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  1. (1 other version)Ethical Non-Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience.Tristram McPherson - 2012 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 7. Oxford University Press. pp. 205.
    It is widely accepted that the ethical supervenes on the natural, where this is roughly the claim that it is impossible for two circumstances to be identical in all natural respects, but different in their ethical respects. This chapter refines and defends the traditional thought that this fact poses a significant challenge to ethical non-naturalism, a view on which ethical properties are fundamentally different in kind from natural properties. The challenge can be encapsulated in three core claims which the chapter (...)
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  • (1 other version)Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure and Welfare.Chris Heathwood - 2011 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6:79-106.
    One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one’s desires provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories about two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about either pleasure or welfare (...)
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  • The knowledge argument, the open question argument, and the moral problem.Michael Pelczar - 2009 - Synthese 171 (1):25 - 45.
    Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical nature could, apparently, suffer from ignorance about various aspects of conscious experience. Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical and mental nature could, apparently, suffer from moral ignorance. Does it follow that there are ways the world is, over and above the way it is physically or psychophysically? This paper defends a negative answer, based on a distinction between knowing the fact that p and knowing that p. This distinction is made (...)
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  • From supervenience to superdupervenience: Meeting the demands of a material world.Terence E. Horgan - 1993 - Mind 102 (408):555-86.
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  • Realist dependence and irrealist butterflies.Caj Strandberg - 2023 - Synthese 201 (3):1-23.
    In this paper, I argue that a realist account of the modality of moral supervenience is superior to a non-cognitivist account. According to the recommended realist account, moral supervenience amounts to strong supervenience where the outer ‘necessary’ is conceptual and the inner metaphysical. It is argued that non-cognitivism faces a critical choice between weak and strong supervenience where both options are implausible on this view. However, non-cognitivism seems to have an important advantage: It can explain why the outer ‘necessary’ is (...)
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  • Nonnaturalism, the Supervenience Challenge, Higher-Order Properties, and Trope Theory.Jussi Suikkanen - 2024 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 26 (3):601-632.
    Nonnaturalist realism is the view that normative properties are unique kind of stance-independent properties. It has been argued that such views fail to explain why two actions that are exactly alike otherwise must also have the same normative properties. Mark Schroeder and Knut Olav Skarsaune have recently suggested that nonnaturalist realists can respond to this supervenience challenge by taking the primary bearers of normative properties to be action kinds. This paper develops their response in two ways. First, it provides additional (...)
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  • How to be a child, and bid lions and dragons farewell: the consequences of moral error theory.David James Hunt - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    Moral error theorists argue that moral thought and discourse are systematically in error, and that nothing is, or can ever be, morally permissible, required or forbidden. I begin by discussing how error theorists arrive at this conclusion. I then argue that if we accept a moral error theory, we cannot escape a pressing problem – what should we do next, metaethically speaking? I call this problem the ‘what now?’ problem, or WNP for short. I discuss the attempts others have made (...)
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  • Survenance et Fondation Morales.Olivier Massin - 2019 - In Ophélie Desmons, Stéphane Lemaire & Patrick Turmel (eds.), Manuel de Métaéthique. Paris, France: Hermann. pp. 271-306.
    On entend par survenance moral la thèse selon laquelle, nécessairement, si deux entités sont parfaitement similaires en ce qui concerne toutes leurs propriétés non-morales, elles sont parfaitement similaires en ce qui concerne leurs propriétés morales. En dépit de son apparente simplicité, cette définition pose de nombreux problèmes. Ainsi, alors que la survenance morale est souvent présentée comme l’une des rares thèses faisant consensus en philosophie, il s’avère à y regarder de près que son interprétation varie grandement selon les philosophes. Trois (...)
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  • Non-factualism and Evaluative Supervenience.Nils Franzén - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (6):1969-1990.
    Supervenience in metaethics is the notion that there can be no moral dif-ference between two acts, persons or events without some non-moral difference underlying it. If St. Francis is a good man, there could not be a man exactly like St. Francis in non-evaluative respects that is not good. The phenomenon was first systematically discussed by R. M. Hare (1952), who argued that realists about evaluative properties struggle to account for it. As is well established, Hare, and following him, Simon (...)
