ESPF Colloquium with Mathew Bedke (University of British Columbia) on Explaining Normative Supervenience

Abstract

There can be no normative difference without some non-normative difference. For example, you cannot have two distinct cultural practices of bullfighting where the *only* difference between the two is that one is morally wrong and the other is not. If there is a moral difference there must be some non-moral difference - whether it hurts the bull, the reaction of the crowd, the cultural significance of the practice . . . *something*. Flout this and you seem conceptually confused. And yet no metaethical theory has adequately explained this normative supervenience. Here, I argue that a certain form of normative subjectivism offers a much better explanation than those realist explanations (both naturalist and non-naturalist) that dominate the literature.

This is an online event, contact Dr Charlotte Knowles for link c.e.knowles rug.nl