Title: "Moral supervenience and non-naturalism: assessing Jackson’s challenge"

Thursday 16^th February 2023

5pm in S2.77 and on TeamsLink opens in a new window.

 Everyone welcome!

 Abstract:

Frank Jackson has argued that, given that every moral predicate is necessarily coextensive with a natural one, moral properties are identical to natural ones. Against this, Jussi Suikkanen has responded with an appeal to Leibniz’s Law, which states that any two identical entities share all of their properties. If moral properties were just natural properties, then moral properties would share all of their higher-order properties with natural ones. A moral non-naturalist – someone who thinks moral properties are not identical with natural properties – can then argue for distinctive higher-order properties that set the moral realm apart. Classically, non-naturalist moral epistemology has asserted that moral knowledge is obtained in a unique way: by reflection, rather than empirical investigation. The non-naturalist can then argue that moral properties have distinctive epistemic properties of their own. I will argue that this cannot be used as a reply against Jackson.