1 For Neil Sinclair and Uri Lebowitz (eds.) Ethics and Explanation (OUP) MORAL EXPLANATION FOR MORAL ANTI-REALISM * Alexander Miller, University of Otago For the purposes of this paper, we can define moral realism as the view that (i) moral judgements express beliefs about the instantiation of mind-independent moral properties, and that (ii) some (positive, atomic) moral judgements are true. The metaphysical component of moral realism, thus defined, includes the claim that mind- independent moral facts exist, or that mind-independent moral properties are genuine features that are at least in some instances instantiated in the world. The aim of the paper is to undermine further the “explanationist” argument according to which the availability of true empirical explanations of moral judgements in terms of moral facts and properties provides evidence in favour of the metaphysical component of moral realism (for recent examples of the explanationist argument, see Majors (2003, 2007) and Sturgeon (2006)) 1 . As such, the paper builds on Miller (2003, 2009) and Neil Sinclair (2011, 2012). In Miller (2003, 2009) I argue that program explanation, as developed by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, cannot be used by Cornell Realist varieties of moral realism (such as that developed in Sturgeon (1988)) to neutralise Gilbert Harman’s (1977) claim that there are no moral properties capable of figuring in good empirical explanations 2 , while Sinclair argues that the availability of moral explanations does not justify moral realism given that expressivist forms of moral anti-realism can accommodate good empirical moral explanations. The present paper * An earlier version of this paper was delivered as the keynote presentation at the November 2011 Ethics and Explanation conference at the University of Nottingham. I’m grateful to the audience on that occasion, and in particular to Stephen Mumford, Philip Percival, Neil Sinclair and Pekka Väyrynen. Thanks, too, to the audience at a presentation at the University of Otago. 1 The term “explanationist” is coined in Sinclair (2011). 2 For critical discussion of the arguments in Miller (2003, 2009), see Nelson (2006) and Bloomfield (2009).