ABSTRACT
J. L. Mackie developed an argument against moral realism he called “the argument
from queerness.”1 He contended that, given a materialist understanding of the cosmos, the existence of objective values would be queer or, to use less colorful language, objective values would be unique and unlikely. “If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly
different from anything else in the universe.”2 Mackie did not conclude that the strange and unlikely has happened, but instead that there are no objective values. The argument has such currency that it is even an entry in the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy under the heading “queerness.” The argument runs along the same lines as Mackie’s reasoning in The Miracle of Theism. Following Hume, Mackie argues that theism is so unlikely it seems like a miracle that anyone believes it; the existence of God would be “queer” given everything else we know about the cosmos, and thus it is best denied. A yet further, similar argument has been advanced by many philosophers about consciousness.
