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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

O X F O R D S TU DI E S IN M E TA E T H I C S
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Oxford Studies
in Metaethics
Volume 13

Edited by
RUSS SHAFER-LANDAU

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

3
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Contents

List of Contributors vii

Introduction ix

1. Why Believe in Normative Supervenience? 1

Debbie Roberts
2. Non-Naturalism Gone Quasi: Explaining the Necessary
Connections between the Natural and the Normative 25
Teemu Toppinen
3. Non-Descriptive Relativism: Adding Options to the
Expressivist Marketplace 48
Matthew S. Bedke
4. How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality through
Acquaintance and Deference 71
Errol Lord
5. Belief Pills and the Possibility of Moral Epistemology 98
Neil Sinclair
6. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation 123
Adam Lerner
7. It Ain’t Necessarily So 145
Nomy Arpaly
8. Moral Uncertainty and Value Comparison 161
Amelia Hicks
9. What is (In)coherence? 184
Alex Worsnip
10. The Authority of Formality 207
Jack Woods
11. Skepticism About Ought Simpliciter 230
Derek Baker
12. Authoritatively Normative Concepts 253
Tristram McPherson
13. The Rationality of Ends 278
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir

Index 301
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

List of Contributors

Nomy Arpaly is Professor of Philosophy, Brown University.

Derek Baker is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Lingnan University.
Matthew S. Bedke is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of British
Columbia.
Amelia Hicks is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Kansas State University.
Adam Lerner is Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in the Center for Bioethics,
New York University.
Errol Lord is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania.
Tristram McPherson is Associate Professor of Philosophy, the Ohio State
University.
Debbie Roberts is Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Edinburgh.
Neil Sinclair is Associate Professor in Philosophy, University of Nottingham.
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir is Associate Professor, Tufts University.
Teemu Toppinen is Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki.
Jack Woods is University Academic Fellow in Mathematical Philosophy, University
of Leeds.
Alex Worsnip is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Introduction
Russ Shafer-Landau

This iteration of Oxford Studies in Metaethics starts off with a pair of essays
that focus on the relations between the normative and the non-normative.
Almost every philosopher who has written about these relations has endorsed
one or more of the supervenience theses that seek to forge a relation between
the two domains. Debbie Roberts, however, argues that such efforts are
bound to misfire, at least so long as they are committed to this familiar thesis:
(NS*) As a matter of conceptual necessity, whenever something has a normative
property, it has a base property or collection of base properties that metaphysically
necessitates the normative one. She reviews the most important arguments for
this thesis and finds each of them wanting. Her efforts, if successful, should
bring cheer especially to the hearts of non-naturalist realists, whose position
has long been thought vulnerable as a result of its alleged inability to adequately
explain the (presumed) truth of NS*.
Teemu Toppinen notes that non-naturalist views need not be realist
ones—all that’s required to enter the camp is the commitment to the
notion, roughly, that normative properties and facts are sui generis. Since
quasi-realists allow for the tenability of talk of such properties and facts, it is
possible to develop a quasi-realist form of non-naturalism. This is what
Toppinen seeks to do, using the supervenience of the normative on the
natural as his case study. Toppinen helpfully discusses how the postulation
of metaphysically necessary connections between the natural and the nor-
mative raise an explanatory challenge for realist non-naturalism. Many have
thought that non-cognitivists have the upper hand here, but Toppinen also
raises concerns for quasi-realist efforts to secure such an advantage. Still, he
ends up encouraging us to understand the explanatory challenge in the light
of a quasi-realist take on the relevant necessity judgments. Once we do so, he
argues, we will see that this challenge takes the shape of a first-order normative
issue—one that can be satisfactorily answered per quasi-realist strictures.
Quasi-realist expressivism has dominated the field of non-descriptivist
views—those that reject the realist’s contention that normative thought
and discourse function primarily to describe aspects of our world. Matthew
S. Bedke’s piece is meant to expand non-descriptivist metaethical options
beyond the expressivist canon. He develops a form of relativism that begins
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x Introduction

