable did not make it acceptable.
Finally, consider emotivism. According to emotivism, when I say ‘killing
is wrong’, I don’t make any claim at all. But, as I am not making any sort
of claim, it again follows that there’s no possibility of my being mistaken
about what’s wrong. There’s nothing to be mistaken about. In short, the
possibility of such individual and collective error seems to show that
moral properties are, after all, objective properties.
Why Being Wrong Is Like Being Round
The following analogy may help to
explain why. Being round is,
presumably, an objective property.
Things are round anyway, no matter
how they might strike us. Admittedly,
a round tower in the distance and in a
certain light might not look round. It
might seem square. But were we all to judge that the tower is square,
the fact is that we would be mistaken? The tower would still be round.
Now, it is because shape is an objective property, a property that is
‘there anyway’, that explains why we can be both individually and
collectively mistaken about whether something is round. If things were
round, square, and so on only because they seemed that way, then,
because the tower seemed square, that would make it square.
Similarly, if the spectacles model were correct and things were wrong
only because they seemed wrong, then the possibility of our being
mistaken about what’s wrong couldn’t arise. The fact that we can be
both individually and collectively mistaken about what’s wrong appears
to show that being wrong, like being round, is an objective property.
Conclusion
We have been looking at two competing views about morality. Some adopt
the spectacles model of morality on which moral value is added by the
emotional spectacles through which we observe the world. Others believe
that right and wrong are objective properties, properties that are ‘there
anyway’ no matter how things might strike us.
Which position is correct? I have to admit, I’m pretty confused. On the one
hand, those who believe moral value is independently ‘out there’ seem to
face an insurmountable difficulty – that of explaining how we come by moral
knowledge. On the other hand, I must also admit that the possibility of us
being both individually and collectively mistaken about what’s right and
what’s wrong does appear to show that we intend the words ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ to pick out objective properties that are ‘there anyway’. The
arguments pull us in opposite directions.
Where do we go from here? Some philosophers suggest that the only
solution is to adopt an ‘error’ theory. On the one hand, our moral concepts
of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ demand that any properties worthy of these labels
must be objective. But it turns out that there are no such objective
properties out there. So, everything we say using these terms is actually
false. It’s false that stealing is wrong. It’s also false that it’s right. We make
an ‘error’ when we think of actions as having moral properties. Moral value
is ultimately an illusion.
But this is a lot to swallow. Is the only satisfactory solution to this puzzle to
admit that there’s ultimately no such thing as moral value? Or can we come
up with a more palatable answer?