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  • Blackburn’s Supervenience Argument Against Moral Realism: Revisited.Harold W. Noonan - 2020 - Metaphysica 21 (1):151-165.
    Blackburn argues against naturalistic moral realism. He argues that there is no conceptual entailment from satisfying a naturalistic predicate to satisfying a moral predicate. But the moral is conceptually supervenient on the natural. However, this conjunction of conceptual supervenience with lack of conceptual entailment is something the non-realist can explain, but the realist cannot. I argue first that Blackburn’s best formulation of his challenge is his first one. Subsequently he reformulates it as a demand for a ‘ban on mixed worlds’. (...)
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  • Supervenience, Repeatability, & Expressivism.Emad H. Atiq - 2019 - Noûs 54 (3):578-599.
    Expressivists traditionally explain normative supervenience by saying it is a conceptual truth. I argue against this tradition in two steps. First, I show the modal claim that stands in need of explanation has been stated imprecisely. Classic arguments in metaethics for normative supervenience and those that rely on it as a premise presuppose a constraint on the supervenience base that is rarely (if ever) made explicit: the repeatability of the non-normative properties on which the normative supervenes. Non-normative properties are repeatable (...)
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  • Grounding the normative: a problem for structured non-naturalism.Justin Morton - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (1):173-196.
    Many non-naturalists about the normative want to endorse the view that some normative facts hold in virtue of both non-normative facts and normative principles. In this paper, I argue that non-naturalism is inconsistent with this thesis, due to the nature of normative principles and their grounds. I then consider two ways in which the nonnaturalist position could be modified or expanded to solve this problem. No solution, it turns out, is without its problems. I end by considering how the non-naturalist (...)
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  • Supervenience, Dependence, Disjunction.Lloyd Humberstone - forthcoming - Logic and Logical Philosophy:1.
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  • Is Irreducible Normativity Impossibly Queer?Teemu Toppinen - 2016 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 13 (4):437-460.
    I argue that Jonas Olson’s argument from irreducible normativity is not a secure basis for an argument for error theory (section 1) and that a better basis is provided by the argument from supervenience, which has more bite against non-naturalist moral realism than Olson is willing to allow (section 2). I suggest there may be a view which can allow for the existence of irreducibly normative facts while remaining unaffected by the kinds of arguments that work against non-naturalist realism. This (...)
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  • Mahdollisuus, välttämättömyys ja luodut ikuiset totuudet Descartesin filosofiassa.Forsman Jan - 2016 - In Ilkka Niiniluoto, Tuomas Tahko & Teemu Toppinen (eds.), Mahdollisuus. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland. pp. 120-129.
    Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen Descartesin ikuisten totuuksien välttämättömyyteen liittyvää ongelmaa. Teoksessa Mietiskelyjä ensimmäisestä filosofiasta (1641–1642) Descartes nostaa esiin käsitteen ikuisista totuuksista, käyttäen esimerkkinään kolmiota. Kolmion muuttumattomaan ja ikuiseen luontoon kuuluu esimerkiksi, että sen kolme kulmaa ovat yhteenlaskettuna 180°. Se on totta kolmiosta, vaikka yhtään yksittäistä kolmiota ei olisi koskaan ollutkaan olemassa. Eräät ajattelemieni asioiden piirteet ovat siis Descartesin mukaan ajattelustani riippumattomia. Ikuisia totuuksia ovat ainakin matemaattiset ja geometriset tosiseikat sekä ristiriidan laki. Samoin Descartesin kuuluisa lause “ajattelen, siis olen” lukeutuu ikuisten totuuksien (...)
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  • Essentially Grounded Non-Naturalism and Normative Supervenience.Toppinen Teemu - 2018 - Topoi 37 (4):645-653.
    Non-naturalism – roughly the view that normative properties and facts are sui generis and incompatible with a purely scientific worldview – faces a difficult challenge with regard to explaining why it is that the normative features of things supervene on their natural features. More specifically: non-naturalists have trouble explaining the necessitation relations, whatever they are, that hold between the natural and the normative. My focus is on Stephanie Leary's recent response to the challenge, which offers an attempted non-naturalism-friendly explanation for (...)
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  • The Supervenience Challenge to Non-Naturalism.Pekka Väyrynen - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 170-84.