by taking for granted various expressivist claims about the shortcomings

of descriptivist views, while also seeking to sidestep some of the perennial
worries that have beset expressivist positions. His entry identifies a novel
family of relativistic metaethical theories that aim to explain the action-guiding
qualities of normative thought and language. The general strategy is to consider
different relations language might bear to a given content, where descriptivity
(or its absence) is located in these relations, rather than in the expression of
states of mind, or in a special kind of content. Bedke sketches the outline of
one such view, which posits two different content-fixing cognitive roles—
one descriptive, the other non-descriptive—for linguistic items.
Our next two entries focus on issues in epistemology that have gained
some prominence in the last decade. Errol Lord considers issues regarding
the appropriateness of forming one’s moral beliefs by deferring to those held
by others. Lord investigates this question by drawing connections with the
parallel issue in aesthetics. In both areas, many have thought it infelicitous,
at best, to form moral or aesthetic beliefs just by taking over the views of
others. As Lord notes, a popular explanation of this disquietude in aesthetics
appeals to the importance of aesthetic acquaintance. This kind of explan-
ation has not been explored much in ethics. Lord defends a unified account
of what is amiss about ethical and aesthetic deference by appealing to the
claim that such deference does not allow us to come to possess the full range
of reasons provided by the ethical and aesthetic facts. It has this feature
because it doesn’t acquaint us with ethical and aesthetic facts. That said,
Lord does not believe that there is any general obligation to refrain from
engaging in such deference, and so concludes by developing a moderate
optimism about the propriety of ethical and aesthetic deference.
Neil Sinclair’s entry—winner of the 2016 Marc Sanders Prize in
Metaethics—focuses on evolutionary debunking arguments, and seeks to
show that such arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely
on the premise that moral judgments can be given evolutionary explan-
ations that do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is
to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral
judgments are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this
gap, Sinclair focuses on Richard Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that
‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the
mechanisms . . . which give rise to moral judgements’. Sinclair argues that
whether there is such an account depends on what we may permissibly
assume about moral truth. He further argues that it is reasonable to make
assumptions that allow for the possibility of moral epistemologies that
yield some epistemic success. The debunker must show that these assump-
tions are unreasonable, but Sinclair believes that the only ways to do so will
render such debunking arguments superfluous.
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Introduction xi

Adam Lerner’s entry focuses on what he calls the Puzzle of Pure Moral
Motivation. The puzzle is an explanatory one. According to Lerner, what
needs explaining is the fact that ordinary people act rationally when they
engage in pure moral inquiry, which occurs when one inquires into some-
thing’s moral features without also investigating its non-moral features.
Lerner argues that each of the standard views in metaethics has trouble
providing such an explanation. He argues that a metaethical view can
provide such an explanation only if it meets two constraints. The first is
that it allows ordinary moral inquirers to know the essences of moral
properties. The second is that the essence of each moral property makes it
rational to care for its own sake whether that property is instantiated.
Nomy Arpaly’s contribution takes up one of the classic philosophical
questions: what is the relationship between being good and living a flour-
ishing life? Is virtue sufficient for such a life? Necessary? Neither? Arpaly
focuses her attention on contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theories,
which argue that the virtuous life constitutes a flourishing life, or is at
least the primary element required for living such a life. Arpaly notes her
agreement with Rosalind Hursthouse, who claims that a policy of being
morally virtuous is a better bet than moral vice for the person who wants to
flourish. Still, Arpaly argues that the neo-Aristotelian project is not ultim-
ately successful, in that it cannot rule out the possibility that a morally
mediocre life is better than a morally virtuous or a vicious one.
Amelia Hicks takes up an issue that has occupied philosophers only
relatively recently—that of how to respond rationally to cases of moral
uncertainty. She employs as foils the views of several philosophers who
argue that decision-theoretic frameworks for rational choice under risk fail
to provide prescriptions for choice in cases of moral uncertainty. These
philosophers conclude that there are no rational norms that are sensitive
to a decision-maker’s moral uncertainty. Hicks disagrees. She argues that
one sometimes has a rational obligation to take one’s moral uncertainty into
account in the course of moral deliberation. To get to this conclusion, she
first argues that one’s moral beliefs can affect what it’s rational for one to
choose. She then addresses what she calls the problem of value comparison: the
problem of being unable to determine the expected moral value of one’s
actions. Some philosophers argue that the problem of value comparison
entails that there are no rational norms governing choice under moral
uncertainty. Hicks devotes the remainder of her chapter to arguing that
this inference is mistaken.
Alex Worsnip next considers the nature of coherence requirements. His
focus is not on the content of such requirements, or with the question of
whether agents necessarily have reason to comply with them. Rather, he takes
a step back and focuses on the metanormative status of such requirements.
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xii Introduction

His chapter focuses on both metaphysical and epistemological issues.

