What is the connection between moral judgement and motivation? We can start with the observation that people’s motivations do often change to reflect their sincere moral judgements. Someone who comes to judge that it is wrong to torture cats will, hopefully, refrain from torturing cats. If I judge that I ought to give money to charity, then I will be motivated to do so. Conversely, we tend to judge people by their acts, as well as by their words: the fact that someone reliably donates money to charity indicates that they judge it right to do so; the fact that someone reliably refrains from torturing cats indicates that they judge it wrong to torture cats; etc. Call the view that there is some interesting necessary connection between moral judgement and motivation internalism.51 Following Smith, we
have:
47 See e.g. Lewis 1988. 48 Altham 1986.
49 Sinclair (2007) adverts to Dawkins 1995: 74 and Papineau 1993, ch 3. §4 on this point. 50 Sinclair 2007: 9.
51 Informative discussion of this topic appears in Darwall 1992, FitzPatrick 2004, Svavarsdottir 1999,
Strong Internalism (SI): Necessarily, if an agent judges it right for her to φ in circumstances C, then she is motivated to φ in C.52
But this is too strong: we want, at least, to allow for agents in whom some defect prevents this motivation from going through. So perhaps we want a defeasible connection.
Weak Internalism (WI): Necessarily, if an agent judges it right for her to φ in circumstances C, then either she is motivated to φ in C or she is practically irrational. (Smith calls this ‘the practicality requirement’).
Strong internalism seems to be false. There are well-documented cases of agents whose capacity for sincere, competent moral judgement remains intact, but who entirely lack the
relevant motivations.53 Weak internalism is also problematic: what is meant by ‘practically
irrational’ in this context? Many of those subjects who fail to be motivated by their (apparently sincere) moral judgements appear to be otherwise practically rational, at least insofar as they are capable of forming and executing plans, navigating the world around them, and so on.
Smith argues that both forms of internalism are defensible – partly because the denial of internalism results in a dilemma. Call the denial of internalism, externalism. The externalist is committed to holding that moral motivation is contingent. On what might it be contingent? Plausibly, on the presence of an appropriate desire to do the right thing. But that must be understood as either de re or de dicto. The de re reading, however, fails to explain why our
motivations often change in line with our moral judgements. And the de dicto desire amounts
(or so Smith claims) to a ‘moral fetish’. Although Smith may be right about the de re reading,
it is not clear that de dicto desires are ‘fetishistic’ in the relevant sense. Indeed, a concern to
do ‘whatever is right’ is often wholly appropriate.54 On this count, at least, externalism should not be seen as implausible.
Let us return to weak internalism. It is not only that there is a problem of explication, here. It also seems that there are people who, although in full possession of judgments about what they ought to do, take a great deal of pleasure in acting contrary to those beliefs. Certainly, it need not be that their behaviour involves inconsistency, contra Kant. On a purely
instrumental understanding of practical rationality (which is, after all, at least pre-
52 Smith 1994: 61-62. 53 See Roskies 2003.
theoretically appealing), there appear to be actual counterexamples to weak internalism, and many of them: although people do often have moral motivations, and hence ends with moral content, not all people do so.55 The sensible (and capable) knave, provided that she is suitably competent, will not be failing to take the means to her ends if she fails to have any moral motivations. The challenge, for the weak internalist, would be to specify the nature of the failing of someone who forms a moral belief, but not the appropriate motivation. Perhaps it is true that, if I believe that I ought to φ, then I believe that I have a reason to φ. And if I believe that I have a reason to φ, then either I am motivated to φ or I am practically irrational. But the first claim – linking beliefs about ‘oughts’ with beliefs about reasons – is not obviously true. Certainly the claim that moral truths entail reasons for action (moral ‘rationalism’) has been disputed. Can we, then, make sense of the motivating thought behind internalism without
accepting either of the two above formulations?
Lenman considers the possibility of the amoralist (following Brink’s terminology).56 The
stock internalist response, he notes, is to claim that amoralists are only making moral judgements in an ‘inverted commas’ sense. That is, they are not making genuine moral judgements, but rather are reporting on others’ usage of moral terms. But reporting on others’ usage of moral terms requires that there be others on whose usage to report. In other words, if amoralists are to make ‘inverted commas’ judgements, then they need a community of genuine moralists surrounding them. Now suppose that there were a world – call it Amorality – whose inhabitants devote a lot of time to detecting and reporting on the moral facts, but who do so in a purely academic fashion. It is ‘really jolly interesting to know what these moral
facts are but it’s of no practical significance.’57 This story is, says Lenman, ‘preposterous’. It
is preposterous, because ‘the inverted commas sense of good is entirely parasitical upon the
stronger internal sense without which it would be altogether empty.’58
In order to make sense of moral discourse without motivation, we need to suppose that agents are making ‘inverted commas’ judgements. But in the absence of genuine moral judgement –
moral judgement plus motivation – there needs to be some way of importing sense into the
disquoted (i.e. without inverted commas) judgement. In the case of actual, real-world amoralists, the suggestion is that the ‘inverted commas’ usage gets its sense from actual, genuine usage. So the ‘world of amoralists’ story is, if not logically incoherent, certainly preposterous.
