Why bother with so what?

Philosophical Studies:1-19 (forthcoming)
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Abstract

I address a family of objections I label the _So What?_ objection to robust non-naturalist realism (or, just non-naturalism). This objection concludes that non-naturalism fails to identify the _moral properties_ in virtue of failing to explain why non-natural properties would have all the features we expect _moral properties_ to have and can be extended to provide the conclusion that the non-naturalist is therefore immoral. I argue that _So What?_ is question-begging because it disallows non-naturalists their central theoretical claim: there are ethical properties iff they are fundamental properties (and, in virtue of that, non-natural). I then diagnose the error anti-non-naturalists make explicitly: those who object to non-naturalism along the lines of _So What?_ either fail to understand precisely what the theory claims or fail to understand non-naturalist motivations for going in for that theory.

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N. D. Cannon
Florida State University

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1958 - Philosophy 33 (124):1 - 19.
“How to Be a Moral Realist.Richard Boyd - 1988 - In G. Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism. Cornell University Press. pp. 181-228.
Dispositional Theories of Value.Michael Smith, David Lewis & Mark Johnston - 1989 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 63 (1):89-174.
Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Believe it.Ronald Dworkin - 1996 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (2):87-139.

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