Metaphysically: what is it for two or more mental states to be jointly
incoherent, such that they are banned by a coherence requirement? In virtue
of what are some putative requirements genuine and others not? Epistemo-
logically: how are we to know which coherence requirements are genuine and
which aren’t? Worsnip offers a dispositional account designed to answer
these questions. On his view, the incoherence of a set of attitudes is a matter
of its being constitutive of the attitudes in question that any agent who holds
these attitudes jointly is disposed, when conditions of full transparency are
met, to give at least one of them up.
Jack Woods next takes up the ages-old problem of why we should do as
morality requires. Ever since Foot’s seminal (1972) article, much of the
work done on this question has sought to answer the question by reference
to a comparison between the strictures of morality and etiquette. Woods
follows suit. As he sees it, etiquette and other merely formal normative
standards, such as legality, honor, and rules of games, are taken less seriously
than they should be. While these standards aren’t intrinsically reason-
providing in the way morality is often taken to be, they do play an important
role in our practical lives: we collectively treat them as important for
assessing our behavior and as licensing particular forms of sanction for
violations. Woods develops an account of the normativity of formal stand-
ards according to which the role they play in our practical lives explains a
distinctive kind of reason to obey them. Etiquette (for instance) is important
to us; therefore we have this special kind of reason to be polite. We also have
this kind of reason to be moral because morality is important to us. As
Woods see it, this parallel suggests that the importance we assign to morality
is insufficient to justify its claim to be intrinsically reason-giving.
Our next entries are a nicely paired duo that take diametrically opposed
positions about the coherence and normative authority of the all-things-
considered ought. Derek Baker starts us off with a skeptical appraisal. As he
notes, there are many different oughts—the moral one, a prudential ought,
an epistemic ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These different
oughts can prescribe incompatible actions; what one morally ought to do
may be different from what one legally ought to do, for instance. It has
seemed to most philosophers, and to most ordinary folk, that we can at least
sometimes compare the normative force of these incompatible prescriptions
and identify what one ought to do, simpliciter. To take an allegedly easy case:
when a very weighty moral duty conflicts with a negligible prudential one,
the moral duty wins out—one ought, all things considered, to comply with
one’s moral duty in such a case. Baker disagrees. He argues that there is just
one coherent notion of an ought simpliciter, and that it brings with it first-
order normative commitments that are so implausible as to make it more
attractive to abandon the all-things-considered ought.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Introduction xiii

Tristram McPherson disagrees. He seeks to provide an analysis of the

concept of the authoritatively normative practical ought, a plausible candi-
date for what Baker dubs the ‘ought simpliciter’. His analysis appeals to the
constitutive norms for the activity of non-arbitrary selection. McPherson
argues that this analysis permits an attractive and substantive explanation of
what the distinctive normative authority of this concept amounts to. He
contrasts his account with more familiar constitutivist theories, and shows
how it can answer ‘schmagency’-style objections to constitutivist explanations
of normativity. That said, he takes his analysis to be metaethically ecumen-
ical, and concludes by seeking to explain how his account can help realists,
error theorists, and fictionalists address central challenges to their views.
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir wraps up this volume by considering the long-
disputed question of whether an agent’s selection of her ends can be rational.
She answers in the affirmative, arguing that agents can be more or less
rational when selecting even final ends. She does this by reference to a
conception of practical rationality as an excellence in the exercise of cogni-
tive capacities in one’s practical endeavors. Svavarsdóttir seeks to move
beyond traditional fault lines in this debate by arguing that Humeans and
anti-Humeans alike should accept her view. She seeks to refocus their
disagreement on the question of whether an excellence in the exercise of
cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors invariably yields a config-
uration of attitudes directed to ends that must make good sense to the agent.
Along the way, she offers a new (albeit incomplete) account of ends. She also
motivates her preferred cognitive excellence conception of practical ration-
ality, contrasting it with conceptions of practical rationality as responsive-
ness to normative reasons or as coherence of attitudes and actions.
The chapters collected here are, with one exception, much-revised
versions of papers given at the 2nd annual Chapel Hill Metaethics Work-
shop in 2016. I’d like to thank the UNC Philosophy Department and the
Parr Center for Ethics for generous support of the workshop, and to give a
major shout-out to events coordinator extraordinaire Katie Bunyea, who
handled the logistics of the three-day workshop so superbly. Over 110
submissions came in for eleven spots on the program. My sincere thanks to
the terrific philosophers who helped to vet them: John Brunero, Matthew
Chrisman, Dale Dorsey, Julia Markovits, Sarah McGrath, and David
Plunkett. Once the workshop had concluded and our authors had the
opportunity to revise their papers, Peter Momtchiloff, all-star editor at
OUP, recruited two reviewers whose extremely detailed and insightful
comments made these very good papers even better. One of these
reviewers prefers anonymity, but Stephanie Leary has kindly allowed me
to publicly acknowledge my gratitude for the tremendous help she pro-
vided our authors.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

