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688 SCHÖNHERR
tell us why the one necessitates the other, i.e. she cannot explain that the one supervenes on
the other.
However intuitive, the attempt to express this uneasiness by reformulating it in terms John
Mackie’s argument from moral queerness proves to be problematic. There does not seem to
be a straightforward account of ‘explanation’ that normative properties fail to satisfy, and that
all other strongly supervenient properties do satisfy. On the one hand, employing conceptual
entailment as a form explanation runs the risk of also rendering mental properties queer, and
on the other hand, the theory of grounding which requires supervenience to be explained in
terms of the base properties alone can readily be embraced by the normative realist.
Despite these difficulties, the normative realist’s defense is built on somewhat shaky
ground. First of all, ultimately, rescuing moral supervenience by referring to mental
supervenience makes the plausibility of normative realism hostage to developments in a
totally unrelated branch of philosophy. After all, philosophers might come to the conclusion
that zombies are either not conceivable and not possible, or both conceivable and possible.
In both cases, the normative realist would lose her companion. This is all the more plausible
because supervenience is not a conceptual requirement on mental properties, therefore
leaving more conceptual space for supervenience to fail in the mental case.
Concerning the second way to explain supervenience, metaphysical grounding has only very
recently been a focus of metaphysicians. And while most philosophers agree that grounding
facts have to be grounded in base-fact alone, they have not yet tackled the question whether
grounding can serve as a touchstone to separate those instances of metaphysical
necessitation that do hold from those that do not hold; an answer to this question will likely
lead to a reevaluation of whether moral supervenience is metaphysically queer.
But, for now, the normative realist has escaped the charge of queer moral supervenience.
Julius Schönherr
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Schoenherrjulius@gmail.com
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