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As mentioned at the end of the last chapter, motivational internalism (from hereon I will drop the word ‘motivational’) presents a potential problem for any cognitivist theory of normative judgement, including naturalist theories and provides support for non-cognitivist theories. Cognitivists usually answer this challenge by denying that internalism is true and that is just what I will do in this chapter. First, I tackle some preliminaries. Then I give a sketch of the existing debate around internalism, showing why it has reached an impasse. Since the debate has reached an impasse, there cannot be drawn from it a decisive argument against naturalism. I then try to break the deadlock by arguing against internalism in an oblique way.

§1

Internalism is the view that there exists a necessary connection between the normative judgements people make and the actions they are motivated to perform.242 _{For instance,} according to one form of internalism, anyone who sincerely judges that some action is right is necessarily motivated to perform that action, and anyone who judges that some action is wrong is necessarily motivated to refrain from performing that action.

According to cognitivist theories, normative judgements are just beliefs. Judging that some action is right, for instance, is, on cognitivist views, just to believe that that action has the normative property is right. It is difficult for cognitivist views to accommodate internalism. Beliefs, it is widely thought, cannot by themselves motivate us to act. It is often thought that beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit, meaning that the aim of belief is to have its content match that of the world.243 _{To desire to do something is, meanwhile, to be motivated to do it.}244 Desires have a world-to-mind direction of fit; their aim is to be realised, or to make the world fit

242 _{It is important to distinguish this view from Williams-style reasons internalism which I talked about in the last}

two chapters.

243 _{Hume (1739), Anscombe (1957), Platts (1979, p.257), Smith (1987).} 244 _{Smith (1988), Dancy (2000, ch.2), Toppinen (2015).}

the way that the desire would have it be. Both beliefs and desires are required to motivate us to act; without desires we have no aim for how the world is to be, and without beliefs we cannot know whether the world needs to change in order to match that aim. If this picture is right, then cognitivists cannot claim that normative judgements can by themselves motivate us to act. That does not quite show that cognitivists cannot accommodate internalism; there remains the possibility that anyone who believes that some action has the property is right necessarily also has a desire to perform that action. However, it is also widely thought that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. If that is correct then the cognitivist cannot account for a necessary connection between rightness-judgements and motivation, since on their view the judgement that some action is right and a desire to perform that action are distinct mental states. If two entities are distinct then it should be possible for us to imagine one existing without the other. Therefore, if cognitivism is correct it should be possible to imagine someone who has the belief that some action has the property is right but does not have any desire to perform that action. However, such scenarios are, according to internalists, conceptually impossible. So, the truth of internalism would present a serious problem for any cognitivist view of normative judgement. It would also provide strong support for non-cognitivist views, which hold that normative judgements just are desires. Non-cognitivists can explain why normative judgements are necessarily accompanied by a motivation to act because on their view that normative judgements just are motivational states.

Some philosophers have argued that cognitivism can be shown to be compatible with internalism. Ralph Wedgwood, for instance, has argued that it is part of the inferential role of normative concepts, that we must intend to perform a particular action if we are to count as judging that that action what we ought to do.245 _{Other philosophers have argued that the claim}

245 _{(2007) ch.4. Wedgwood is not a naturalist, but I do not see why naturalists could not adapt his view. Jackson}

(1998, pp.160-1) briefly makes a suggestion which is along these lines. Laskowski (2019) explores a view which is similar to this.

that someone is motivated to do something is entailed or conventionally implicated (in Grice’s

sense246_{) by normative judgements.}247 _{According to all these views, though normative judgements} are just beliefs that some action or object has some natural property, in order to understand them specifically as normative judgements it must be the case that we are disposed to infer that the person who makes the judgement has a certain motivation. Interesting though these views are, I will not go into them here.

Since I am defending naturalism and not cognitivism per se, I could argue that naturalism is compatible with internalism even if cognitivism is not. Internalism is a conceptual claim about normative judgements whereas naturalism, as I have understood it, is the metaphysical claim that normative properties are nothing over and above natural properties. That being so, the truth of internalism would not immediately discount naturalism. At the same time, it is very natural to think that naturalism and cognitivism go hand-in-hand. If some action’s being right consists in its having a particular natural property, it is hard to see how the judgement that some action is right could not simply be the belief that that action has that property.

Philosophers have recently challenged this idea in a number of interesting ways. For instance, some have argued that while normative properties are natural properties, normative judgements consist of both a belief that something has a natural property and a desire to act in a particular way.248 _{Allan Gibbard has even argued that naturalism is compatible with the view that normative} claims just express desires.249 _{There is a lot to say about these views but I will put them to one}

246 _{In Studies in the Way of Words, Grice stipulates that by ‘S implicates X’ he means that X is an implicature of S.} 247 _{Tresan (2006) is an example of entailment view while Copp (2001) is an example of the conventional implicature}

view. I do not mention conversational implicature views (e.g. Finlay 2005) because conversational implicature is cancellable and so difficult to square with there being a necessary connection between judgement and motivation. See also, Radcliffe (2006).

