Visited my supervisor today.

I feel very good. I paid a fee a while ago for borrowing privileges from the library of my alma mater, and I went there today specifically to check out a metaphysical anthology to assist me in my ongoing philosophical research. University has Easter holidays at present, so although the academics are still there, they are all busy working on their journal papers and so on. Nevertheless, I chanced on coming upstairs to see if my old supervisor was there, and he was. It was very good to see him, and I spent about quarter of an hour catching up with him, discussing what I had done since my MPhil, and how things were going with him as well. I mentioned why I was at the university, and he gave me a reference I could look up, which turned out also to be covered in the metaphysical anthology that I was borrowing. I was very happy that he was willing to assist me with further research, which was more than I had hoped for. He also gave me the names of two people in the department whom I could ask questions about meta-ethics, and universals and supervenience respectively, so my ability to network has thus been increased.

Interestingly, he said that the main proponent of moral supervenience was Simon Blackburn. If I am going to take a view of moral supervenience, then I should at least be familiar with his work. I am not at all sure, however, that he would have the same conception of supervenience that I would, mainly in terms of exactly what he thinks it is over which morality does indeed supervene. But I should be able to discern his views from his essay "Morals and Modals", which is in the realism/antirealism section of the Blackwell Anthology of Metaphysics.

I don't think he goes into those views enough in that essay. He states more fully what his moral position is, and why, in an interview on the web. This is not getting into the technical nitty gritty of examples, but it is enough to demonstrate that his conception of what it is over which morality supervenes is quite different from my own. It is similar in some ways, but I employ universals, existentials and particulars in my account, which does not even seem present in his work. He is also basically an emotivist, which I find far too limiting as an ethical position. I don't really think, therefore, that I have much to learn from him, and I do not wish to focus on difficulties with moral supervenience that pertain to Blackburn's theory either at this stage. There will be a time to do that, but the reality is that I have already worked out my own view on moral supervenience to what seems to me to be a high degree of consistency. For now, therefore, I think I should continue with the real reason that I went to the library today. That was to find out about what kind of work has been done with supervenience and universals, because that is an area that I probably should learn more about to have confidence in what I have to say about it.

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