    This paper is a survey of the supervenience challenge to non-naturalist moral realism. I formulate a version of the challenge, consider the most promising non-naturalist replies to it, and suggest that no fully effective reply has yet been given.
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  • Can Moral Principles Explain Supervenience?Aaron Elliott - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (4):629-659.
    The distribution of moral properties supervenes on the distribution of natural properties, and this provides a puzzle for non-naturalism: what could explain supervenience if moral properties are not natural properties? Enoch claims moral principles explain supervenience. But this solution is incomplete without an account of what moral principles and properties are, and what relation holds between them. This paper begins to develop such an account by exploring analogous issues for Realism about Laws of nature in philosophy of science. Appealing to (...)
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  • What is at Stake in Debates among Normative Realists?Tristram McPherson - 2013 - Noûs 49 (1):123-146.
    One class of central debates between normative realists appears to concern whether we should be naturalists or reductionists about the normative. However, metaethical discussion of naturalism and reduction is often inconsistent, murky, or uninformative. This can make it hard to see why commitments relative to these metaphysical categories should matter to normative realists. This paper aims to clarify the nature of these categories, and their significance in debates between normative realists. I develop and defend what I call the joint-carving taxonomy, (...)
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  • Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism.Mark van Roojen - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2013 (1):1-88.
    Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, noncognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, noncognitivists think that moral statements have no truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-cognitivists, when people (...)
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  • A Defense of Hume's Dictum.Cameron Gibbs - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...)
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  • Hybrid Non-Naturalism Does Not Meet the Supervenience Challenge.David Faraci - 2017 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12 (3).
    It is widely agreed that normative properties supervene on natural properties. Non-naturalists face a distinctive challenge to explain this relation. Stephanie Leary argues that non-naturalists can meet this explanatory demand by positing the existence of hybrid normative properties. I argue that this proposal does not meet the supervenience challenge.
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  • Moral supervenience.Anandi Hattiangadi - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):592-615.
    It is widely held, even among nonnaturalists, that the moral supervenes on the natural. This is to say that for any two metaphysically possible worlds w and w′, and for any entities x in w and y in w′, any isomorphism between x and y that preserves the natural properties preserves the moral properties. In this paper, I put forward a conceivability argument against moral supervenience, assuming non-naturalism. First, I argue that though utilitarianism may be true, and the trolley driver (...)
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  • Some Varieties of Metaethical Relativism.Ragnar Francén Olinder - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (10):529-540.
    This opinionated survey article discusses a relativist view in metaethics that we can call Appraiser-standard Relativism. According to this view, the truth value of moral judgments varies depending on the moral standard of the appraiser – that is, someone who makes or assesses the judgments. On this view, when two persons judge that, say, lying is always morally wrong; one of the judgments might be true and the other false. The paper presents various forms of this view, contrasts it against (...)
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  • Evilism, moral rationalism, and reasons internalism.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2015 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 77 (1):3-24.
    I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law’s (Relig Stud 46(3):353–373, 2010) evil god challenge.
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  • Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence.Jonas Olson - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.
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  • Moral Relativism in Context.James R. Beebe - 2010 - Noûs 44 (4):691-724.
    Consider the following facts about the average, philosophically untrained moral relativist: (1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality (...)
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  • Does Shafer-Landau have a problem with supervenience?Robert Mabrito - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 126 (2):297 - 311.
    This article focuses on one well-known argument in favor of expressivism and against realism that Shafer-Landau considers, namely Blackburn's supervenience argument. Shafer-Landau believes that he can successfully defend moral realism against Blackburn's argument. I have my doubts about whether this is so.
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  • A Logical Response to Blackburn's Supervenience Argument.Jorn Sonderholm - 2007 - SATS 8 (1):178-185.
    Simon Blackburn’s supervenience argument against moral realism has been widely discussed since its first appearance more than thirty years ago. A number of different suggestions have been made as to how the argument can be countered. In a review of Blackburn’s Spreading the Word, Crispin Wright comments on the argument and rather briefly points out some technical difficulties with it that arise from the formula used in the definition of supervenience. In this paper, I try to show, building on Wright’s (...)
