Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:12:35.424Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Weak Motivational Internalism, Lite: Dispositions, Moral Judgments, and What We're Motivated to Do

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jesse Steinberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Motivational internalists hold that there is a necessary connection between an agent's moral judgments and what she is motivated to do. One way to express the central thesis of this view is as follows:

Necessarily, for any agent 5, if 5 judges that some available action is morally right (or good, or obligatory, or …) for 5 to perform (or to refrain from performing), then 5 is motivated, at least to some extent, to perform (or to refrain from performing) that action.

This is, to borrow a phrase from David Lewis, quite an unlovely mouthful. Perhaps a simpler way of articulating things would be:

Necessarily, an agent's sincere moral judgment that she ought to φ provides her with some motivation to φ.

Yet another formulation of motivation internalism is:

Necessarily, if an agent makes a moral judgment, then she has some desire that favours, inter alia, any course of action that judgment entails.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 35: Belief and Agency , 2009 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anscombe, G.E.M. 1957. Intention. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bedke, M. S. 2009. “Moral Judgment Purposivism: Saving Internalism From Amoralism.” Philosophical Studies 144: 189–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, S. 1998. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, P. 2001. Moral Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brink, D. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brink, D. 1997. “Moral Motivation.” Ethics 108: 4–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bromwich, D. 2010. “Clearing Conceptual Space for Cognitivist Motivational Internalism.” Philosophical Studies 148: 343-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copp, D. 1997. “Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith’s the Moral Problem.” Ethics 108: 33–54.Google Scholar
Cuneo, T. 2002. “Reconciling Realism with Humeanism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80: 465–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. 1983. Impartial Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Darwall, S. 1997. “Reasons, Motives, and the Demands of Morality.” In Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, eds. Darwall, S., Gibbard, A., and Railton, P., 305-12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de Sousa, R. 1987. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Sousa, R. 2001. “Moral Emotions.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 4: 109-26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deigh, J. 1990. “Review: A Cognitivist's Approach to the Emotions.” Behavior and Philosophy 18 (1): 63–67.Google Scholar
Deigh, J. 1994. “Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions.” Ethics 104: 824-54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doring, S. 2003. “Explaining Action by Emotion.” Philosophical Quarterly 53: 214-30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreier, J. 1990. “Internalism and Speaker Relativism.” Ethics 101: 6–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldie, P. 2002. “Emotions, Feelings, and Intentionality.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 235-54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenspan, M. 1980. “A Case of Missed Feelings: Ambivalence and the Logic of Emotions.” In Explaining Emotions, ed. Rorty, A., 223-50. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Greenspan, P. 1988. Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gunther, Y. 2004. “The Phenomenology and Intentionality of Emotion.” Philosophical Studies 117: 43–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, R.M. 1952. The Language of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Joyce, R. 2001. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R. 2002. “Expressivism and Motivation Internalism.” Analysis 62: 336-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenman, J. 1999. “The Externalist and the Amoralist.” Philosophia 27: 441-57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, J. 1978. “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, vol. LII.Google Scholar
McDowell, J. 1979. “Virtue and Reason.” Monist 62: 331-50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, J. 1983. “Reason and Action.” Philosophical Investigations 5: 301-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton, D. 1988. Moral Motivation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mele, A. 1989. “Motivational Internalism: The Powers and Limits of Practical Reasoning.” Philosophia 19:417-36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, C. 2008. “Motivational Internalism.” Philosophical Studies 139: 233-55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, T. 1970. The Possibility of Altruism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Neu, J. 2000. A Tear is an Intellectual Thing: The Meaning of Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. 1997. “Reasons and Motivation.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71: 99–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prinz, J. 2006a. “Are Emotions Feelings?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 12: 9–25.Google Scholar
Prinz, J. 2006b. “The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgment.” Philosophical Explorations 9: 29–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, P. 1986. “Moral Realism.” Philosophical Review 95: 163–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, R. 2003. Emotions: an Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, J. 1983. “Emotion, Judgment, and Desire.” Journal of Philosophy 80:731-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadler, B. 2003. “The Possibility of Amoralism.” Philosophy 78: 63–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T. 1998. What We Owe Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schroeder, M. 2009. “Hybrid Expressivism: Virtues and Vices.” Ethics 119: 257–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E. 2001. “In-Between Believing.” Philosophical Quarterly 51: 76–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E. 2002. “A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief.” Nous 36: 249-75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E. 2010. “Acting Contrary to our Professed Beliefs.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91:531-53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, R. 1998. “Moral Motivation and Moral Judgment.” Philosophical Quarterly 48: 353-58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, R. 2000. “A Defense of Motivational Externalism.” Philosophical Studies 97: 267-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, R. 2003. Moral Realism: A Defense. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sneddon, A. 2009. “Alternative Motivation: A New Challenge to Moral Judgment Internalism.” Philosophical Explorations 12:41-53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sobel, D., and D. Copp. 2001. “Against Direction of Fit Accounts of Belief and Desire.” Analysis 61: 44–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, R. 1980. “Emotions and Choice.” In Explaining Emotions, edited by Rorty, Amelie, 251-81. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Swan, K. 2004. “Moral Judgment and Emotions.” Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (1): 375-81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmons, M. 1999. Morality without Foundations. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vadas, M. 1984. “Affective and Non-Affective Desire.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45: 273-80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zabzebski, L. 2003. “Emotion and Moral Judgment” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1): 104-24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zangwill, N. 2008. “Besires and the Motivation Debate.” Theoria 74: 50–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar