J. L. Mackie

John Leslie Mackie (25 August 1917 – 12 December 1981) was an Australian philosopher. He made significant contributions to ethics, the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Mackie had influential views on metaethics, including his defence of moral scepticism and his sophisticated defence of atheism. He wrote six books. His most widely known, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, opens by stating, "There are no objective values." It goes on to argue that because of this, ethics must be invented rather than discovered.

His posthumously published The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1982) has been called a tour de force in contemporary analytic philosophy. The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen described it as "one of the most, probably the most, distinguished articulation of an atheistic point of view given in the twentieth century." In 1980, Time magazine described him as "perhaps the ablest of today's atheistic philosophers".

Life Mackie was born 25 August 1917 in Killara, Sydney, son of Alexander Mackie, professor of education at the University of Sydney and principal of the Sydney Teachers College, influential in the educational system of New South Wales.

Mackie graduated from the University of Sydney in 1938 after studying under John Anderson, sharing the medal in philosophy with Harold Glass. Mackie received the Wentworth Travelling Fellowship to study greats at Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in 1940. In 1963, he moved to the United Kingdom, becoming the inaugural holder of the chair of philosophy in the University of York, a position he held until 1967, when he was elected a fellow of University College, Oxford, where he served as praelector. In 1969, he gave a lecture, "What's Really Wrong with Phenomenalism?", at the British Academy as part of its annual Philosophical Lectures series. In 1974, he became a fellow of the British Academy. This personal style is exemplified by the following words from the preface to Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong:

Mackie married Joan Meredith in 1947. One of their three children, Penelope Mackie, also became a philosopher. She lectured in philosophy at the University of Birmingham from 1994 to 2004, and then at the University of Nottingham from 2004 until her death in 2022. Mackie's son David is also a philosopher and graduated from Oxford University, where he held lectureships at Exeter College, Corpus Christi College, and Christ Church before being appointed a Fellow and Tutor at Oriel College. He is Head of Philosophy at D'Overbroeck's College, Oxford. His daughter Hilary is a classicist at Rice University.

Philosophical work Mackie is best known for his contributions to metaethics, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics.

In his work The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation, Mackie makes an analysis of causality by prior philosophers and sets forth his theory of causality based on counterfactual conditionals. He argued that a cause is an "INUS condition" (insufficient but non-redundant parts of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the occurrence of the effect). E.g, the statement "The short circuit caused the fire", the short circuit is a necessary part of the fire condition (short circuit and flammable material) but not sufficient (a short circuit does not always result in a fire). This condition in turn is sufficient for a fire to take place, although not necessary (it can be replaced by other conditions such as "lightning and flammable material" or "arson").

In metaethics, he took a position called moral scepticism, arguing against the objective existence of right and wrong as intrinsically normative entities on fundamental grounds. He was unsure what kinds of thing they would be if they existed.

His most widely known work, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, bluntly begins with the sentence "There are no objective values". His criticisms of the free will theodicy are particularly significant. He argued that the idea of human free will is no defence for those who wish to believe in an omnipotent being in the face of evil and suffering, as such a being could have given us both free will and moral perfection, thus resulting in us choosing the good in every situation. In 1955 he published "Evil and Omnipotence", which summarized his view that belief in the existence of evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god is "positively irrational".

Mackie's views on this logical problem of evil prompted Alvin Plantinga to respond with the "free-will defense", which Mackie later responded in his The Miracle of Theism. In metaphysics, Mackie made significant contributions relating to the nature of causal relationships, especially conditional statements describing them and the notion of an INUS condition.

After being given a copy of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene as a Christmas present, The philosopher Mary Midgley responded in 1979 with "Gene-Juggling", an article arguing that The Selfish Gene was about psychological egoism rather than evolution. This started a dispute between Mackie, Midgley, and Dawkins that was ongoing at the time of Mackie's death.

Publications

Books

Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973), Oxford University Press. The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (1980), Oxford University Press. Problems from Locke (1976), Oxford University Press. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), Viking Press. Hume's Moral Theory (1980), Routledge Keegan & Paul. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (1982), Oxford University Press. Theories of Justice and Rights (2025), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0198917403.

Anthologies Logic and Knowledge: Selected Papers, Volume I (1985), Oxford University Press. Persons and Values: Selected Papers, Volume II (1985), Oxford University Press.

Papers/book chapters

"What’s Really Wrong with Phenomenalism?" Proceedings of the British Academy 55, 1969 (1971)

For a more complete list of works see "The publications of J. L. Mackie" compiled by Joan Mackie.