How facts make law and nature of moral facts
| Autor | Mark Greenberg |
| Cargo | Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at UCLA |
| Páginas | 165-174 |
How Facts Make Law and the nature
of moral facts*
Mark Greenberg**
In his thoughtful and thought-provoking paper, Ken Himma claims
that the argument of How Facts Make Law must go wrong somewhere be-
cause, if successful, the argument shows too much with too little1. In par-
ticular, he claims that my argument, with very limited resources, reaches
a conclusion that entails that subjectivist and non-cognitivist theories of
morality are false. Himma insists that I should not be able to resolve such
controversial debates in meta-ethics with no meta-ethical or even norma-
tive resources.
My response has two parts. First, it is not correct that my conclusion
entails that subjectivist and non-cognitivist theories of morality are false.
My conclusion itself is neutral as to the metaphysics of morality. Second,
it’s not even true that my argument, if successful, shows that there must
be moral facts. The reason is that I rely on the plausibility of the existence
of moral facts (whatever their metaphysics) in arguing for my conclusion.
In sum, my argument’s conclusion doesn’t get us nearly as far as Him-
ma thinks. Nor are my argument’s resources as meager as he claims.
* The following paper was presented at the American Philosophical Association’s 2007 Berger Prize session.
It is a reply to Ken Himma’s comment on my paper, “How Facts Make Law”, which was awarded the 2007
Berger Memorial Prize for the outstanding paper in philosophy of law published during 2004 and 2005. I
am very grateful to Ken for his kind remarks and his stimulating comments.
** Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at UCLA.
1 HIMMA, 2012. Page numbers in the text refer to Himma’s paper.
Direito, Estado e Sociedade n.40 p. 165 a 174 jan/jun 2012
miolo Direito 40.indd 165 22/01/2013 16:10:26
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