Abstract

Intuitively, it seems that we can easily distinguish which norms are moral and which are not. For example, regulations on killing clearly belong in the moral category while rules governing "casual Fridays" do not. Moral norms seem to have an authoritative force that other norms (e.g. conventional, epistemological, aesthetic, etc) lack. I argue that this intuitive picture is flawed. In my dissertation, I argue against moral norm essentialism. The view that among norms, there is a feature or set of features, M, that all and only moral norms possess. This is not to say that norms, generally construed, do not exist or have certain features in common, only that moral norms are not in a special category of their own. I consider three empirically informed accounts of what makes moral norms unique and find that none are successful. Ultimately, I advocate an anti-essentialism about moral norms. This kind of anti-essentialism is a negative thesis: there is no feature or set of features that all and only moral norms possess. Hence, there is no unified set of norms that are distinctly moral norms. Each MNE view I consider is not successful, and while I do not think my arguments against each one are conclusive - a lot more empirical work needs to be done in order to fully support my arguments - I do think that my arguments taken together undermine the plausibility of moral norm essentialism. There do seem to be different features of norms (e.g. some are more serious than others, some tend to be accompanied by emotion), but there isn't one particular feature or cluster of features that can adequately capture our current categories of norms