2. Domains

The concept domain is at the heart of Scanlon’s metaphilosophy in this book. This concept appears to provide the most general element of Scanlon’s understanding of metaphysics, and seems crucial to his thinking that his view is ontologically thin. Scanlon rejects Quine’s ‘…exclusive emphasis on the physical world’ (18), and diagnoses his main mistake as that of assuming that there is one set of rules that determine what there is.

Scanlon’s proposed alternative to this Quinean assumption is as follows:

We read this as committing to the following principle about true propositions:

Truth-Domain raises several pressing questions.

First: What makes a proposition count as being ‘about’ a domain? This seems at least somewhat metaphorical: literally speaking, the number two is prime is about the number two, not about mathematics. What exactly, then, is the relation between a proposition and ‘its’ domain?

Second, notice that Truth-Domain provides only a sufficient condition for truth. This is because we are not told what happens when the standards of two domains do conflict. Scanlon’s denial of the existence of witches (presumably licensed by the supernatural domain, but ruled out by the empirical one) indicates that he thinks that in some cases of conflict, certain domains ‘trump’ others. But we are given no account of what grounds such domain-trumping. In this case, why is it that the empirical domain trumps the supernatural one and not the other way around? Because Scanlon suggests that the normative domain does not conflict with other domains (22), it may seem that he only needs the sufficient condition for his metanormative purposes, and that he can thus ignore these further questions. But this is not so – Scanlon’s metanormative view rests on a general meta-metaphysical picture, and so it’s fair play to raise doubts about that picture. And it’s not clear that the outlines of this picture can be filled in without either entailing implausible implications, or else committing to one super-domain (the standards of which settle all domain-conflicts). The problem with the latter move is that once saddled with such a super-domain, Scanlon’s view seems a mere terminological variant of Modest’s: What in Scanlon’s dialect is thought of as existence in this super-domain is what in Modest’s dialect is thought of as existence sans phrase. It’s hard to see how progress has been made.

The most pressing family of questions, however, is about how to understand the notion of a domain. We raise questions, first, about how to understand what a domain is; second, about how to individuate domains; and third, about the relations between domains’ metaphysics and epistemology. Together, these worries show how much more work needs to be done to explain domains within the context of Scanlon’s views, and how unlikely it is that it can be satisfactorily done.

First, consider what a domain is. One natural way of understanding domains takes them to be individuated metaphysically, by the nature of the entities they contain, or some such. This way of individuating domains is not available to Scanlon, because it makes entities explanatorily prior to domains, and defeats the hope of achieving an ontologically thin kind of realism. We worry that some of the initial plausibility of Scanlon’s talk of domains depends on implicit appeal to this natural way of thinking of domains, and is thus illusory.

Scanlon says instead that

This quote may be understood as hinting at neo-Carnapian directions. But Scanlon rejects such a reading (19 n.3): despite the fact that domains should be understood in terms of concepts, the ‘procedures appropriate to a domain’ are not settled by linguistic rules for the use of those concepts, a la Carnap. While we are sympathetic with Scanlon’s rejection of Carnapianism, Carnap’s view at least provides relatively clear ‘rules to the game.’ Once both the metaphysical and Carnapian approach are off the table, we are simply unsure we have any grip on the notion, absent a positive story that Scanlon does not provide. What sort of thing is a domain, then? (A collection of concepts? A collection of sentences? Of true sentences? A collection of truth-makers? etc).

Second, how are domains individuated? We are told that there are at least the following three domains: science, mathematics, and the normative (19). But we are not told, generally, what conditions have to be satisfied for some putative domain D to count as distinct from another putative domain D*. Far from addressing this question, Scanlon says: ‘…I mean to leave the question of what domains there are entirely open’ (23). We don’t think he can afford to do this. For, to the extent that we understand the notion of a domain, we could think of the Quinean view that Scanlon rejects as simply the view that there is a single universal domain. On the other extreme, consider a permissive view, on which every concept is associated with a domain: on this view, there is an apple domain and an orange domain. We also don’t think this is Scanlon’s view. It would seem to render domains too trivial to be explanatorily useful. Further, a multiplicity of domains generates a multiplicity of conflicts between domains. So depending on how conflicts between domains are settled, the permissive view may lead either to an ontology that may be too permissive even by Scanlon’s lights, or to an extremely austere one.

