Metaethical-or, more generally, metanormative-realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us-very roughly speaking-an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear-nor uncontroversial-how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. In this paper I try, first, to present the challenge in its strongest version, and second, to show how realistsindeed, robust realists-can cope with it. The strongest version of the challenge is, I argue, that of explaining the correlation between our normative beliefs and the independent normative truths. And I suggest an evolutionary explanation (of a preestablished harmony kind) as a way of solving it.
In this paper, we present an account of in virtue of what thinkers are justified in employing certain basic belief‐forming methods. The guiding idea is inspired by Reichenbach’s work on induction. There are certain projects in which thinkers are rationally required to engage. Thinkers are epistemically justified in employing a belief‐forming method that is indispensable for successfully engaging in such a project. We present a detailed account based on this intuitive thought, and address objections to it. We conclude by commenting on the implications that our account may have for other important epistemological debates.
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