Universals and morals

You are researching the significance of supervenience to the problem of universals. It seems to me that if you are going to do that, then you should ask yourself, how important is a theory of universals to your theory? Specifically, what are the necessary presuppositions that you are making about what universals are for the sake of your theory? For example, is there anything at stake for you whether a universal is a real entity or merely a word, and if so, what?

Well, it seems to me that if a prescriptive agent has been universalised for the sake of a moral judgement, then this will explain people's tendency to want to engage in moral arguments. Because if the prescriptive agent has been universalised in a particular moral judgement, then it must of necessity apply to all prescriptive agents in the world, regardless of whether the universal is a concept, a word or a real entity, and this is indeed all that I require of it.

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