Abstract

This chapter lays out the central elements of non-theistic robust normative realism. It pays particular attention to the supervenience of moral properties upon non-moral properties, addressing challenges to such supervenience from John Mackie, Mark Schroeder, Frank Jackson, Campbell Brown, and Tristram McPherson. At the heart of the defense against these challenges is Michael DePaul’s view that we must distinguish between supervenience and a more robust sort of dependence relation—the making relation. It is suggested that the making relation is best understood as a robust sort of causation. The final section of the chapter begins to contrast non-theistic robust normative realism with theistic approaches to ethics: it is argued that whereas proponents of theistic versions of moral realism seek to make God the foundation of objective moral truth, it is at least as plausible to construe objective moral truth as not needing an external foundation at all.