Against Propositionalism About Moral Laws

ABSTRACT Propositionalism, the view that moral laws are propositional, is nearly a truism in metaethics. Against this, I argue that those who hold that moral laws play an ineliminable role in moral explanation should reject it. If laws are to play such a role, they must make what explains relevant to what is explained. Yet if laws are themselves propositions, this requirement yields an explanatory regress. I develop a relational alternative according to which moral laws are generative relations rather than propositions. This relational account avoids the regress, preserves the explanatory role of moral laws, and has significant implications for metaethical theory. In particular, I show that it yields a nontrivial formulation of non‐naturalism and clarifies the relation between moral and metaphysical explanation.