This leaves us with a familiar dialectic. Scanlon wants the concept domain to do central work in his argument. But there is a reasonable suspicion that any view between neo-Quinean universalism and permissivism will be unstable. We thus need at least the sketch of a non-ad hoc way of explaining which (and how many) domains there are. Absent such an explanation, it is unclear whether the notion can do any work.

Third, what is the relationship between the metaphysics and epistemology of domains? As we noted above, Scanlon claims that truth-values within domains are properly ‘settled’ by the standards of those domains (19). Is settling a metaphysical or epistemological relation? Is it the metaphysical relation of truth-making or truth-explaining, or is it that epistemological one of providing access or justification or knowledge? Scanlon nowhere explains.Footnote ³ The worry, of course, is that by exploiting this ambiguity, Scanlon can make certain claims appear more intuitively plausible than they are. The challenge is thus to disambiguate in a way that will conserve this plausibility. We are not sure this can be done (we give some reasons below). But this, at any rate, is what must be done if Scanlon is to have a plausible metanormative view.

Recall Modest. Scanlon and Modest are both confident that there are normative facts and that we can discover them. Thus far, it is not clear how Scanlon’s appeal to domains is supposed to show that confidence to be reasonable in a way that Modest’s is not. Indeed, given how thin our grasp of domains in Scanlon’s sense is, it is possible that Modest might also accept that there are such domains. (Of course, there is a clear danger that unless they do sufficient explanatory work, domains will simply amount to an unattractive theoretical epicycle.) So far, then, it’s hard to see what advantage Scanlon can claim over Modest. At the very least, it is hard to see how invoking domains can secure such an advantage.

3. Easy ontology?

Scanlon, to repeat, seems to think of his view as less ontologically committed, or perhaps as committed in some more minimal or thin sense, than those of other realists, like Modest. In this section, we try to better understand this claim, and why Scanlon thinks it may be true.

As we have seen, the concept domain is central to Scanlon’s account. For – as we suggested in the previous section – Scanlon appears committed to

In virtue of its generality, this thesis applies to ontological propositions as much as any others. As we have noted, Scanlon seeks not to commit himself to a view about how many domains there are. However, in one important passage, he considers an objection that attributes to him the view that (a) any well-defined, internally coherent ‘way of talking’ that did not conflict with other domains constitutes its own domain, and (b) that if this way of talking specifies truth conditions for certain existential claims, then where those conditions are satisfied, the relevant claims are true (27). Importantly, Scanlon at least appears to embrace this liberal interpretation of his view.

But suppose that we have an adequately regimented way of thinking about magical elves, understood as existing in a wholly causally isolated partition of the universe. On the liberal interpretation of Scanlon’s view, it seems that these conditions entail that it is true that the elves exist. Now, this would mark a clear difference between Scanlon and Modest (who presumably rejects Truth-Domain, accepts some domain-independent criteria for existence, and can rely on them to reject the existence of these magical elves). But this would not be good news for Scanlon. Accepting such magical elves into one’s ontology strikes us as hard to swallow, to put it mildly.Footnote ⁴ And that makes it hard for us to believe that there are no domain-independent constraints that restrict the scope of what it is reasonable to believe exists, and indeed, of what exists.

Scanlon himself considers the objection that his view is ‘too [ontologically] permissive,’ and that it allows existence to be vindicated ‘so cheaply’ (27). Scanlon replies that the relevant existence questions are settled by the standards of relevant domains. But it is not clear how this is supposed to help address the objection. After all, the objection was pointing out a troubling consequence of this very commitment.

One way to read Scanlon here is as embracing the strategy of the proponent of ‘easy ontology.’ For example, on Amie Thomasson’s view (e.g. Reference Thomasson2014, 142), the thesis that whenever there are some simples ‘arranged table-wise’ there is also a table is a truth which is guaranteed by the meaning of ‘table.’ The ‘easiness’ of Thomasson’s ontology is supposed to be exactly a function of her assumption that the ‘easy’ ontological commitments are a function of

1. (1) ordinary science and ‘difficult’ ontology (which license our belief that there are some simples arranged tablewise), together with

2. (2) analytic truths (like the ‘table’ thesis, above) that serve as bridge principles, taking us to new ontological commitment.

On Thomasson’s account, element (ii) is what is supposed to spare us from additional ontological anxieties about tables (e.g.). The relevant existence claims (‘There are tables’; ‘there is a table in front of me’) just follow from the analytic bridge principles that constitute what we count as true, qua existence of tables (together with the facts about the existence of simples arranged tablewise). The fact that in posing the objection to his view, Scanlon adverts to coherent ways of talking might seem to support a Thomasson-style interpretation. As we have seen in the previous section, however, Scanlon rejects the idea that the standards for a given domain are conceptual truths (19 n.3). And this seems to rule out attributing (ii) to him. However, (ii) is precisely the part of Thomasson’s view that is supposed to explain why the relevant ontological commitments are ‘easy’ or ‘lightweight.’

