In his 1977 book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, John Mackie presented and defended a moral error theory, according to which moral judgments are all false. But he also believed that they are too useful to abandon, so he urged us to continue using them. This is moral fictionalism. Others, who also believe that moral judgments are false, think that morality is not so useful, and so they encourage us to abandon moralizing and rely on alternative and less duplicitous ways to impose our wills. This is moral abolitionism.
In the last few years, several books and papers that deal with this controversy have appeared. Most of them favor moral fictionalism, but an article of mine (“Abolishing Morality”) defending moral abolitionism and replying to several moral fictionalists appeared in a volume of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice celebrating the 30th anniversary of the publication of Mackie’s book. This article will be reprinted in A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie’s Moral Error Theory (edited by Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin). Other than a brief and out-of-print monograph by Ian Hinckfuss criticizing “the moral society,” I know of no book that gives a sympathetic hearing to moral abolitionism. In The Myth of Morality (Cambridge, 2001) and The Evolution of Morality (MIT 2006) Richard Joyce defends the error theory, but he opts for moral fictionalism. My revision of Beyond Morality offers an explanation, in clear language and without undue technicality, of what moralism is, what it means to abandon it, what we gain by doing so, what other devices can fill the gap (if any) left by its departure, and how little it will be missed when it is gone.