248 _{e.g. Boisvert (2008), Hay (2014). Schroeder (2009) offers an excellent, critical survey of many of these views. So-}

called ‘Besirest’ theories (e.g. McNaughton (1988), Wiggins (1991), Zangwill (2008)) would also fall under this heading since they think that the mental states that constitute normative judgements have a world-to-mind and a mind-to-world direction of fit.

249 _{Gibbard (2003), pp.29-33. He prefers to say that normative judgements are plans rather than ‘desires’, but since I}

side also and assume that naturalists are cognitivists. Instead, I will argue that internalism is false. First, I need to say a bit more about internalism.

§2 - Internalism

Saying that someone is motivated to perform an action is ambiguous. It could mean that that person would perform that action if the opportunity arose, or it could merely mean that they would feel some pull to perform the action but not necessarily enough motivation to actually perform it. According to, what David Brink, calls “strong internalism”, anyone who makes a normative judgement will necessarily act in accordance with that judgement (or at least try to).250 For example, the strong internalist would think that someone who sincerely judges that visiting the dentist today would be the right thing to do will necessarily at least try to visit the dentist today.

Strong internalism is an implausible theory and very few people now defend it. The idea that we sometimes fail to attempt to do that which we judge to be the right thing to do is not only coherent, but also familiar. For example, it is not uncommon for a student to believe that starting working on their essay immediately would be the right thing to do, only for them to do something fun instead. The strong internalist might argue that the fact that the student does not start work on their essay shows that really what they think the right thing to do is to have fun. However, this seems more like an ad hoc attempt to save strong internalism than it is a plausible claim about our psychology. It is hard to think of any justification for such a claim that does not assume the truth of strong internalism. According to strong internalism, it is impossible for us to fail to attempt to do what we think would be right for us to do due to lethargy, selfishness, cowardice, etc. Since the theory rules out the possibility of such commonplace, widely recognised

phenomena, we would need some very strong reasons to accept it. No such reasons have been found, so in what follows I ignore the possibility that strong internalism might be true.

Nowadays, internalists almost all opt for weak forms of internalism. According to weak

internalism, anyone who makes a sincere normative judgement will necessarily have at least some motivation to act as that judgement requires. For instance, a weak internalist might claim that anyone who judges that some action would be the right thing for them to do will necessarily be motivated, at least to some degree, to perform that action. The motivation to do what they judge to be right could be outweighed by a motivation to perform a different action. It is consistent with weak internalism that I might fail to give £10 to Oxfam, even though I judge that it would be right to give £10 to Oxfam, if my motivation not to give £10 to Oxfam is stronger. Weak internalism merely requires that in that scenario I would have at least a tiny amount of

motivation to give £10 to Oxfam. From here on when I use the label, ‘internalism’, I will usually be talking about weak forms of internalism unless otherwise stated.

Internalist theories can also be grouped into unconditional and conditional varieties.251 _{So far I have} been talking as if all internalist theories were unconditional. According to unconditional

internalism anyone, without exception, who makes a normative judgement must have a corresponding motivation. Not all forms of internalism are like this. Conditional internalists argue that someone who makes a normative judgement will necessarily have a corresponding motivation as long as they meet condition C. Meeting C usually requires that the person making the normative judgement is free from the kinds of quirks or defects which are thought to prevent people from doing what they judge to be right. For example, meeting C might require that the speaker is not a psychopath.

Since, according to conditional views, there is still a necessary connection between judgement and motivation, the cognitivist has as much trouble accommodating these forms of internalism as they do unconditional internalism. On the cognitivist view normative judgements and the mental states which motivate us to act on those judgements are distinct so, regardless of which conditions the person making the normative judgement meets, it should be possible to imagine that person having one mental state without having the other.

The main exceptions to this are conditional forms of internalism which require that the person meets certain normative conditions. For example, some philosophers argue that anyone who makes a normative judgement necessarily has a corresponding motivation as long as they are fully rational.252 _{The cognitivist can accommodate this form of internalism because they can plausibly} argue that the normative property is fully rational is had only by people who would be motivated to act on their normative judgements. This would not be an ad hoc move; that someone is fully rational only if they are motivated to act on their normative judgements is an independently plausible claim. It does seem to plausibly be a defect of rationality not to be motivated to do what you judge to be right. That being so, when the naturalist comes to identify which natural property is identical to is fully rational, they could restrict their search only to natural properties had by agents who are motivated to do what they judge is right and in so doing capture this kind of internalism. It has often been said, rightly in my view, that introducing the requirement that the person making the normative judgement be fully rational has the effect of making internalism trivial since most metaethical views are able to accommodate it. The same is true, mutatis

mutandis, for conditional forms of internalism which require that the person making the normative judgements is fully virtuous or maximally good. Since these conditional forms of internalism are not much threat to cognitivism I do not say any more about them.

