Blackburn on the Ban on Mixed

【Subject Class】Ethics, Meta-Ethics 【Keyword】Moral Realism, Moral Projectivism, Moral Facts, Moral Supervenience, Simon Blackburn 【Abstract】This is a realist response to Blackburn’s version of the explanatory inadequacy of the moral thesis based on the ban on mixed worlds, and to its possible explanatory reductionism version. First, the moral supervenience relationship is made explicit, for the ban on mixed worlds has been expressed most commonly by employing the notion of moral supervenience. This is done to clarify the implications of the ban. Second, it will be argued that the dependence relationship between the two is self-explanatory, given the dependence relationship expounded here. This will allow us to show that there is no such modal fact as the ban on mixed worlds for projectivists such as Blackburn to explain. Third, I shall consider and reject a possible rejoinder from Blackburn: explanatory reductionism. A nonreductive physicalistic type of moral realism can still fail if it can be shown that all of the explanatory power possessed by the supervening properties is reducible to the explanatory power provided by the subvening properties. This is especially so when