Abstract

Quasi-realists have proposed an “internal” reading of the mind-independence claim embedded in our moral discourse, according to which the claim to mind-independence itself is a moral claim. I argue against such a quasi-realist “internal” reading. My objection is that quasi-realists cannot plausibly explain why the majority of us, either implicitly or explicitly, take moral mind-independence to be a metaethical notion. Quasi-realists either must attribute a quite obvious mistake to most metaethical theorists without explaining why they cannot recognize it, or give us an intolerably ad hoc explanation about why ordinary moral speakers fail to understand their own words. Without properly addressing this problem, we have good reason to reject the quasi-realist account of moral mind-independence.