David Copp is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of California, Davis. He is author of Morality, Normativity, and Society (1995) and Morality in a Natural World (2007), and he edited The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (2006). He served on the editorial boards of Ethics and the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

• 1. Introduction: The Problem of Normativity


• 2. What is Normativity?


• 3. A Categorization of Theories of Normativity


• 4. Ethical Realism


• 5. Some Alternatives to Ethical Naturalism


• 6. Naturalism I: Natural Properties


• 7. Naturalism II: Structural Varieties


• 8. Naturalism III: Substantive Varieties


• 9. Objections and Replies


• 10. The Problem of Normativity

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.