Debunking, Supervenience, and Hume's Principle

TY - JOUR

T1 - Debunking, Supervenience, and Hume's Principle

AU - Leng, Mary Catherine

N1 - © 2019 Canadian Journal of Philosophy. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2020/1/1

Y1 - 2020/1/1

N2 - Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same.

AB - Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same.

KW - Hume’s principle

KW - Mathematics

KW - evolutionary debunking

KW - metaethics

KW - supervenience

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062470809&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/00455091.2019.1584936

DO - 10.1080/00455091.2019.1584936

M3 - Article

SN - 0045-5091

VL - 49

SP - 1083

EP - 1103

JO - Canadian journal of philosophy

JF - Canadian journal of philosophy

IS - 8

ER -