Abstract
The claim that the normative depends on the non-normative is just as entrenched
in metanormative theory as the claim that the normative supervenes
on the non-normative. It is widely held to be a genuine truism,
a conceptual truth that operates as a constraint on competence with normative
concepts. Call it the dependence constraint. I argue that this status
is unwarranted. While it is true that the normative is dependent, it is not a
genuine truism, or a conceptual truth, that it depends on the nonnormative.
I argue for the following inadequacy claim: that when we cull
all the normative terms from our language, and so the concepts that they
stand for, what we will be left with will not necessarily be sufficient to
adequately describe, conceptualize or represent what it is that we are
supposed to be making normative judgements in virtue of. This has implications
for both ascriptive and metaphysical understandings of the dependence
constraint, and the potential to radically reshape the dialectic in
metanormative theory.