The Supremacy Challenge

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents two challenges to normative monists: the codification challenge and the supremacy challenge. The codification challenge is to sufficiently codify the overarching normative standpoint that is claimed to exist, and the supremacy challenge is to argue for the supremacy of this standpoint over other normative standpoints. This chapter focuses on the supremacy challenge by evaluating some possible candidates that can already be said to be codified, namely, rationality and morality—as the ought simpliciter is sometimes identified with what the rational agent would do, or with morality itself. It argues that of the two standard conceptions of rationality, “structural rationality” does not have the right content to be understood as an overarching normative standpoint and that “substantive rationality” fails to meet the codification challenge. Hybrid versions are also rejected. The chapter also argues against the thesis of moral overridingness, which could serve to make morality supreme.