Abstract

This chapter explores bridge-law non-naturalism: the view that when a particular thing possesses a moral property or stands in a moral relation, this fact is metaphysically grounded in non-normative features of the thing in question together with a general moral law. Any view of this sort faces two challenges, analogous to familiar challenges in the philosophy of science: to specify the form of the explanatory laws, and to say when a fact of that form qualifies as a law. The chapter explores three strategies for answering these questions, all of which maintain that a moral law is a true generalization of the form [It is normatively necessary that whatever ϕ‎s is F].