Potential "Queerness" of Moral Entities

Mackie famously points out that moral facts, if they existed, would seem 'queer'. "If there were objective values", he argues, "then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe" (1977, 38).

Construed as an attack against moral realism, an argument 'from queerness' will continue assuming that the existence of objective values is necessary for the truth of moral realism. The kernel of the problem, as Mackie's construes it, in its direct form (Mackie also adumbrates an indirect, epistemological variant), is this.

(AQ1) If objective values existed, they would be 'queer'. 

(AQ2) 'Queer' states probably do not exist.

(AQC) Hence, objective values probably do not exist. 

It is easy to see that the term on which the weal and woe of this argument hinges is "queer". What this term actually aims at, however, is rather unclear. 

In his statement of the argument, Mackie repeatedly emphasises that if moral facts existed, then they would have to be essentially motivating, thus apparently assuming the truth (or validity) of Internalism about moral judgements, and deriving the alleged 'queerness' from this position. Notice, however, that Internalism is not very broadly accepted—in fact it is rather an exotic position. Internalists' suggestion that the existence of an amoralist, making moral judgements without being being motivated to act accordingly, be impossible, strikes most people as deviate. Accordingly weak is the basis on which Mackie's hint at an argument rests. But the real problem, when the significance of 'the' argument is at issue, is that Mackie fails to explain (what he means to aim at by) the term 'queer', and that in the absence of such an explanation, the term is quite unclear.

Mackie explains the notion of 'queerness' by the words "utterly different from anything else in the universe". But under which conditions is something, which is different, 'utterly' different? Let us consider some examples. What about mental states? Are they not utterly different than, for instance, material objects? Are they, then, 'queer'? If so, then given the Argument from Queerness, we would have to abandon the existence of mental states along with that of objective values; but confession to such an implication sounds rather much like a reductio ad absurdum. Another example: Are not attractive forces, exerting their impact through empty space, 'queer' (and, for that matter, utterly different from anything else in the universe)? Or, what about photons, sharing properties of waves as well as properties of corpuscles? What about Higgs particles (supposed to be required to make other particles to have some mass)?  What about gravitation waves? Is any of these phenomena not 'queer'? The problem of 'the' argument 'from queerness' is that there is no such (clear, identifiable) argument. Mackie fails to make clear enough (to enable serious academic work) what the argument is supposed to be.

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Yet while the reproach of 'queerness' is thus too vague and its force at least hard to assess, the Swabian defence of OMR takes the wind out of its sails anyway. For it offers a direct and clear derivation of the existence of objective value from indubitable entities. The 'Argument from Queerness', vague and speculative as it is, will hardly be taken as reason against the existence of objective values unless this derivation can be, and has been, decisively weakened.