ABSTRACT
Error theory in meta-ethics is motivated by skepticism about the claim that there are properties and relations instantiated in the world of the kind supposedly posited in moral experience, moral thought, and moral discourse. It might then seem that non-naturalism and error theory are the only views that recognize the pertinent phenomenology of moral authority. This chapter focuses on Jean Hampton's characterization of moral-authority phenomenology. Her argument is phenomenological, focusing on introspectively salient aspects of moral experience. The argument proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, she offers what she says is a "minimalist and metaphysically neutral" initial characterization of how the normativity of moral reasons is experienced. In the second stage, she describes two metaphysically different ways of "embellishing" the initial characterization, and she argues that only the second way—a version of non-naturalist moral realism—comports with the phenomenology of moral-reasons experience.
