INTRODUCTION

These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeled internalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive reason-giving power of desires. As we will see, however, while these debates overlap, the new debate is importantly different from the old debate.

Bernard Williams inaugurated the new debate about internalism. He argued that genuine reasons must be internal, that is, they must have a certain specified connection to the motivations of the agent whose reasons they are purported to be. Williams tells us that the most fundamental arguments for internalism stem from what I will call his explanation condition. Before we get bogged down in the attempt to formulate precisely what the explanation condition and internalism amount to, however, let me offer a quick road map of this essay. In this essay, I will try to reach a better understanding of (1) the thesis that Williams has labeled internalism, (2) the “interrelation of explanatory and normative reasons” that Williams claims exists, and (3) how Williams thinks (2) helps establish (1). I will argue that Williams's claim that reasons must be interrelated with explanation in a particular way, that is, his explanation condition, does not support internalism as he supposes. Furthermore, I will argue that Williams's explanation condition is false. Finally, I will argue that internalism is false.