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The Real Problem With Internalism About Reasons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Talbot Brewer
Talbot Brewer*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA22904-4780
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Extract

Over the past two decades, moral philosophers have been engaged in a seemingly interminable debate about the role of internal and external reasons in practical reasoning. The rough distinction between these two sorts of reasons is this: internal reasons apply to particular agents in virtue of their relation to that agent's desires, preferences, or other motivational states, while external reasons are normative for particular agents quite independently of their relation to the subjective motivational states of these agents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 443 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2002

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References

1 I would like to thank the Institute for Practical Ethics and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, both at the University of Virginia, for their invaluable support when I was writing this essay.

2 The term ‘internalism’ is also sometimes used to designate the different, though closely related, view that one cannot accept a practical reason claim (i.e. a claim that there is reason to perform some action) without coming to have a motivation to perform the action. I briefly discuss this sort of internalism in Part V below.

3 I borrow the term ‘direction of gaze’ from Richard Moran's ‘Self-Knowledge: Discovery, Resolution and Undoing,’ The European Journal of Philosophy 5 (1997) 141-61. My argument has clear affinities with Moran’s, though he is primarily concerned with making up one's mind about what to believe, not what to do.

4 The notable exception is T.M. Scanlon, whose discussion of desire forthrightly broaches the question whether our psychological states are ever themselves sources of reasons for action. Still, I do not think that Scanlon has succeeded in spelling out the implications of this point for the debate between internalists and externalists. See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1998), 33-55 & 363-73.

5 Bernard Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981) 101-13

6 Bernard Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers, 1982-1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995) 35-45

7 Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 101

8 Ibid., 105

9 Ibid., 110

10 Williams claims that motivational dispositions such as generosity are explicitly represented ‘in the content (and not just the occasions) of the agent's dispositions’ and that ‘the basic representation in deliberation of such a disposition is in the form ‘‘I want to help.’’’ See ‘Utilitarianism and Moral Self-Indulgence’ in Moral Luck 40-53; quotations from 48 and 48n. These passages are pointed out by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith in ‘Backgrounding Desire,’ The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 575.

11 Arguing along these lines, David Sobel concludes that Williams’ internalism, properly understood, is not a theory of how we ought actually to reason, but rather a theory of what reasons we have. Williams’ internalism, then, cannot be rejected simply because it yields an implausible picture of, or guide to, actual deliberation. See Sobel's ‘Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action,’ Ethics 111 (2001) 461-92.

12 Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 103

13 Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 39

14 Williams’ second fundamental argument is that the externalist insists upon saying of people who fail to do what the externalist thinks they have reason to do that they are irrational, while internalism restricts itself to ‘thick’ descriptions of their shortcomings. For instance, the internalist might say of a man who is not nice to his wife, and who professes to see no reason to be nicer, that he is ‘ungrateful, inconsiderate, hard, sexist, nasty, selfish, [or] brutal,’ while the externalism seems to boil down to the insistence to say one further thing — that the man is irrational. Williams doubts that the externalist can assign any meaning to this extra charge. (Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 39-40) This argument seems to me to be entirely without force. In the first instance, the externalist need not say that the person in question is irrational, but only that he has a reason to be nicer. T.M. Scanlon has argued convincingly, in response to Williams, that the latter claim does not entail the former. (Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 27) Second, it seems clear that if someone is inconsiderate, nasty, brutal, selfish, etc. (or ‘cruel’ or ‘imprudent’ — for Williams makes the same claim about these charges in ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 110), then they do have a reason to be different. These are terms of condemnation, not dispassionate descriptions. To condemn a person in any of these terms is to imply that they ought to act differently, and this in turn is to imply that they have a reason to act differently. Williams’ internalism is inconsistent with the full-throated use of these terms of condemnation in the cases he describes.

15 Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 38

16 Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 103

17 Here we catch sight of another reason to read Williams as an inferential internalist: it is hard to know what to make of talk of ‘rational links’ between desires that shape deliberation and conclusions reached via deliberation.

18 The argument that I have sketched here, and that I elaborate in the remainder of the paper, has certain affinities with the argument offered by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith for what they call the ‘strict background’ view of the role of desires in deliberation. Pettit and Smith argue persuasively that while our actions can always be explained as the causal upshot of a set of beliefs and desires that rationalize the action, these desires need not and do not always figure in deliberation as justificatory reasons for performing the action in question. However, Pettit and Smith do not present their view as a reason for rejecting internalism. In their view, the fact that desires sometimes figure only in the background of our deliberation has no implications for the stand-off between cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories of reasons, since the back-grounded desires might or might not themselves be cognitive. This skirts the real issue, which is whether desires are necessary conditions for the justifiability of any conclusions about reasons reached in the deliberation for which they provide the background. My aim, in this paper, is to show that they are not. Furthermore, Pettit and Smith do not doubt that desires sometimes figure in deliberation as the justifications for the very actions they explain. I argue in the last section of this paper that this is a mistake. See Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, ‘Backgrounding Desire,’ 578-9.

19 Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 103, and ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 36

20 I say perhaps because it might well be explanatorily inert to add to the fact that the agent has often categorized certain actions under certain concepts the supposedly separate fact that he has a disposition to do so. If the disposition is logically implied by a series of like evaluations, then it cannot explain those evaluations.

