Abstract

Ethical theories are explanatory. But do ethical theories themselves include explanatory content? The direct model holds that they do. The indirect model denies this, maintaining instead that, if true, ethical theories can be employed to provide explanations of the phenomena they concern. The distinction between these models is left implicit in much of ethics. The choice between them, however, has significant methodological and other consequences. I provide two arguments for the direct model and suggest that ethical theories do contain explanatory content. I then respond to three objections, connecting this neglected issue to others concerning property-identity and the nature of explanation and theory confirmation in ethics.