I give some reasons for thinking that we should reject the forms of conditional internalism that are incompatible with cognitivism later in this chapter. First, however I briefly discuss the debate around unconditional internalism. I argue that the main arguments that have been given for or against unconditional internalism are not decisive, but I then go on to provide what I think is a better argument against it. To set up these argument we need to know a bit more about the main alternative theory of normative motivation.

§3 – Externalism

Cognitivists are very often externalists. They believe that our motivation to do what our normative judgements require is supplied externally to the judgements themselves. On externalist views we might be motivated by a motivational state such as a desire (either de dicto or de re) to do the right thing, rather than by the normative judgement itself.253 _{Unconditional internalists feel that if, for} example, someone says that they believe that it would be right for them to do something but they have no motivation whatsoever to do it, then they do not really believe that that is the right thing to do. Externalists can accept that this is usually the case. Failing to be motivated to do what you say you think is right might be a reliable indicator that the speaker is being insincere. There are a few ways that the externalist can try to explain this fact.

First, they might argue that normative properties are natural properties which usually motivate us to perform actions that we believe exemplify them.254 _{A utilitarian could, for instance, argue that} the reason we are usually motivated to perform actions we judge to be right is that we are usually motivated to perform actions which would maximise happiness.

Second, they might argue that the content of normative claims makes essential reference to facts about our motivation and desires. For instance, according to one view judging that something is right involves judging that we would desire to desire that it were done if we thought about the 253 _{See e.g. Svavardóttier (1999)}

issue as fully as we could.255 _{This view is not quite compatible with internalism, since it is}

conceivable that someone might not desire to do what they believe they would desire to desire to do if they considered the matter fully. But this view could explain why we usually are motivated to do what we judge to be right.

Third, there are views which try to explain why normative judgements are usually accompanied by a particular motivation by drawing on the pragmatics of normative language.256 _{According to} these views normative judgements presupposes or implicates a connection between that

judgement and the speaker’s motivation. If, for instance, we are happy to accept that people tend to speak in a way that fulfils the function of the conversation, and if we assume that normative conversation function to settle questions of how we are to act, then it will not be surprising if we can usually correctly infer from a speaker’s normative utterances that they have particular

motivations.

Externalists explain why normative judgements are usually accompanied by a motivation in these kinds of ways. Internalists think that this is insufficient for having a satisfactory account of normative motivation. They believe that it is necessarily the case that anyone who makes a

normative judgement has a corresponding motivation. Externalists demur. They think that it is at the very least conceivable that someone might not be motivated to do what they judge to be right. I now move on to give a brief overview of how the debate between them has gone.

§4 – The Internalist-Externalist Stalemate

§4.1 – The Externalist Case against Internalism

The debate between internalists and externalists has largely been focused on the possibility of amoralists – people who have no motivation to do what they judge to be right. Externalists think

255 _{Lewis (1989)} 256 _{Finlay (2005, 2014).}

that there are clearly are some amoralists and that this shows that the connection between normative judgements and motivation is not a necessary connection. 257

Psychopaths are very often cited as examples of amoralists. Psychopaths are people with

sociopathic personality disorders who are prone to violence and who seemingly feel unmoved by moral considerations. Nevertheless, it has been found that, when questioned, psychopaths will say that they agree that violent and harmful behaviours are morally wrong; they just do not care that these behaviours are morally wrong. Some externalists consider this to be good evidence that people can make normative judgements while having no motivation to act on them. Internalists have some good replies to this objection. One reply is to question whether psychopaths really make moral judgements, or if they just use terms like ‘right’ in what R.M. Hare called a “conventional sense”.258 _{The idea is that when psychopaths say that something is} ‘right’, they mean merely that society generally deems it to be right. These kinds of judgements are not moral judgements in any interesting sense so the fact that they do not entail that the speaker has any particular motivation is not an objection to internalism. This seems to be a plausible account of what psychopaths mean when they make moral judgements. Studies have shown that psychopaths do not generally see as much of a distinction between what is conventional and what is moral as regular adults.259 _{Psychopaths will, for instance, usually judge that moral norms} are contingent on their society’s conventions. Furthermore, they view moral transgressions and transgressions of conventions as being very close in terms of seriousness. A good explanation of these data is that psychopaths simply mean to describe what is conventional when they use moral terms. With a viable alternative account on the table, internalism is at no disadvantage as regards explaining the lack of moral motivation in psychopaths.

257 _{Stocker (1979), Brink (1989), Mele (1996).}

258 _{(1952, pp.125-6). Internalists usually talk instead about the ‘inverted commas sense’ when referencing Hare but}

for Hare the ‘conventional sense’ and the ‘inverted commas sense’ of a word are different and the ‘conventional