Internalism and the good for a person

Ethics

Volumn 106, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 297-326

  Rosati, Connie S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039088105     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233619     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. The label comes from Stephen Darwall, who distinguishes existence internalism from what he calls "judgment internalism." According to judgment internalism, a necessary connection exists between motivation and sincere avowal of a normative claim. See Stephen L. Darwall, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 54-55.
2. turn to the connection between existence and judgment internalism later. See David O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 40,
3. for a related distinction between what he calls "agent internalism" and "appraiser internalism." For discussions of internalism with respect to obligation and morality, see W. D. Falk, "'Ought' and Motivation," in Ought, Reasons, and Morality (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 21-41;
4. William K. Frankena, "Motivation and Obligation in Recent Moral Philosophy," in Perspectives on Morality: Essays of William K. Frankena, ed. Kenneth E. Goodpaster (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), pp. 49-73;
5. Kurt Baier, "Moral Reasons and Reasons to be Moral," in Values and Morals, ed. Alvin I. Goldman and Jaegwon Kim (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978), pp. 231-56;
6. Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970);
7. Brink, chap. 3; James Drier, "Internalism and Speaker Relativism," Ethics 101 (1990): 6-26;
8. and Stephen L. Darwall, "Autonomist Internalism and the Justification of Morals," Nous 24 (1990): 257-68 ,
9. "Internalism and Agency," Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992): 155-74,
10. and "Motive and Obligation in the British Moralists," Social Philosophy and Policy 7 (1989): 133-50.
11. For discussions of internalism about reasons, see Darwall, Impartial Reason;
12. and Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981), pp. 101-13.
13. The relevant motivation is typically taken to be a desire (first or second order) or a preference for a given thing. Obviously, if internalism is to be a substantial thesis, ideal conditions cannot include those in which a person has the information that X is good for her. For recent proponents of accounts of a person's good that satisfy internalism see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 395-433;
14. Richard B. Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979);
15. Peter Railton, "Moral Realism," Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 163-207,
16. "Facts and Values," Philosophical Topics 14 (1986): 5-31,
17. and "Naturalism and Prescriptivity," Social Philosophy and Policy 7 (1990): 151-74;
18. David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), chap. 2;
19. John C. Harsanyi, "Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 39-62;
20. and James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), esp. pp. 31-32.
21. Darwall endorses Rawls's account of a person's good in Impartial Reason, pt. 2.
22. For a more recent dispositional theory of value that endorses internalism, see David Lewis, "Dispositional Theories of Value," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 63 (1989): 113-37.
23. Railton, "Facts and Values," p. 9.
24. David Velleman finds a different intuitive basis for internalism in the subjectivist thought that value can exist only in virtue of beings for whom things can matter. See J. David Velleman, "Is Motivation Internal to Value?" in Preferences, ed. Georg Meggle, Christoph Fehige, and Ulla Wessels (in press). I prefer to treat this consideration as suggesting what I will latter describe as a metaphysical argument for internalism.
25. By 'subjectivist theories', I mean theories according to which a person's good either consists in or crucially depends upon certain positive psychological states or proattitudes, such as pleasure or (actual or counterfactual) desires. Here I roughly follow Brink, pp. 220-21.
26. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 400-402, 113-15.
27. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), p. 42. See, e.g., Griffin, pp. 9-10. Curiously, even some who seem to reject internalism make arguments that rely upon it. See Brink's use of Nozick's example to reject hedonism (Brink, pp. 223-24).
28. For example, a long tradition of scholarship criticizes Aristotle's intellectualist picture in book 10 of Nichomachean Ethics as too narrow an account of the human good. For a recent defense of Aristotle's conception(s) of happiness, see Gavin Lawrence, "Aristotle and the Ideal Life," Philosophical Review 102 (1993): 1-34.
29. Critics of internalism about a person's good fall into two camps. Those in the first camp reject internalism about goodness entirely. It includes externalists who, like Moore, hold a nonnaturalistic account of good, proponents of what Derek Parfit calls an "objective list theory," and certain perfectionists. See G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), esp. pp. 81-85;
30. Panayot Butchvarov, "That Simple, Indefinable, Nonnatural Property 'Good'," Review of Metaphysics 36 (1982): 51-75;
31. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 499-500;
32. Thomas Hurka, "'Good' and 'Good For'," Mind 96 (1987): 71-73,
33. and Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), see pp. 17, 27.
