Abstract
Error theory is a kind of radical skepticism about morality. The moral error theorist holds that all moral judgments are mistaken – not necessarily mistaken in a
practical
sense, but in the sense that the world just doesn't contain the requisite “stuff” necessary to render any moral judgments true. Just as nothing is morally wrong or right, so too nothing is morally good or bad or evil, nothing is morally obligatory or prohibited or permissible, nothing is morally praiseworthy or blameworthy, nothing is a moral vice or virtue, nothing is morally
anything
. In other words, the moral error theorist thinks that when we engage in moral evaluation we ascribe to the world (to actions, people, states of affairs, etc.) a range of properties and relations that simply aren't really there; morality is an illusion.