Moral supervenience

Author(s):  
Anandi Hattiangadi
Keyword(s):  
2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK C. MURPHY

Michael J. Almeida offers two criticisms of the argument of my ‘A trilemma for divine command theory’. The first criticism is that I mistakenly assume the validity of the following inference pattern: property A is identical to property B; property B supervenes on property C; therefore, property A supervenes on property C. The second criticism is that I have misinterpreted the moral-supervenience thesis upon which I rely in making this argument. The first of Almeida's criticisms is completely untenable. The second of his criticisms casts doubt on my argument, a doubt that I can mitigate but not entirely dispel.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 592-615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anandi Hattiangadi

AbstractIt is widely held, even among nonnaturalists, that the moral supervenes on the natural. This is to say that for any two metaphysically possible worlds w and w′, and for any entities x in w and y in w′, any isomorphism between x and y that preserves the natural properties preserves the moral properties. In this paper, I put forward a conceivability argument against moral supervenience, assuming non-naturalism. First, I argue that though utilitarianism may be true, and the trolley driver is permitted to kill the one to save the five, there is a conceivable scenario that is just like our world in all natural respects, yet at which deontology is true, and the trolly driver is not permitted to kill the one to save the five. I then argue that in the special case of morality, it is possible to infer from the conceivability of such a scenario to its possibility. It follows that supervenience is false.


1995 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 240-262
Author(s):  
Nick Zangwill ◽  
Keyword(s):  


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Blake McAllister ◽  

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID E. ALEXANDER

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.


dialectica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-601
Author(s):  
Alexander Miller
Keyword(s):  

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richmond Campbell ◽  
Jennifer Woodrow

Author(s):  
Kit Fine

Gideon Rosen supports the central theses of “Varieties of Necessity” (VN) concerning the distinction between metaphysical and normative necessity and the proper formulation of moral supervenience; and he takes the defense of these theses much further than I did in my own paper and makes the case for them especially vivid and compelling. I was especially impressed by his attempt to find out what might lie ...


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document