Can Scanlon’s view be revised along Thomasson-like lines, by accepting analytic or conceptual bridge-principles that will secure an easy ontological status for normative truths, properties, and objects? The most natural way of understanding such a move would see it as endorsing a naturalist reduction of the normative, a reduction Scanlon is invested in rejecting. Furthermore, it will seem to be an a priori, perhaps analytic, version of reductionism, one that faces perhaps especially serious problems. And of course, such a view is not quietist at all – rather than avoiding the metaphysical discussion Scanlon hopes to bypass, it is a major move within it. In order to endorse a Thomasson-style line, then, Scanlon has to abandon much of the rest of what he thinks, and to deal with numerous challenges he hopes to avoid. If he thinks he can help himself to such a line without committing to a naturalist reduction, he owes us an explanation how. And if he can do none of these things, it’s still hard to see how he can avoid the commitment to the existence of magical elves.

Despite this, several passages in Scanlon suggest that he thinks of ontological commitment as unproblematic. For example:

We find this passage puzzling. First, it is again very hard to distinguish metaphysics from epistemology here. Second, one might take the passage to be grasping toward a view on which existence claims per se are somehow insubstantial, and so the existential quantifier is no guide to metaphysics.Footnote ⁵ Such a view would indeed distinguish between Scanlon and Modest. Scanlon says that the general idea of existence seems ‘empty’ in contrast to the ‘significance’ that domain-relative existence claims can have (23). But so far, this seems to be an unhelpful metaphor. We, of course, get more information if we know that x exists and is an F, than if we merely know that x exists. And since domains are (somehow) linked to specific concepts on Scanlon’s view, knowing that x exists in a certain domain will presumably thereby be informative. But the existing/non-existing part seems like a distinct and rather important dimension in either case.

One might think that Scanlon could reject this by arguing for minimalism about ‘exists’ talk. Scanlon does appear to accept minimalism about ‘fact’ talk, according to which facts either are ‘true thoughts’ [i.e. propositions?] (cf. 45), or are explanatorily parasitic on them (cf. 66). However, Scanlon denies that his account of existence is ‘minimalist’ (28). We agree: it is unclear why commitment to the explanatory basicness of domains would lighten the ontological load.

Another possibility is that Scanlon takes the ontological ‘thinness’ of the normative to follow from his endorsement of minimalism about normative properties (45). It is not clear what Scanlon means by ‘minimalism’ here, but he makes this claim immediately after drawing a contrast between two sorts of concepts. Scanlon notes that some concepts (e.g. water) are such that an adequate grasp of the concept does not guarantee knowledge of the nature of the property predicated by that concept, while in other cases adequate grasp of the concept discloses the nature of the relevant property (43). So, perhaps the idea is that properties whose natures are fully disclosed by the relevant concepts are distinctively ‘minimal’ in the sense of being mere reflections of our predicative practices (cf. 45 n. 46).

But this interpretation too is problematic. First, Scanlon argues that the concept reason is nature-revealing, but he also argues that the concept morally wrong is not. If property-minimality is associated with a concept being nature-revealing, this means that many normative properties will thus not be minimal. And this in turn means that we lose the prospect of a general contrast between the ontology of the normative and that of the non-normative here.

Second, and more importantly, it is hard to understand what a concept’s being nature-revealing has to do with the related property’s being ‘minimal’ in any interesting sense. For example, phenomenal concepts are among the best candidates for being nature-revealing (see e.g. Chalmers (Reference Chalmers, Smith and Jokic2003)), but this in no way suggests that phenomenal properties are ‘minimal’ in any metaphysical sense.

We have thus yet to find a helpful contrast that would show Scanlon to have fewer ontological burdens than Modest. Furthermore, there’s the worry that Scanlon is going to be committed to lots of things that Modest will reasonably eschew – like those elves, and indeed, domains – without a clear sense of why he is entitled to be less perturbed by these commitments than Modest would be by hers.

