Papers

The Explanatory Redundancy Challenge to Moral Properties

Pölzler, Thomas (2023): The Explanatory Redundancy Challenge to Moral Properties. In: Gaitán, Antonio T.; Viciana, Hugo; Aguiar, Fernando (eds.): Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 104-124.

Abstract: Most philosophers assume that moral properties exist. One of the main challenges to this claim has been Gilbert Harman’s “explanatory redundancy challenge”: (1) we are justified in believing in the existence of a certain kind of entity only if these entities figure in the best explanations of observations that we make, and (2) moral properties do not figure in the best explanations of any observations that we make. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the explanatory redundancy challenge and critics’ main responses to it. Moreover, I tentatively assess these responses. It will turn out that there is little reason to reject the argument’s first premise. Critics should rather try to show that moral properties are in fact needed to best explain observations that we make (by showing that these properties reduce to or supervene upon explanatorily potent non-moral properties). However, success is not guaranteed with this latter strategy either.