Abstract

Mark Johnston has recently attacked various versions of subjectivism and anti-realism, using what he calls the “missing-explanation argument”. In this paper I shall outline the MEA, and show how Johnston takes it to demolish some anti-realist views, both historical and contemporary. In particular, I shall outline how the argument would apply to the view about the origin of piety espoused by Euthyphro in Plato’s dialogue of that name, to the judgement-dependent conception of intentional states recently sketched by Crispin Wright, to the “internal realism” that has been espoused by Hilary Putnam, and to the perceptual model of value that has been advocated by John McDowell. I shall then attempt to deflect the MEA by raising a set of nested dilemmas for the argument. The conclusion I hope to establish is that Johnston is still some distance from establishing the falsity of the versions of anti-realism that he considers.