4. Pragmatism?

In this section, we consider another important interpretation of Scanlon, as a pragmatist. One way to motivate this interpretation is to notice a structural problem for Truth-Domain: if all truth is relativized to domains, how are we to assess the truth of claims about the existence of domains, or, indeed, of Truth-Domain itself? Suppose, there were a domain relative to which we could answer all of these questions. That domain would sound suspiciously privileged. Arguably, existence relative to that domain would be what really counts, and that domain would thus seem like an ideal candidate to provide a privileged existential quantifier, which is precisely what would turn Scanlon’s position into a terminological variant of Modest’s.

Scanlon appears to notice this central problem for his view. He says:

This reply is not isolated; it is part of a repeated theme in the book (for example, compare pp. 16–17, 24, 27, 85). But this reply is initially disorienting. Scanlon has told us that domains are the central organizing category in metaphysics. The next natural question is thus seemingly which domains are there? But now we are told this isn’t the question. What could that mean?

One idea is that domain existence is not the question because the answer to this question is a trivial ‘yes,’ in accord with the sort of easy ontology idea discussed in the Section 3. However, because the most promising way of interpreting Scanlon as an easy ontologist itself appealed to domains, this interpretation runs directly into the problem that we introduced this section with.

Another idea is that domain existence is not the question because domains are not the sort of thing we can intelligibly ask existence questions about. Scanlon sometimes makes claims about the limits of meaningful application of certain concepts, such as the world (24). But he also emphasizes that there can be meaningful ‘external’ questions about claims in a domain (23), and (as we have seen) he proposes to leave the question of how many domains there are open (23), which would be odd if this question was meaningless. And, substantively, it does seem highly implausible that this question is meaningless (see for instance, Enoch Reference Enoch2011, Section 5.3.2).

In this section, we explore a third, pragmatist reading of passages like the one quoted above. On this reading, the question of whether there are domains may well be intelligible and have a non-trivial answer. However, rather than simply assessing our evidence concerning whether a given domain exists, we are supposed to ask whether supposing that a domain exists provides a helpful way of discussing certain matters. Indeed, perhaps such pragmatic considerations are not just our path to the right answer regarding a domain’s existence – perhaps they are what determines what the right answer is. One initial piece of support for this reading is that the passage above comes immediately after Scanlon invokes Carnap. And for Carnap, ‘external’ questions are (when intelligible) to be understood (and so answered) pragmatically.

This pragmatist reading also seems to fit with other important passages from Scanlon. For example, the passage just quoted continues:

The claim here does not seem to be that the relevant ‘external’ questions cannot be answered, or have an easy answer. Rather the claim seems to be that it is in some sense better to avoid them.Footnote ⁶

This reading would also complete the explanation of why Scanlon might be an easy ontologist about intra-domain ontological questions. According to Truth-Domain, such questions are settled by the standards of certain domains. According to the pragmatist reading, we now suggest, we do not need to seek out evidence for the existence of the relevant domains, but should instead simply ask whether they are useful posits. If assertability ultimately bottoms out in usefulness in this way, that constitutes a straightforward sense in which our ontological commitments are thin. And on such a reading, of course, the differences between Scanlon and Modest – who has no pragmatist bone in her body – couldn’t be clearer.

This synthesis is supported by the following striking passage:

The beginning of this passage tells us that the question of whether certain entities exist is settled by the totality of intra-domain facts (absent conflict). This supports the easy ontology part of the interpretation. The end of this passage suggests that the only remaining question is whether we have any reason to be concerned with the entities posited within a certain domain. This supports the pragmatist part of the interpretation.Footnote ⁷

If this synthesis correctly represents Scanlon’s view, it invites several (related) concerns. First, and rather obviously, if the question of whether X is a genuine domain is meaningful and has an answer (as Scanlon seems to suggest), why would we not here – as elsewhere – grant that our central doxastic goal is to have accurate beliefs about this question? Why would practical concerns suddenly preempt our ordinary epistemic standards?Footnote ⁸

Perhaps a weightier concern, however, is that if we are right to read Scanlon as combining easy ontology about internal questions with pragmatism about external questions, his view appears hard to distinguish from an unattractively global hermeneutic fictionalism. According to hermeneutic fictionalism about a discourse (such as about normative discourse), the best understanding of the discourse – for instance, of what we aim at when engaging in it – doesn’t involve a commitment to truth, but to something like a pretense of truth, or perhaps truth-in-the-fiction (Eklund Reference Eklund and Zalta2015, Section 2.2). And on the current suggestion, Scanlon’s view is like hermeneutic fictionalism in the sense that on this theory, our assertions of the form domain D exists are not characteristically guided by our evidence for those beliefs, but instead by the usefulness of the assertive practice.

