The Supervenience Challengeto Non-Naturalism

Abstract

Non-naturalism is a form of moral realism —a family of views according to which there are moral truths that are objective and metaphysically robust. The distinctive claim of non-naturalist moral realism is that these moral properties, and perhaps normative properties in general, are sui generis —significantly different in kind from any other properties. Supernatural properties are tricky to distinguish from the non-natural, but are meant to include non-normative properties such as being willed by God. Supervenience is a general rather than specific supervenience claim: it only requires some or other difference in base respects for a moral difference and says nothing about which specific base properties moral properties supervene on. Thus it is neutral between various first-order theories in normative ethics. A natural alternative to the Conceptual Strategy is to seek a metaphysical explanation of Supervenience—a Metaphysical Strategy. The Metaphysical Strategy seeks to identify a necessary metaphysical connection that avoids the Conceptual Strategy problems.

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