1
Why Believe in Normative
Supervenience?
Debbie Roberts

According to many, that the normative supervenes on the non-normative is

a truism of normative discourse. If one person is morally good and another
not, they must differ in some other respect. If two paintings are qualitatively
alike in all other respects they must be aesthetically alike. And if one person is
justified in believing that p and another not, there must be some other
difference between them. It’s commonly assumed that ‘other’ should be
interpreted as non-moral, non-aesthetic, and non-epistemic, respectively.¹
To my knowledge there is only one epistemologist in the literature who
doubts the epistemic supervenience claim, Keith Lehrer.² Those who have
doubts about aesthetic supervenience have doubts not about the supervenience
claim itself but only about how widely the supervenience base should be
construed.³ We find more dissenters in metaethics, but still only a few.⁴ This
makes it plausible to say, with Gideon Rosen, that the claim that the normative
supervenes on the non-normative is the ‘least controversial’ thesis in metaethics.⁵
I argue that those committed to the more specific moral, aesthetic, and
epistemic supervenience theses should also hold (NS*):
(NS*): As a matter of conceptual necessity, whenever something has a
normative property, it has a base property or collection of base properties
that metaphysically necessitates the normative one.⁶

¹ I take that normative domains include ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics. This is
not meant to be exhaustive. It is plausible, e.g., that the prudential is normative. I’m using
‘normative’ to include both the evaluative and the deontic.
² Lehrer (1997).
³ See, e.g., the exchange between Wicks (1988, 1992) and Zangwill (1992, 1994).
⁴ Griffin (1992), Dancy (1995), Raz (2000), Sturgeon (2009), Hills (2009), Hattiangadi
(m.s.), and Rosen (m.s.).
⁵ Rosen (m.s) pp. 1–3.
⁶ A base property is one that is not normativity involving (McPherson 2012).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

2 Debbie Roberts

(NS*) is closely linked to a grounding claim: that normative facts obtain in

virtue of non-normative facts. Many hold that this dependence relation
explains (NS*).⁷
My main aim is to show that none of the available arguments establish
(NS*), or indeed the relevant epistemic, aesthetic, and moral supervenience
theses. (NS*) is not a conceptual truth.⁸ This has considerable dialectical
importance.
One interesting upshot is that it affords non-reductivists and non-
naturalists a novel way of resisting certain prominent supervenience-based
objections to their views, including objections that formulate supervenience
as a purely metaphysical thesis.⁹
I explain the relevant supervenience claim in Section 1.1 and outline the
relation between this claim and a normative grounding claim in Section 1.2.
In Section 1.3 I explain two possible views, radical holism and irreducible
thickness, that have starring roles in my argument. Section 1.4 lays out
the different arguments for supervenience, and my objections to them.
I consider key implications in Section 1.5 and conclude in Section 1.6.

1.1. SUPERVENIENCE OF THE NORMATIVE

The basic idea of supervenience is a modal one, captured by the slogan

‘no A difference without a B difference’. This can be made more precise by
specifying how the modal strength is to be interpreted (metaphysical, con-
ceptual, nomological) and what the thesis quantifies over (individuals,
regions, entire possible worlds), and whether the distribution of A and
B properties is restricted only within possible worlds (weak) or across possible
worlds (strong).
An initial statement of the relevant claim is the following individual,
strong supervenience thesis:

⁷ See, e.g., Smith (2004), Sibley (1959), Van Cleve (1985).

