Vayrynen, PP (2013) Grounding and Normative Explanation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 87 (1). 155 - 178. ISSN 1467-8349
Abstract
This paper concerns non-causal normative explanations such as ‘This act is wrong because/in virtue of__’ (where the blank is often filled out in non-normative terms, such as ‘it causes pain’). The familiar intuition that normative facts aren't brute or ungrounded but anchored in non-normative facts seems to be in tension with the equally familiar idea that no normative fact can be fully explained in purely non-normative terms. I ask whether the tension could be resolved by treating the explanatory relation in normative explanations as the sort of ‘grounding’ relation that receives extensive discussion in recent metaphysics. I argue that this would help only under controversial assumptions about the nature of normative facts, and perhaps not even then. I won't try to resolve the tension, but draw a distinction between two different sorts of normative explanations (one concerning ‘bearers’, the other concerning ‘sources’ of normativity) which helps to identify constraints on a resolution. One distinctive constraint on normative explanations in particular might be that they should be able to play a role in normative justification.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2013, Wiley-Blackwell. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com |
Keywords: | Grounding; Explanation; Normativity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 Nov 2013 10:36 |
Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2014 02:50 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2013.00224.x |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2013.00224.x |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:76770 |