Essence and necessity: The Case of Normative Nonnaturalism

In this essay I try to show what an ontology for normative nonnaturalism could look like. Firstly, I inquire into the modal nature of the supervenience relation within a normative nonnaturalist framework. I surmise that the necessity preceding a strong normative supervenience relation is neither analytical nor nomological, but metaphysical. Borrowing from E. J. Lowe’s essentialist theory of necessity I argue that among the metaphysical determinations of an object’s essence there is also the property of possessing a certain telic structure. Secondly, I analyze the normative constitution relation, whose function is to identify what grounds supervenience. This analysis highlights the fact that end-directedness is a component of constitution along with descriptive properties. Thirdly, I show that supervenience follows from constitution and that the supervenience relation between descriptive and normative properties is obtained by means of the constitution analysis of the telic structure of the object displaying such properties.