⁸ My conclusion is similar to Sturgeon (2009). However, Sturgeon does not consider
the arguments given for supervenience. His strategy is to argue that there is no super-
venience thesis that is not parochial (i.e. acceptable from some metaethical view(s) but not
others). (NS*) is similar to the thesis McPherson (2012) argues, in response to Sturgeon,
should be common ground for at least metaethical realists. My version is one anti-realists
would also be likely to accept, on the ascriptive understanding of it in the case of some
expressivist views.
⁹ Non-naturalists are non-reductivists, but not necessarily the reverse. The objections
are the ‘reduction’ objection, e.g. Jackson (1998), and the ‘explanation’ objection, which
applies only to non-naturalism, e.g. Dreier (1992), McPherson (2012).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Why Believe in Normative Supervenience? 3

(NS): As a matter of conceptual necessity, whenever something has a

normative property, it has a non-normative property or collection of
properties that metaphysically necessitate(s) the normative one.
I refine (NS) in Section 1.1.1. Nonetheless, (NS) is useful for my first
purpose in this section, which is to show that those committed to epistemic,
moral, and aesthetic supervenience theses should also be committed to the
normative supervenience thesis.

1.1.1. Epistemic, Aesthetic, Moral, and Normative Supervenience

(ES): Necessarily, if an individual S has epistemic property E, then
S has some non-epistemic property N such that, necessarily, any
individual S* with N also has E.¹⁰
(AS): For any possible worlds, w and w*, and for any artworks x and
y, if x in w has all of the same non-aesthetic properties as y in w*, then x
in w is aesthetically indistinguishable from y in w*.¹¹
(MS): As a matter of conceptual necessity, whenever something has
a moral property, it has a non-moral property that necessitates the
moral one.¹²
Commonly, in both metaethics and in epistemology, supervenience is
understood as individual and strong, holding with metaphysical necessity,
i.e. the second ‘necessarily’ in (ES) and the ‘necessitates’ in (MS) are to be
understood in terms of metaphysical necessity.
The aesthetic case is less clear. It is common to understand aesthetic
supervenience as an individual supervenience thesis. However, it is more
controversial whether the modal strength of aesthetic supervenience is
strong or weak (and often this is left unspecified).¹³ This controversy is
connected to the main debate about aesthetic supervenience, namely which
properties aesthetic properties supervene on. Once we include extrinsic,
relational properties in the base, including human sensibilities, those
attracted to the supervenience thesis are likely to accept the strong version,
that is, (AS).

¹⁰ Kallestrup and Prichard (forthcoming) p. 1. ¹¹ Hick (2012) p. 309.

¹² Dreier (m.s.) p. 2. All these formulations state an ontological connection between
properties, not a connection between types of judgments. However, they are relatively
easily recast as ascriptive. Ascriptive version of the points I make later will hold against
these versions (one of the arguments I consider is the main argument given for ascriptive
supervenience).
¹³ See e.g. Levinson (1984), Bender (1987), Zangwill (1992, 1994, 2003), Fudge
(2005), Hick (2012).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

4 Debbie Roberts

So (ES), (AS), (MS), and (NS) are all strong supervenience theses. They are
individual supervenience theses about metaphysical necessities. If one holds
that the moral (epistemic, aesthetic) strongly supervenes on the non-moral
(non-epistemic, non-aesthetic) does one also then hold that the normative
strongly supervenes on the non-normative?
I take it that it is uncontroversial to hold that the moral is normative, and
the same is true for the aesthetic. The epistemic case is more controversial,
but it is still a widely held view. Moreover, the main argument for epistemic
supervenience in the literature assumes that the epistemic is normative.¹⁴
Characterizing the base is trickier. ‘Non-normative’ is not appropriate for
views, for example reductive views, that hold that normative properties are a
subset of the base properties. I address this in Section 1.1.2. There is another
issue here. The non-normative includes the non-moral, the non-epistemic,
and the non-aesthetic. Putting aside the issue of the first necessity, (NS) thus
entails each of (ES), (AS), and (MS). However, the reverse is not true since,
for example, the non-moral doesn’t obviously include the non-epistemic or
the non-aesthetic (or the non-prudential, non-intentional, and whatever
other kinds of non-normative properties there are). In theory, a defender
of (MS) could reject (NS) on the grounds that (MS) allows epistemic,
aesthetic, and other kinds of normative but non-moral properties into the
base whereas (NS) does not. Similarly for defenders of (AS) and (ES).
However, proponents of these theses typically don’t have these sorts of
views in mind. As well as using the terms ‘non-epistemic’, ‘non-aesthetic’,
and ‘non-moral’, proponents of these theses typically use terms—for
example, ‘descriptive’, ‘natural’, and ‘physical’—to refer to the superveni-
ence base that make clear that the properties they have in mind are meant to
contrast with the normative in general.¹⁵
There is one final matter to consider in resolving whether proponents of (ES),
(AS), and (MS) should accept (NS), namely the nature of the first necessity.
In metaethics, it’s widely held that an individual who fails to respect the
supervenience thesis thereby reveals themselves to be an incompetent user of
moral terms; the supervenience thesis operates as an a priori, conceptual
constraint on moral judgments.¹⁶ The first necessity is thus widely held to
be conceptual necessity. A proponent of (MS) should accept (NS).
How to understand the first necessity isn’t discussed in epistemology or
aesthetics. There is good reason to think, though, that those who hold the