55 Broome 2002, Brink 1989., Svavarsdottir 1999.
56 Lenman 1999, see Brink 1989, discussed at Chapter 1 §9.2. 57 Lenman 1999: 446.
This, however, does not get us all the way to either strong or weak internalism. What it does
yield is Very Weak Internalism:
Very Weak Internalism (VWI): Necessarily, if a community uses moral discourse, then there is at least one member of that community who is generally motivated to act in accordance with her sincere moral judgements.
This is simply the denial of hyperexternalism – the claim that there is no connection between
moral judgement and motivation whatsoever. Individual agents may consistently fail to be motivated to act in accordance with their moral judgements, for whatever reason, but
nonetheless count as competent users of the discourse in virtue of being appropriately related to those who are motivated accordingly.
There are, however, two problems with Very Weak Internalism. The first is that it is simply too weak. This is in part a function of the sheer implausibility of a community where only one person is appropriately motivated. A story of a world of amoralists which contained only one
moralist would be just as preposterous as the story of the world of amoralists. Not only is it implausible in itself, but it also raises the question of why, faced with such a world, we would think that the motivated agents are the ones making the genuine judgements. This question
applies to any account which permits the minority usage to be treated as the genuine usage. Here, there is a contrast between the case of morality and the case of science. As far as science is concerned, we have a criterion of expert usage; although the majority may make no distinction between jadeite and nephrite, or be unable to tell the difference between elm trees and beech trees, we nonetheless defer to the minority usage. And our competent usage of the terms ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ is dependent on being appropriately related to others who are able to
differentiate between the two. As far as morality is concerned, however, it is hard to see what grounds we could have for treating the majority practice as a deviant variety of the minority practice. Given this, here is a less weak form of internalism, called Less Weak Internalism:
LWI: Necessarily, if a community uses moral discourse, then members of that community are generally motivated to act in accordance with their sincere moral judgements.
The second problem with VWI, however, applies to all of these defeasible formulations. We need to give some explanation for why these defeasible formulations obtain, and this takes us straight back to the initial discussion of internalism. The connection can be readily explained by the invocation of an intrinsic connection: moral judgements simply are motivating states.
But this is too strong, for the reasons discussed above. A realist account would have to give some account of moral judgements wherein there is a conceptual tie between making judgements and generally being motivated. At this point, the naturalist might invoke an analytic tie between some natural property, F, and motivation, and then claim a non-analytic tie between that natural property and goodness.59 Perhaps the property of goodness is
identical with the property of our own well-being, and we cannot help but care about our own well-being. But the problem with that move, thinks Lenman, is that it leaves the concept of
‘good’ empty; it need have no particular descriptive content (since the property identity is a
synthetic one), nor need it have any connection with motivation. This leaves the possibility of the world of amoralists again open. Worse still, the realist has to explain why it is possible for there to be one amoralist, but not for all members of a community to be amoralists.
I think that Lenman is right to worry about the chances of such an explanation succeeding. But he is wrong to think that attributing analytic connections between goodness and
motivation, or between goodness and some natural moral property, or – even – between some natural property and motivation, implies an intrinsic connection. There is at least one case
where an analytic connection does not imply an intrinsic connection, namely the case of Davidson’s various interpretative arguments.60 Similarly, there are relationships between non-
moral beliefs and motivation which parallel the defeasible connections outlined by WI and LWI above. For instance, it is an analytic truth that, within a community, if members of that community believe that an object is dangerous, then generally they will be motivated to avoid that object.61
I will assume, then, that LWI stands in need of explanation by, and accommodation within, any acceptable metaethical theory. Chapters Three and Four outline how the realist and the constructivist, respectively, can meet this criterion. In the realist case, the strategy will be to claim that goodness is conceptually connected to the notion of something which is
intrinsically normative, and that the best candidate for such an entity is also one which is conceptually linked to motivation. In the constructivist case, true moral principles are held to pick out solutions to co-ordination problems. There is therefore a conceptual connection between what we have moral reason to do, and what we have an interest in doing. But I will make this connection explicit in due course.
59 Following Lenman 1999: 451. An instance of such a proposal is given in Boyd 1988. 60 See Davidson 1984 esp. 17-43, 125-155, 183-199.