 This line of reasoning is too quick as it stands. Supervenience is a modal claim, so contingent ethical nihilism—the thesis that there are no actually instantiated ethical properties—cannot explain ethical supervenience. Indeed, as Christian Coons (2011) has shown, it is possible to use supervenience to construct an interesting argument against contingent nihilism. A crucial question here is: what is the modality of the supervenience thesis to be accounted for? If the supervenience thesis we need to explain is conceptual, then even the truth of non-contingent nihilism—the thesis that it is metaphysically impossible for ethical properties to be instantiated—would not do the relevant explanatory work. Only the thesis that the instantiation of ethical properties is conceptually impossible would suffice. (Note that the nihilist might be able to adapt one of the realist replies to Blackburn discussed in  Section 3.1,  but in this case it would not be easier for the nihilist to explain supervenience, than it is for the realist who adopts the same reply.)