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  • Expressivism, constructivism, and the supervenience of moral properties.Chris Meyers - 2012 - Philosophical Explorations 15 (1):17-31.
    One of the most familiar arguments for expressivist metaethics is the claim that the rival theory, moral realism, cannot provide a satisfying explanation of why moral properties supervene on natural properties. Non-cognitivism, however, has its own problems explaining supervenience. Expressivists try to establish supervenience either by second-order disapproval of type-inconsistent moral evaluations or by pragmatic considerations. But disapproval of inconsistency is merely a contingent attitude that people happen to have; and pragmatic justification does not allow for appraisers to take their (...)
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  • Mixed up about mixed worlds? Understanding Blackburn’s supervenience argument.Cole Mitchell - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (12):2903-2925.
    Simon Blackburn’s supervenience argument—focusing on the mysterious “ban on mixed worlds”—is still subject to a variety of conflicting interpretations. In this paper, I hope to provide a defense of the argument that clarifies both the argument and the objections it must overcome. Many of the extant objections, I will argue, fail to engage the argument in its true form. And to counter the more compelling objections, it will be necessary to bring in additional argumentation that Blackburn himself does not clearly (...)
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  • Aristotle and supervenience.Victor Caston - 1993 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 31 (S1):107-135.
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  • Moral Supervenience: A Defence of Blackburn's Argument.Alexander Miller - 2017 - Dialectica 71 (4):581-601.
    In the 1970s and 1980s, Simon Blackburn published a number of much-discussed works in which he argued that the supervenience of the moral on the natural generates a serious problem for moral realism, a problem which his own brand of moral projectivism can avoid. As we will see below, Blackburn construed moral supervenience in terms of what is known as weak supervenience. Partly in response to Blackburn, a number of philosophers have argued that weak supervenience is too weak to capture (...)
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  • Reply to Wilson Mendonça’s “Supervenience arguments against robust moral realism”.Rafael Graebin Vogelmann - 2019 - Filosofia Unisinos 20 (3).
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  • Moral Mistakes.Zed Adams - 2010 - Philosophical Investigations 34 (1):1-21.
    Is it possible to show that a moral claim is mistaken without taking a moral stand with regard to it? A striking number of contemporary metaethicists suppose that it is. In this paper, I argue against a prominent line of support for this supposition. My goal is to cast suspicion on a general tendency to think that the epistemic standing of moral claims is something that can be assessed from outside the practices of making and critically evaluating moral judgements. I (...)
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  • Swinburne on the Euthyphro Dilemma. Can Supervenience Save Him?Simin Rahimi - 2008 - Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 13 (1):17-29.
    Modern philosophers normally either reject the „divine command theory” of ethics and argue that moral duties are independent of any commands, or make it dependent on God's commands but like Robert Adams modify their theory and identify moral duties in terms of the commands of a loving God. Adams regards this theory as metaphysically necessary. That is, if it is true, it is true in all possible worlds. But Swinburne's position is unprecedented insofar as he regards moral truths as analytically (...)
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  • Assimilative Moral Realism and Supervenience.Ken Yasenchuk - 1995 - Dialogue 34 (1):75-.
    David Brink has recently argued for the “parity” of ethics and the sciences. While the parity claim alone might be metaphysically neutral, Brink favours a form of ethical naturalism on which moral properties “are” natural properties, just as non-moral macrophysical properties “are” the microphysical states that compose them. Brink supports this claim by showing that both types of properties share certain important features: specifically, that both may be constituted, supervening and synthetically necessitated. I shall argue that notwithstanding these common features, (...)
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  • La sopravvenienza estetica.Alfonso Ottobre - 2007 - Rivista di Estetica 36 (36):209-231.
    All’inizio degli anni Sessanta Frank Sibley pubblicava un articolo dal titolo inequivocabile, Aesthetic and Non Aesthetic; in esso, riprendendo alcuni spunti presenti in un altro suo celebre articolo, precedente di pochi anni, il filosofo americano affrontava esplicitamente il problema del rapporto tra giudizi, qualità, descrizioni e concetti estetici e non estetici. Aveva così inizio un dibattito tra i più fecondi sviluppatisi in seno all’estetica analitica, dibattito che ancora oggi è al ce...
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