El estudio de la tasa de variación como una aproximación al concepto de derivada

In The Moral Problem Michael Smith grapples with the apparent incompatibility of a Humean theory of motivation with the combination of motivational internalism and cognitivism about moral judgements. Moral cognitivism is the view that our moral judgements are the sorts of things that are true or false.23 Motivational internalism is the view that our moral judgements are inherently motivating – judging it wrong to commit murder inherently motivates the judger not to commit murder. Humeanism about

motivation is the view that motivation requires both a belief and an appropriate desire. At first glance, a Humean theory of motivation is incompatible with a combination of

cognitivism and motivational internalism because cognitivism requires that moral judgements be matters of belief, while moral internalism requires that moral judgements motivate. But the Humean theory of motivation holds that while both beliefs and desires are necessary for motivation there can be no necessary connection between beliefs and desires. As a result, according to the Humean theory of motivation beliefs alone can neither directly nor indirectly (since beliefs cannot cause desires) generate motivation. Since beliefs are not able to generate motivation alone and cognitive judgments are a kind of belief, a cognitive moral judgement cannot on its own generate motivation, unless the agent already, and independently, has a desire relevant to that judgement. Consequently, a conjunction of the otherwise appealing positions of moral cognitivism, motivational internalism, and the Humean theory of motivation appears to be impossible.

There are a few ways this incompatibility can be resolved (Miller, 2003). Non-

cognitivists deny that moral judgements are like beliefs, and thus moral judgements could be either desires or non-cognitive states capable of generating desires, compatible with Humeanism and motivational internalism. Motivational externalists hold that moral

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Note that Smith is a moral realist, and that moral realism – the position that moral claims are about moral facts and are true or false with respect to those facts – is a subspecies of moral cognitivism.

judgements are not inherently motivating, and thus moral judgements can be true or false while motivation still requires the presence of a desire that might not be present when a moral judgement is made. In this chapter I will focus on Michael Smith’s argument in

The Moral Problem. There he attempts to solve this apparent dilemma in an ingenious manner. Smith argues for an anti-Humean theory of normativity that is generally compatible with the Humean theory of motivation and is also compatible with both cognitivism and motivational internalism. While Smith's larger project is very interesting, my interest here is with his argument for a Humean theory of motivation conjoined with his anti-Humean theory of normativity, as it is this area of his project that relates to my concern with reasons for action and the specific relationship between motivating and normative reasons. Since Smith is a moral cognitivist and has a well-developed and robust account of motivating and normative reasons that attempts to address some of the obvious problems of a Humean theory of motivation, I will take his position to be generally representative of theHumean position.

Smith's position is one of the leading theories of moral reasons and moral motivation, and many take it to be, perhaps with some modification, the right solution to the problem for moral realists that Williams puts forward in “Internal and External Reasons” as discussed in my previous chapter. As such, I take it to be important to discuss Smith, not merely to show how his position fits in relation to Williams and Dancy, but to demonstrate the problems that lead me to reject his position and Humeanism generally, thereby showing that his position is not satisfactory and that there is the space and the need for a better moral realist account of moral reasons. I will do this by arguing that the Humean theory of motivation fails to provide us with an adequate account of what our practice of

ascribing reasons is intended to provide. In the next chapter of this essay, I will show that Dancy's anti-psychologistic account of reasons has a number of significant advantages over Smith's position, and is better able to resolve the particular concerns I raise in this chapter.

My ultimate aim in this chapter is to show that an anti-psychological account of reasons explanations is better than Smith's version of the Humean theory of motivation and that, particularly for those who aim to endorse a moral cognitivist position, the Humean theory

of motivation is not the best account of motivating reasons. An essential component of my argument is that our theory of motivating states, which describes the psychological states that make up motivation, is notidentical to our theory of motivating reasons, which provides an account of what serves to explain the reasons for which we do the things we do. I will establish this important claim in this chapter. Motivating states are the

psychological states that make up an agent's motivation, while motivating reasons are the reasons which explain why an agent did what she did. If a thorough-going anti-

psychological account of reasons is correct, then it must be the case that our theory of motivating reasons is not the same as our theory of motivating states. If the Humean theory of motivation (Humeanism) is the right theory of motivating reasons, then all reasons are psychological states, since the Humean theory of motivation explains all motivation through the use of psychological states. However, if our theory of motivating states is not our theory of motivating reasons, it is possible that our theory of motivating reasons could include anti-psychological reasons as reason candidates, even if the best explanation of our motivating (psychological) states is Humeanism.