ABSTRACT
Normative realism is a non-starter because it cannot guarantee that people's reasons for action will have any authority over them. In defense of her conception of normative authority, Christine Korsgaard argues that realists cannot account for even basic requirements of rationality. As Korsgaard bravely acknowledges, her understanding of the normative question creates difficulties for empirical realism and not just normative realism. John Mackie raises two broad sorts of worries about normative realism, which he famously describes as the argument from queerness. Mackie also argues that normative realism should be rejected on epistemological grounds. John McDowell famously rejects the Humean theory of motivation, arguing that normative beliefs can constitute motivating dispositions in people who are sufficiently virtuous. Crispin Wright allows that there is a sense in which normative reasons can be said to exist and to play a part in causal explanations of people's motivating reasons, but then insists that more is needed to establish that normative realism is true.