34. The second camp includes objectivists and perfectionists who may accept internalism about the good for humans while rejecting internalism about an individual's good. Some perfectionists might hold, for instance, that something can be good for human beings only if it can motivate or matter to most (normal) humans, given their essential nature, while rejecting that something can be good for an individual only if it can motivate or matter to her. On the latter view, the person who cannot care about the human good is simply someone who will miss out on her good. For a discussion of the various forms that perfectionism can take, see Hurka, Perfectionism.
35. Velleman makes this point in "Is Motivation Internal to Value?" See also Griffin, p. 11.
36. I here follow an idea of Velleman's. He construes internalism, however, as requiring a relation to affect. I talk in terms of motivation broadly construed and proattitudes, because the term 'affect' may have connotations of emotion or feeling that are unnecessary to the relationship between a person and her good that internalism seeks to capture. Moreover, 'affect' suggests a passive state and so may not capture the range of relevant attitudes.
37. Velleman characterizes internalism along basically these lines. See his discussion for a distinction between two senses of a person's good and two corresponding versions of internalism.
38. I talk in terms of what a person would want under appropriate conditions, rather than what she could want, since the canonical way of testing whether a person could want X under C is to put her in C and see if she would want it.
39. On the need for this distinction, see Railton, "Moral Realism," p. 174, n. 15; and Griffin, pp. 11-12.
40. I am indebted here to David Velleman, who originally suggested to me the need to incorporate something like ordinary optimal conditions. The qualification 'self-interestedly' does not preclude from a person's good concern for others or for larger projects, but merely distinguishes between a person's moral concerns and her concerns from a personal standpoint. By 'rationally' I mean simply that she makes no errors in reasoning.
41. As noted earlier, my specification of ordinary optimal conditions is not intended to be complete. Those conditions could, for instance, include attention to more information than is readily available. Even so, for reasons already given, the information required to assess counterfactual conditions is limited. The nature of the inquiry suggests as well that the conditions under which a person assesses remote counterfactual conditions need not be otherwise extraordinary. A person need not, for example, have phenomenal powers of reason, memory, or imagination.
42. "Facts and Values," pp. 17, 13-14;
43. "Moral Realism," pp. 177-78.
44. I have elsewhere raised difficulties for full information, dispositional theories of a person's good such as Railton's. See my "Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument," Nous 29 (1995): 46-70,
45. and "Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good," Ethics 105 (1995): 296-325.
46. Also see J. David Velleman, "Brandt's Definition of 'Good'," Philosophical Review 97 (1988): 353-71. A theory of the good for a person need not be dispositional to satisfy internalism.
47. As far as I can tell, only the fourth argument has been explicitly offered as a defense of internalism about a person's good. The other arguments I here consider are suggested either by the approaches that theorists have taken to defending particular accounts of a person's good or by arguments given in support of internalism with respect to other areas of normative assessment.
48. For discussion, see Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, "Toward Fin de Siécle Ethics: Some Trends," Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 115-89, pp. 116-20.
49. As Drier observes, judgment internalism can be stated in an implausibly strong form (pp. 9-14). He endorses "modest internalism," according to which necessarily "in normal contexts a person has some motivation to promote what he believes to be good" (p. 14). Whereas externalism holds that moral judgments typically motivate due to external factors, modest internalism holds that an internal connection exists between sincerely asserting a moral judgment and being motivated to act, though the necessary connection holds only for normal contexts (p. 11). I here add this qualification to my depiction of judgment internalism.
50. Railton's discussion suggests an argument of this kind in "Naturalism and Prescriptivity," p. 173.
51. See also "Facts and Values," p. 16.
52. Arguments from judgment to existence internalism also surface with regard to other areas of normative assessment, although those who make them do not always clearly distinguish between these forms of internalism. Darwall seems to presuppose such an argument in constructing the second half of the Humean case for internalism about reasons (Impartial Reason, pp. 56-57). Nagel seems to suggest that existence internalism about morality can be supported by appeal to judgment internalism (p. 7). And Drier argues from judgment internalism to a form of speaker relativism about morality (p. 7).
53. I am indebted here to D. Gene Witmer's argument for an internalist connection akin to what I have called "two-tier internalism" in his "Normative Realism: An Eclectic Dispositional Analysis" (unpublished paper, Rutgers University). I had originally thought that the second link to motivation provides a necessary condition on counterfactual conditions because it is needed to capture recommending force. But Witmer's arguments convinced me that the need is more generally due to the action-guiding character of normative language. The argument I present here for the double link thus follows his argument in this regard. I am still inclined for various reasons, however, to emphasize recommending force and the guidance of attitude over that of action.
