Hedonism is in adequate accord with our normative intuitions. But I have also promised a direct argument, independent of appeals to normative intuition, for the truth of that element of the Hedonic Maximin Principle. That is the task of this chapter.

Here is the short version: Ethical discourse is justificatory reason giving. And this requires hedonism, in the world we inhabit, whether we like it or not and whatever our normative intuitions. That is because pain and pleasure involve the only unconstituted natural normative properties found in the world.

This is a new metaethical alternative, within the cracks between familiar views. Justificatory reason giving has a metaphysical cost, but because there is this new metaethical alternative, we can pay it.

You may reasonably worry that hedonism is antecedently more plausible than any of the controversial metaphysical and metaethical claims that I will make here in support of it. But the nature of ethical discourse as justificatory reason giving requires an objective and asymmetrical vindication of its key normative claims over possible competitors. Normative intuitions alone are not enough. We must develop some understanding of what conditions might make our intuitions suitably true or otherwise asymmetrically appropriate, and see that those conditions are in fact plausible. And the only obvious thing that could provide such a vindication of a specific conception of the sole basic normative value is the existence in our world and all relevant alternatives of merely that type of basic value.