Kiliba, Edgar Mwemezi2018-05-102018-05-102017https://hdl.handle.net/10539/24434A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, 2017Any comprehensive theory of the realist position in metaethics must be equipped with a version of moral ontology. Metaethical theological voluntarism, which purports that supernatural facts, i.e. commands issued by a divine being, determine moral states of affairs, has been accused for a long time of rendering morality ‘arbitrary’. Implicit in this widely-accepted objection is the idea that a moral theory cannot have an arbitrary ontological foundation because then anything could have been right or wrong. This paper gives a detailed analysis of this objection that theological voluntarism is arbitrary and makes the case that a commitment to avoiding arbitrariness imposes constraints on the formulation of a moral theory. In particular, this paper argues that accounting for such a commitment decreases the significance that natural facts play for moral theories that maintain a naturalist account of moral ontology.Online resource (59 pages)enEthicsPhilosophy, Modern--21st centuryMetaethicsThesis