ABSTRACT
This short paper is a response to Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever’s
‘Particularism and the Contingent A Priori’.
I start by looking again at one of the claims of mine that Ridge and
McKeever leave unchallenged. Is it true that basic moral facts, that is, facts
about what is a moral reason for what in a particular case, are clearly contingent? Holism maintains that a feature that is a reason in one case need be
no reason in another, and will not be if some necessary enabler, present in
the first case, is missing in the second. Whether this feature is here a reason,
therefore, seems to be properly contingent; that same feature might not be a
reason in other circumstances.