The view also threatens to infect the intra-domain level, derivatively. To see this, consider an example: suppose that I take 2 + 2 = 4 to be true in virtue of being licensed by the mathematical standards. But if, in going in for mathematical talk, I think (with Scanlon) that it doesn’t matter whether a mathematical domain that includes such standards really exists, I seem to be indifferent to the very thing that would, if it existed, ground the truth of my ordinary mathematical claim. This is a familiar phenomenon: if one is an instrumentalist about the existence of unobservable theoretical entities, this naturally entails instrumentalism about specific scientific claims about – e.g. – bosons. So Scanlon’s fictionalism, unlike that of many contemporary fictionalists, threatens to become an unattractive global thesis.

One might seek to block this conclusion by suggesting a slightly different interpretation in which an intra-domain thesis is true if it is useful for speakers to talk about that domain. This might help to limit the fictionalism in question to just explicit talk of domains. But it seems to have objectionable modal consequences. Suppose that some proposition P is licensed by the standards of domain D. Suppose further that we should go in for D-talk. So P is (according to Scanlon) true. Now consider a possible world in which we should not go in for D-talk (if ‘the only question’ about domains is pragmatic, such a world must be possible). Does this mean that P is not true at that world? (Or, at least: not true for the same reasons it is true here?) This sort of possibility threatens to make all true existence claims true contingently, and, what’s worse, contingently on the wrong kind of considerations: pragmatic considerations. Especially seeing that one of Scanlon’s main examples is that of mathematics, this is a very unappetizing bullet to bite (Had the mathematical domain not been useful, would numbers and sets not have existed? Would two plus two not have equaled four?).Footnote ⁹ Given what Scanlon has to say about the judgment- and choice-independence of reasons elsewhere (93ff), this is not a bullet that he should be happy to bite.Footnote ¹⁰

This worry too is related to the one about the disappearing gap between Scanlon’s view and hermeneutic fictionalism – for arguably, hermeneutic fictionalist views face related modal worries (compare Kim Reference Kim and Kalderon2005).

Despite the text we have canvassed, we have a hard time believing either of these variants could be Scanlon’s considered view. The pragmatist reading is hard to square with Scanlon’s apparent goal of providing a reasoned defense of the metanormative desiderata mentioned in §1. After all, on the reading we are considering, Scanlon is committed only to its being useful to talk as if there is a normative domain for which those desiderata hold. But that is surely inadequate to vindicate those desiderata.Footnote ¹¹

Further evidence against a pragmatist or fictionalist reading is provided by the fact that Scanlon rejects familiar ‘indispensability’ arguments for ontological commitments in mathematics. These, he complains, would show mathematics to be useful,Footnote ¹² but not provide reasons for us to believe that they exist (27–28). This seems to suggest that he rejects the pragmatist’s characteristic gambit.

We thus both hope and expect that Scanlon will reject the reading of his view as global hermeneutic fictionalism. But if he does this, it again becomes unclear how his view is different from Modest’s view, and what role the talk of domains is supposed to play in his theorizing.

5. What progress has been made?

The preceding sections have focused on difficulties in interpreting the view that Scanlon sets out in this book. In the remainder of the paper, we seek to bracket those difficulties to the extent this is possible, and critically examine the metanormative view as we understand it. We think that the challenges we will offer apply to Scanlon’s view, however it is precisified vis-à-vis the interpretive questions raised in previous sections. In this section, we consider two of the central challenges to non-reductive normative realism that Scanlon purports to have solved: a supervenience challenge, and an epistemic challenge. We will ask two questions about each of Scanlon’s solutions: The first is whether the solutions are promising. The second is whether the solutions appeal in important ways to the distinctive view being developed. In particular, could our foil – Modest – simply appropriate these solutions on behalf of her shamelessly ontologically committal (e.g. non-naturalistic) realism? This second question is especially important in evaluating Scanlon’s view. For often, the proof of the philosophical pudding is in the theoretical eating: the attractiveness of the complicated metaphysical and metaphilosophical view discussed above will partly depend on its explanatory payoffs with respect to issues like these. If when push comes to shove, Scanlon’s responses to such general objections are not significantly different from the ones that Modest can put forward (or, indeed, that her allies have been suggesting), this will undermine a seemingly major motivation for the attempt to find an ontologically non-committal realist option.

