The Construction of Morality: Why Ethics Is Social

The paper focuses on the interaction between ethics and ontology, particularly with regard to social ethics and social ontology. The paper analyses a few basic moral categories, such as universality, objectivity, subjectivity, value, evaluation and the relevant criteria. My analysis mainly takes into account the concept of objectivity as outlined by John L. Mackie and tries to show how its redefinition is connected to other key-concepts for ethics, such as relativity and causality, being central points in a new discussion on ethics. Critiques to realism and intuitionism are part of the argument, while references to Locke’s and Hume’s theories on primary and secondary qualities are crucial (along with Hare, Searle, Rée, and Dewey). The paper aims to outline Mackie’s error theory and tries to extend it beyond Mackie’s intentions in order to solve the misinterpretations of objectivity and causality. This analysis, which allows a certain grade of re-definition of those categories, tries to demonstrate the social nature of ethics, intended to be an institutional fact. The goal of the paper is to outline the possibility of a new approach to ethics as system of standards of evaluation, passing by a new definition of objectivity, connecting relativity to causality, and considering the role played by social agreement, which renders ethics a matter of rights in the end.