A realist and internalist response to one of Mackie’s arguments from queerness

Abstract

If there is such a thing as objectively existing prescriptivity, as the moral realist claims, then we can also explain why — and we need not deny that — strong (conceptual) internalism is true. Strong conceptual internalism is true, not because of any belief in any magnetic force thought to be inherent in moral properties themselves, as Mackie argued, but because we do not allow that anyone has (in the practical sense) ‘accepted’ a normative claim, unless she is prepared to some extent to act on it (to see to it that it is satisfied).