Some Hazards of Motivational Internalism: The Practical Case for Externalism (original) (raw)

Normative Concepts and Motivation

2005

Philip Pettit, Michael Smith, and Tyler Burge have suggested that the similarities between theoretical and practical reasoning can bolster the case for judgment internalism - i.e. the claim that normative judgments are necessarily connected to motivation. In this paper, I first flesh out the rationale for this new approach to internalism. I then argue that even if there are reasons for thinking that internalism holds in the theoretical domain, these reasons don't generalize to the practical domain.

Motivational Internalism and Normativity

Etyka

Motivational internalism is a view about the connection between motivation and moral judgment. The debate over internalism has long focused on establishing the nature of the connection between moral judgment and motivation. In this paper I argue that recent studies regarding personality disorders such as psychopathy and VM damage, which have been traditionally seen as providing a counter argument to internalism, indicate that motivational deficiencies in the moral sphere are linked to motivational deficiencies in other normative spheres such as prudence. This observation suggests that internalism focus of internalism should not be moral judgments simpliciter but rather the nature of the connection between motivation and the general normative sphere. If this is correct then psychopathy and VM damage should not be treated as disproving internalism, but rather as emphasizing a problem with the traditional ways it has been phrased.

Reconsidering the Meta-ethical Implications of Motivational Internalism and Externalism

Theoria

Motivational internalism and externalism – that is, theories about moral motivation – have played central roles in meta-ethical debate mainly because they have been thought to have implications for the constitutive nature of moral judgements. Thus, internalism and externalism have been adduced in favour of and against various versions of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. This article aims to question a fundamental presupposition behind such arguments. It has standardly been assumed (i) that if motivational internalism is true then moral judgements must consist of attitudes that cannot be had without the relevant motivation, and (ii) that if motivational exter-nalism is true, then moral judgements must consist of attitudes that one can have without being motivated. Against the background of a recent argument to the effect that the first of these assumptions is false, this article develops a parallel argument against the second. If this argument is correct , then motivational externalism is consistent with moral judgements being attitudes that one cannot have without being motivated. Together with the parallel argument concerning internalism, this means that the meta-ethical significance of internalism and externalism must be reconsidered.

A paper arguing against a strong form of motivational internalism (draft of 4/16/23)

Some writers in metaethics have maintained that moral motivation is intrinsic to the semantic content of an apparently propositional reasons statement. This paper unpacks and responds to this claim by showing that all mainstream metaethical views are committed to the non-identity of the properties that underlie actual motivation with the properties of the semantic contents of moral judgments. First, the paper reconstructs accounts on which the semantic contents of moral judgments are supposed to be intrinsically motivating. Then, it objects to such accounts by showing that the semantic contents of reasons statements, according to any metaethical view of what these consist in, are not of the right kind to belong to the proper objects of motivational states. An important implication of this argument is the falsity of a strong version of the motivational internalism thesis, according to which there is a necessary connection between agents’ recognition of reasons statements and their possession of corresponding motivation because motivational state contents are intrinsic to the semantic contents of reasons statements.

Defusing counterexamples against motivational internalism

Externalists argue that motivation is external to moral judgments on the grounds that people can be unmoved by their moral judgments. I reply that people sometimes act indifferently to their moral considerations not because their moral judgments lack motivation but because their moral judgments are obstructed by rival desires. It appears that the moral motivation wanes while the moral judgments linger. In reality, however, the moral motivation is only made inconspicuous by the motivation of the opposing desires. A moral judgment is subject to obstruction just like an emotive judgment and a gustatory judgment.

Motivational Internalism: a Somewhat Less Idealized Acount

Philosophical Quarterly, 2000

Contemporary internalists typically idealize the conditions for motivation, claiming for example that motivation must be present in rational persons under certain conditions. Robert Johnson, in The Philosophical Quarterly, 49 (1999), convincingly argues that these versions of internalism overlook ways in which the conditions in the antecedent of the conditional expressing the analysis are incompatible with the claim under analysis. However, avoiding the fallacy decouples internalism from its use to explain and justify moral action. I use Johnson’s argument as the basis of a new proposal for defining central internalist claims, modifying the conditions in which motivation must be manifest so that it is less idealized. We can specify conditions which are ideal enough to ensure motivation, but which are not so ideal as to be incompatible with the grounds of an agent’s reasons.

An Internalist Dilemma—and an Externalist Solution

The Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2013

In this paper, I argue that internalism about moral judgments and motivation faces a dilemma. On the one hand, a strong version of internalism is able to explain our notion of the connection between moral language and motivation, but fails to account for the possibility that people who suffer from certain mental conditions need not be accordingly motivated. On the other hand, a weaker form of internalism avoids this difficulty, but fails to explain our notion of the connection between moral judgments and motivation. Moreover, I argue that externalism in conjunction with a pragmatic claim that employs Grice's concept of generalized conversational implicature is able to account for both these considerations and that it consequently avoids the dilemma. Thus, there is reason to think that this view is preferable to internalism.