"Just No Damned Good"

Description

Moral realism is sometimes defended by arguing that “moral facts” provide the best explanation for events or situations in the world. Sometimes the events and situations that are allegedly explained in this way are beliefs about value or moral beliefs. These arguments pose special problems. But there is also a more general difficulty. The argument that moral facts sometimes provide the best explanation for other facts in the world is undercut by the logic of supervenience. Moral properties apply, when they do, by virtue of other properties on which they supervene. But in every case where the instantiation of a moral property is supposed to explain something, the explanandum is equally well accounted for by the state of affairs upon which the alleged moral explanans is supervenenient. Or, leaving supervenience aside, any moral statement that we make is (among other things) a way of drawing attention to the explanatory power of a non-moral proposition.

Source Publication

Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael Moore

Source Editors/Authors

Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, Stephen J. Morse

Publication Date

2016

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