Ethical Naturalism: The Challenge to Explain Naturalism

We all have ethical beliefs, such as the belief that torture is wrong. Ethical beliefs purport to guide our behaviour rather than merely to describe the world, and this creates a puzzle: What could possibly make some of these beliefs be true? Ethical realists hold that there are ethical facts that make some of them true. Ethical naturalists contend that these are ordinary natural facts -- facts that are similar in all relevant respects to physical ones. This idea has seemed especially problematic. How could it be that any ordinary natural fact has the kind of normativity -- the action-guiding nature -- that our ethical beliefs point to? David Copp answers these puzzles and argues, surprisingly, that ethical naturalism is better positioned to explain the nature of normativity than its alternatives.