It will not do to argue that whenever a principle P is grounded in certain facts F, the statement "if any situation contains facts of type F, then one one ought to act in accord with P" - will hold independently of there actually being any such facts F and therefore expresses a principle, call it P', that is, to this extent at least, fact-independent. For P' is not a principle that explains why facts of sort F ground the principle P. It is simply a statement to the effect that they do so. Moreover, the sense in which P' is fact-independent is that there need not exist any facts of sort F for it to be true that, were they to exist, they would ground principle P