The Moral Mosaic

A central metaphysical debate about laws concerns whether they govern or merely summarize. This debate has recently been extended to moral laws, with fresh criticism directed at the Humean position by, inter alia, David Enoch and Daniel Fogal & Olle Risberg. These criticisms have seemed compelling, we think, because a contemporary Humean metaphysics of moral laws has only been offered implicitly or with important metaphysical concessions. Our aim, therefore, is to sketch the first explicitly Humean metaphysics of moral laws, modeled on David Lewis's Best Systems Account. We then employ this framework to rebut the objections from Enoch and Fogal. This paper rescues the Humean position from criticisms that have made it seem untenable, and clarifies the role of moral laws within a version of Humeanism: moral laws unify particular moral facts and guide practical deliberation without being metaphysically fundamental.