21 See Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 39. (The passage is quoted above.)

22 See Williams, ‘Persons, Character and Morality,’ in Moral Luck, 1-19; or Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985), esp. Ch. 7-10.

23 This way of developing my argument was suggested to me in anonymous comments from an editor of this journal.

24 Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 35-6

25 As far as I can see, one could only deny this by insisting that we do not really have reasons until we actually follow the sound deliberative routes that culminate in the conclusion that we have those reasons. This, however, is clearly not Williams’ view, for he stresses that we can have reasons which we fail to recognize. More generally, it would be highly implausible for an internalist to adopt this view, since it would render it extremely obscure what we are doing when we wonder, in the course of deliberation, whether we ought to conclude (i.e. whether it would be true to conclude) that we have some reason. If no such conclusion could be true unless affirmed, then we could never go astray in refusing to recognize that we have a reason.

26 Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 369

27 John McDowell, ‘Might There Be External Reasons?’ in J.E.J. Altham and Ross Harrison, eds., World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995), 71-2.

28 Bernard Williams, ‘Replies,’ in Altham and Harrison, World, Mind and Ethics, 186

29 Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 39

30 Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 372

31 Williams, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 44; ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 111; see also Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 371-2

32 As noted above, Williams explicitly claims that he is theorizing about the sort of reasons we are in search of when we deliberate or offer advice. See ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 103, and ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 36.

33 See David Sobel, ‘Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action,’ 467-75.

34 See Williams, ‘Internal and External Reasons,’ 102. Sobel discusses this example in ‘Subjective Accounts,’ 470-2.

35 On the other hand, it is to Sobel's credit that he distinguishes these two roles that might be played by an account of justificatory reasons. While I had arrived at the main claims of this section prior to reading his article, I found it very helpful in clarifying these claims.

36 Korsgaard, ‘Skepticism about Practical Reason,’ reprinted in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) 311-34, esp. 317

37 David Sobel regards Korsgaard's internalism requirement as false because a true practical reason claim might be incapable of motivating a rational person who, because she lacks vital information about her circumstances, is unable to see the claim's truth (Sobel, ‘Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action,’ 483). For instance, if it will rain later today but I do not know it, then it might be true that I have a reason to carry an umbrella even though I am now immune to the motivational tug of this truth. Korsgaard is vulnerable to this objection only on a flat reading of the word ‘capable’ in her claim. If the knowledge that it will rain later would motivate me to carry my umbrella, then it provides me with a reason that passes the test of Korsgaard's internalism.

38 Stephen Darwall is one of the few protagonists in the internalism debate who has carefully marked the distinction between these two kinds of internalism. The literature would be far less confused than it is if others followed his lead. See Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1983), 54.

39 Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), esp. Lecture 1, 7-48

40 Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 17

41 Ibid., 101

42 Ibid., 102

43 A very similar objection is made by Thomas Nagel in his reply to Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity, Lecture 7, 200-9, esp. 206-7.

44 Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 103

45 Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 121

46 See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, Ch. 1, esp. 33-55. My argument in this section closely follows, and is inspired by, Scanlon's discussion of desires. The main departure from Scanlon is that he does not offer his own theory of desires as a reason for rejecting internalism. Indeed, in a separate appendix, Scanlon argues that internalists and externalists ought to agree that reasons often have subjective conditions, that failing to see the force of a reason need not involve irrationality but may involve only some other sort of deficiency. He claims that once these points of agreement are in place, the dispute between externalists and internalists cannot be settled definitively (372-3). I believe that the ‘direction of gaze’ arguments offered above do indeed settle the dispute definitively. I also believe that when this sort of argument is conjoined with Scanlon's insights into the nature of desire, it provides a good reason for altering the prevailing understanding of the burden of proof in the debate.

47 This point has been made by many others, including Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 37, and Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1970), 29-30.

48 Gary Watson makes this point in ‘Free Agency,’ The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 211.

49 For instance, giving in to the urge to play a video game or to view pornography might strengthen and prolong the urge itself, hence might not even temporarily alleviate the annoyance and distraction associated with that urge.

50 Warren Quinn has argued for this point by imagining a person who has a psychological disposition to turn on radios that happen to be in his vicinity. The disposition Quinn imagines is unaccompanied by any tendency to take pleasure in the noise that predictably issues forth from the radio, nor to find any other point in turning on radios. In other words, the disposition is a bare urge, untethered from the agent's system of ends and purposes. Quinn claims that the mere presence of this sort of bare urge does not constitute a reason to turn on radios. See Quinn, ‘Putting Rationality in Its Place,’ in Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993) 228-55, esp. 236-7. Dennis Stampe makes a similar point in ‘The Authority of Desire,’ The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 348-53.

51 Cf. Quinn, ‘Putting Rationality in Its Place,’ 242-3, and Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 44-5.

52 See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 45, 370-2

53 Ibid., 37-41

54 Ibid., 39-40

55 I draw these examples from Barbara Herman's ‘Making Room for Character,’ in Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting, eds., Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 46.

56 For a very interesting discussion of this topic, see Barbara Herman's The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993), esp. Ch. 4 and 7.