Alternative motivation: a new challenge to moral judgment internalism

Abstract

Internalists argue that there is a necessary connection between motivation and moral judgment. The examination of cases plays an important role in philosophical debate about internalism. This debate has focused on cases concerning the failure to act in accordance with a moral judgment, for one reason or another. I call these failure cases. I argue that a different sort of case is also relevant to this debate. This sort of case is characterized by (1) moral judgment and (2) behavior that accords with the content of the moral judgment but that has been performed not because of the moral judgment. Instead it is due to some other source of motivation. I call these alternative motivation cases. I distinguish two sorts of alternative motivation cases, and I argue that externalists have natural explanations of these cases. By contrast, extant internalist accounts of failure cases are inadequate when applied to alternative motivation cases.

Keywords:

• moral judgment
• externalism
• moral motivation
• internalism
• amoralism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous referees for comments that greatly improved this article.

Notes

See Darwall (1997) and Svavarsdottir (1999) for extensive discussion of varieties of internalism.

Sarah Stroud (2003, pp. 123–124) is explicit about this, and cites Nagel (1970), Korsgaard (1986), Foot (1995) and Scanlon (1998) as exemplifying the same idea.

Consider cases involving conflict between a prior moral reason to keep a promise to meet a friend and a new, very significant non-moral reason. Here is a morality-prudence case: suppose that you have the opportunity to make a fortune or to ensure your own good health for decades, but availing yourself of it requires that you miss your meeting with your friend. Alternatively, consider a morality-aesthetics case: suppose that you are suddenly provided with a fleeting opportunity to see newly discovered paintings by Rembrandt, or to hear an impromptu concert by master musicians who have never worked together before and probably never will again. Prima facie, it is rational to forego living up to the moral claim and to act upon the new non-moral claims in these cases.

David Copp (1997) explicitly defends the idea that moral reasons do not necessarily override other sorts of reasons, such as prudential ones.

Although ignored in meta-ethics, this phenomenon has been important in the philosophy of action for decades. It is part of Donald Davidson's seminal case for treating reasons as causes (1963). The argument, roughly, is this: consider an agent who has two reasons to do A, yet who acts from only one of these. For example, consider a person who knows that she has both health reasons and taste-based reasons to eat salad, but who acts solely to satisfy her palate. How are we to make sense of this? Davidson argues that we should understand the taste-based reason as playing a causal role in the consumption of the salad, and we should think that the health-based reason plays no such role. Theorists who deny that reasons can be causes cannot cast this phenomenon in these terms and putatively lose the ability to give a satisfying account of people who act from just one of two reasons.

One might well wonder if it is possible to make a moral judgment without endorsing it. Perhaps the making of judgments implies some degree of assent to them. If by moral judgment we mean the psychological capacity or capacities by which we evaluate actions, states of affairs, persons, etc. in moral terms, then it seems that this can be done without endorsement. If we mean something else, then perhaps endorsement is implied. Consider an analogy: suppose I say, ‘This is a “good” velvet Elvis picture.’ I do not endorse this aesthetic evaluation, but I recognize that other people might literally make this judgment, and I can follow their criteria. Am I making the aesthetic judgment that someone else sincerely uttering this sentence would be making? It seems to me desirable to leave open the possibility that I am. This goes for the moral case as well. If you disagree, then disregard this paragraph and endnote, as this implies that this possibility collapses into the next one.

I take it that some degree of change of this sort is compatible with normal psychological functioning. If you doubt this, put aside the hybrid cases and focus on the primary versions. Note: the issue here is not whether these agents are behaving rationally – deviations from rationality are certainly consistent with normal moral psychology. Rationality is the topic of the next section.

The qualification can be added to all desires as well: P has reason to desire-on-the-grounds-of-the moral-judgment that A in C just in case a fully rational version of P would desire-on-the-grounds-of-the moral-judgment that P desire-on-the-grounds-of-the moral-judgment that A in C. So far as I can tell, this adds no important considerations, so I will not discuss it independently.

Perhaps it is relevant to all cases about which we are to imagine fully rational persons forming desires. However, in these cases it is additionally relevant because the fully rational person is forming desires about the desires of the agents in the cases.

The possibility of this sort of divergence is cut off in the Williams–Smith account of rationality by the requirements that the rational agent have all relevant true beliefs and no relevant false ones.