DPhil Seminar (Wednesday - Week 3, MT26)

Abstract: How is basic normative change possible? Many apparent cases of normative change can be explained as the application of timeless normative principles to changing circumstances. But if genuinely new normative principles can come into existence, their emergence appears objectionably arbitrary. Existing discussions formulate this arbitrariness challenge as a demand to explain why one normative principle rather than another comes to hold. I argue that this misidentifies the explanatory target. The real challenge is to explain why a principle comes into being when it does. After reformulating the challenge in terms of the timing rather than the content of normative change, I argue that it can be answered by distinguishing substantive from structural normative principles. Structural principles provide enabling explanations: they explain why substantive principles could not have existed earlier without determining their content. I defend this account against two objections and argue that, once enabling explanations are admitted, non-arbitrariness may not require any normative principle to be timelessly true.

Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.

See the DPhil Seminar website for details.

_{DPhil Seminar Convenor: Tom Heywood}