Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-d8cs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-26T02:26:58.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Problems for moral/natural supervenience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

DAVID E. ALEXANDER
DAVID E. ALEXANDER
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Huntington University, 2303 College Avenue Huntington, IN 46750 e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

‘Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features’ (Smith (1994),22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality (DCT) is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, showing, among other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 73 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Kim, J. (1989) ‘The myth of nonreductive materialism, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 63, 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loux, M. (2002) Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (New York NY: Routledge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menzel, C. (1991) ‘Temporal actualism and singular foreknowledge’, in Tomberlin, J. (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives, V, Philosophy of Religion (Atascadero CA: Ridgeway Publishing), 475–507.Google Scholar
Miller, A. (2003) An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (Cambridge MA: Polity Press).Google Scholar
Quinn, P. (2005) ‘Theological voluntarism’, in Copp, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 63–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, R. (2003) Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. (1994) The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Smith, M. (2004) ‘Does the evaluative supervene on the natural?, in idem Ethics and the A Priori: Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zangwill, N. (2005) ‘Moore, morality, supervenience, essence, epistemology’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 42, 125–130.Google Scholar