Abstract
The paper describes the problem for robust moral realism of explaining the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and examines five objections to the argument: (1) The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because we may owe different obligations to duplicates. (2) If the supervenience thesis is repaired to block (1), it becomes trivial and easy to explain. (3) Supervenience is a moral doctrine and should get an explanation from within normative ethics rather than metaethics. (4) Supervenience is a conceptual truth and should be explained by the nature of our concepts rather than by a metaphysical theory. (5) The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because moral principles are not metaphysically necessary. It concludes that none of these objections is successful, so Robust Realists do have an explanatory debt to worry about.
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Notes
I am somewhat worried that the ‘separation’ issue is trickier than I allow in the body of the text. One issue is whether there are ways of drawing the line between the moral and the non-moral properties that impoverishes the subjacent class, so that there aren’t enough base properties left to fix the moral status of acts and laws and people. I would like to have something really good to say about this issue, but so far I have only messy and rather rough, intuitive things.
Also important: if Naturalist Realism were in play, I would have to say some things about the doubts raised by Sturgeon (2009). But it isn’t, so as far as I can tell, I don’t.
I am relying heavily on Kim (1984). Weak Supervenience is the relation described by the result of removing the second necessity operator from Strong Supervenience as set out in the body of the text. Hare (1984) and Blackburn (1984a) have each said in print that the interesting relation in metaethics is Weak Supervenience, but this was an error.
Some people are skeptical about conceptual necessity. Some people are skeptical about metaphysical necessity. I won’t be able to allay the concerns of either group in this paper.
See Kramer (2009a) The general line of this very interesting book is that many of the phenomena that have driven metaethics are not metaphysical, epistemological, or logical, but rather moral, and thus belong to ethics rather than to metaethics proper.
As shown in Campbell Brown’s unpublished work. Brown extends the common philosophical notion of supervenience to properties in a natural way, leading to the failure of some logical connections that metaphysicians expect to hold.
Thanks to Krister Bykvist for pointing out this trivialization problem to me.
Kramer (2009b) and Scanlon (2014), but I don’t yet have a clear statement of this position in print to cite, which is why this section is very short and sketchy. I have recently heard a version of this position articulated by Camil Golub, one which calls for more careful discussion; I hope Golub will publish his ideas soon.
Not exactly; the ‘making’ relation is the converse of the supervenience relation, or really, as I am understanding supervenience here, it is what explains the supervenience relation. I have only an intuitive grasp of how to employ ‘making’ in this context, though, rather than a theory; I don’t mean the gloss to bear any important argumentative weight.
For a thorough discussion, see Olson (2009).
This really is a matter of stipulation, since the International Astronomical Union changed the definition of ‘planet’ in 2006 by fiat, and ordinary speakers seem to defer to expert panels like the IAU.
Thanks to Selim Berker and Jerome Hodges for very helpful discussion of this idea at a workshop at MIT.
After Ananke, the pre-Olympian mistress of necessity; and ἀνάγκη, necessity.
Compare Sturgeon’s magnet example in Sturgeon (2009).
This may not be true, I don’t know for sure.
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Dreier, J. Is there a supervenience problem for robust moral realism?. Philos Stud 176, 1391–1408 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01244-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01244-w