6. Schmeasons (and another word about fictionalism)

In previous work (McPherson Reference McPherson2011; Enoch Reference Enoch2011, Section 5.3), we offered what we might call the ‘schmeasons’ (or ‘counter-reasons’) challenge to Scanlon. The basic idea is this. Consider two linguistic communities – the ‘reasoners’ and the ‘schmeasoners.’ Each community has a certain term – ‘reason’ and ‘schmeason,’ respectively – that they take to be central to their normative practices. And in each community there are well-developed practices of criticism and evaluation that use the relevant term. But the reasoners and schmeasoners tend toward quite different substantive views in their practices. If we suppose that these practices are coherent, and constitute their own domains, then both communities might be functioning quite well relative to their respective domains. But intuitively, we want to say that all is not well: it is bad that the schmeasoners are sensitive to schmeasons rather than reasons.

This, however, looks like an objection that can be raised perfectly symmetrically from within each of the two domains. For the schmeasoners can point out that it is ‘schbad’ that we are sensitive to reasons rather than schmeasons. Our suggestion was that a metaphysically committal realism does a better job capturing what we intuitively want to say. This is because the metaphysically committal realist can say that only the reasoners – and not the schmeasoners – track the normative structure of reality.

Scanlon replies this way:

But this reply misses the point of the objection. It is not about whether we genuinely disagree with the schmeasoners. (Explaining how that is possible is a deep but wholly different challenge, which we are also unsure how to meet on Scanlon’s behalf). The point is that it seems wrong to say that – epistemically speaking – everything is fine with the schmeasoners. The schmeasoners – we say – are like people who have the concept grue rather than green: their way of thinking about reality is inapt (compare Sider Reference Sider2011, §1.1). As Enoch (Reference Enoch2011, 123–124) points out, it is characteristic of fictionalism to lack the resources to make such claims. If I am talking about fiction A, and you about fiction B, I can hardly characterize your way of talking as less fitting to reality, since both ways are simply spinning out their respective fantasies. True, from within fiction A, A-statements are privileged over B-statements. Just as true, of course, is the claim that from within fiction B, B-statements are privileged over A-statements. In a fictionalist framework, there doesn’t seem to be anything that can break this symmetry. Once again, if you’re committed to only doing things, as it were, from the fiction-A-perspective, you have an asymmetry. Similarly, in the opposite direction, if you’re already committed to doing things from the fiction-B perspective. Scanlon seems (at the very least) analogous to the fictionalist who is committed to doing things from within the reason-fiction, rather than the schmeason-fiction. This doesn’t seem to give us the kind of objectivity we are after.

This brings us yet again to a request for what would be a useful clarification: what, in Scanlon’s view, distinguishes fictional domains from non-fictional ones? Scanlon seems committed to the distinction (18, 24 n. 9). But we don’t yet see how he can make it out.

7. What’s the argument?

This puts us in a position to put a final challenge to Scanlon, and with it a final request for more details. The book does much to at least give a feel of the view Scanlon accepts (although, as we explained in earlier sections, often in ways that leave crucial questions about the view unanswered). But nowhere in the book did we find even an attempt at an argument for the view. This is striking given that there is nothing obvious about the view. Why should we believe it, then? What reason does Scanlon offer to support it? We are told that Scanlon thinks that the domain-centric way of thinking ‘makes the most sense’ (19). And we are told that it is ‘better to avoid [certain] questions altogether’ (24). But we found it difficult to find in the book anything more by way of argument for the view it puts forward.

One possibility is that Scanlon’s aim is to argue by elimination. He engages in detail Mark Schroeder’s Humeanism, Allan Gibbard’s expressivism, and Christine Korsgaard’s constructivism, offering reasons – sometimes powerful ones – to reject them. But if Scanlon wants to argue by elimination, he needs to address all relevant alternatives. And as we’ve shown, he leaves unilluminated his two most salient foils: non-deflationary forms of normative realism (such as Modest’s), and hermeneutic fictionalism.Footnote ¹⁷

Perhaps a more charitable interpretation is that Scanlon aims to have his view earn its keep by its explanatory payoffs. But at least with non-deflationary realism and hermeneutical fictionalism as the relevant competing theories, the discussion in §5 suggests that the distinctive features of Scanlon’s view do not provide explanatory payoffs with respect to supervenience and epistemology. If this is true more generally, as we suspect,Footnote ¹⁸ it will be extremely difficult to mount this sort of explanatory case for the view.

Funding

For very helpful discussion and comments on a previous version, we thank David Plunkett, Daniel Wodak, Jack Woods, and two anonymous readers for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. David Enoch’s research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, Grant 439/15.