¹⁴ See e.g. Sosa (1991) p. 192.

¹⁵ This contrast may not, ultimately, be a deep metaphysical one for it may turn out
that normative properties are themselves descriptive, natural, or physical.
¹⁶ This is automatically the case if the thesis in question is ascriptive. Indeed, the ascriptive
version is just supposed to be a deep truth about the nature of our normative judgments.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 25/4/2018, SPi

Why Believe in Normative Supervenience? 5

relevant supervenience theses would take the first necessity to be conceptual

necessity. It is true, as in ethics, that which specific supervenience claims
obtain may well be an a posteriori matter. However, it seems plausible that if
you think that there can be no epistemic difference without a non-epistemic
difference, or that two objects that share all of same non-aesthetic features
share the same aesthetic features, you’d be likely to think of these as a priori
conceptual truths. In support of this, note that proponents of aesthetic
supervenience do not carefully distinguish this claim from a dependence
thesis that is taken to be constitutive of aesthetic thought—someone who
fails to respect it manifests incompetence with aesthetic concepts.¹⁷ More-
over, the main arguments given for epistemic and aesthetic supervenience
are a priori.¹⁸ Thus, proponents of (AS) and (ES) should too accept (NS).¹⁹
I now turn to considering (NS) in more detail.

1.1.2. Normative Supervenience

(NS) is in need of some refinement. These refinements primarily concern
the nature of the supervenience base.
The supervenience base is variously characterized, for example, as ‘the
factual’, ‘the natural’, ‘the physical’, ‘the descriptive’, the ‘non-evaluative’,
and the ‘non-normative’. Each of these, if Nicholas Sturgeon is correct,
comes with certain costs to metanormative neutrality.²⁰ To avoid these issues
I adapt a suggestion of Tristram McPherson’s and characterize a base property
as any property that is not normativity involving.²¹ A normativity involving
property is what might be called a non-natural property. It is to be understood

¹⁷ Zangwill (2014). Sibley (1959) is often credited as the origin of discussions of

aesthetic supervenience. It is clear that what Sibley is concerned to elucidate is this sort of
dependence relation. Many have gone on to characterize this relation as aesthetic super-
venience. (In general, dependence and supervenience are not sharply distinguished in the
aesthetic or epistemic literature.)
¹⁸ Van Cleve (1985) pp. 98–9, Sosa (1991) pp. 152, 179, 192.
¹⁹ Purely metaphysical versions of these theses are of course possible. My claim is that
this is not how these theses are commonly understood.
²⁰ Sturgeon (2009). Sturgeon doesn’t consider ‘the non-normative’, but he is using
non-evaluative to mean what I mean by non-normative. Sturgeon also doesn’t consider
‘the physical’. This isn’t a common construal of the base in metaethics. Unless physicalism
is true a priori, the claim that the normative strongly supervenes on the physical is not a
conceptual truth—its truth would require that certain substantive metaphysical, physic-
alist assumptions be true.
²¹ McPherson (2012). On his version base properties are those that are not ethically
involving. Ridge (2007) suggests an alternative response to Sturgeon: that the base be
characterized as either descriptive or non-normative. I agree with McPherson that
Sturgeon’s argument puts Ridge’s proposal into doubt (2012 p. 213 n. 23). However,
my arguments also work given this disjunctive construal of the base.
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