54. Railton's discussion in "Naturalism and Prescriptivity" suggests both lines of argument.
55. R. B. Perry, General Theory of Value (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 125.
56. For a strikingly similar, though more careful, passage which offers this same basic argument for subjectivism, see Railton, "Facts and Values," p. 9.
57. The argument presented here follows an argument that Darwall has offered (and apparently endorsed) in explaining Hume's internalism about reasons (Impartial Reason, pp. 55-57). In "Internalism and Agency," however, Darwall distinguishes between "constitutive internalism" and "non-constitutive internalism." While both are forms of existence internalism, only constitutive internalism holds that "motivation is a constituent of ethical facts themselves" (p. 157). And so only constitutive internalism, Darwall argues, can explain how ethical knowledge necessarily motivates: such knowledge is itself of motives "deriving from the agent's practical reasoning" (p. 158). Also see Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, pp. 176-77.
58. Some who reject internalism may agree that at least some value can exist only if there are creatures for whom things can matter, while denying that goodness must be a motivational property. On Moore's view, the organic unities that have the greatest intrinsic value require the existence of creatures who are capable of aesthetic appreciation and friendship. But even these wholes are made good by the presence of a nonnatural property.
59. J. L. Mackie offers the classic criticisms of this picture of value in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1978), chap. 1.
60. Sensibility theories have been developed chiefly with respect to moral value. See John McDowell, "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 52 (1978): 13-29,
61. "Values and Secondary Qualities," in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985),
62. and "Truth and Projection in Ethics," Lindley Lecture (University of Kansas, 1987).
63. Also see David Wiggins, "A Sensible Subjectivism," "Truth as Predicated of Moral Judgments," and "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life," in Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 185-214, 139-84, 87-138.
64. For critical discussion of sensibility theories, see Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, pp. 152-65; and Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 186.
65. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), p. 34.
66. Mill, p. 34.
67. Griffin sometimes talks as if he might endorse such an argument, though he does not formulate it explicitly (pp. 26-31).
68. One might try to support appeals to the experience of others by connecting them to an account of human nature together with an account of how our nature gives us a particular good. But surely even such an approach must take account of variations in individual natures.
69. Brandt defines the notion 'good' rather than the notion 'good for a person', but since different persons may rationally desire different things, his definition is better understood as one of goodness for a person.
70. Brandt does not say this explicitly, but see his defense of his reforming definition of 'morally right' (pp. 244-45).
71. Ibid., pp. 154-60. Railton makes similar arguments. See n. 17.
72. Falk's defense of internalism about the moral 'ought' similarly relies on internalism about practical reasons. See his "Ought' and Motivation";
73. and Darwall, "Internalism and Agency," pp. 155-56.
74. The way in which internalists about a person's good defend their accounts suggests that they have implicitly recognized this. See, again, Brandt, pp. 154-60. Also see Griffin, pp. 12-14.
75. See his "Is Motivation Internal to Value?" More specifically, Velleman argues that simple internalism is derivable from the principle that 'ought' can imply 'can'. Velleman suggests that an implication of this derivation is that simple internalism may be the strongest version of internalism that is true.
76. In this way, one of two things is possible: first, she may be able over time to induce in herself a direct concern for the thing itself; second, she may be motivated to submit to a procedure of the sort that would bring her to care about what she would care about under those conditions.
77. This view can explain, in keeping with the principle that 'ought' implies 'can', why some nomologically realizable conditions are not candidates for assessing whether something can be a part of a person's good, whereas some nomologically unrealizable conditions may be relevant. No person can be fully informed and rational, yet what a person would care about for herself while under such conditions at least seems relevant.
78. Darwall has argued that there is a distinct autonomist rationale for internalism about morality, though the rationale he considers differs from the one suggested here. See "Autonomist Internalism and the Justification of Morals," p. 263.
79. See also "Internalism and Agency."
80. See "Facts and Values," p. 11.
81. Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72, p. 525,
82. A Theory of Justice, pp. 407-24,
83. and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 72-77.
84. An autonomy-based rationale for internalism is also suggested by David Velleman's account of an agent's values in Practical Reflection (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). According to Velleman, agents have intellectual motives that incline them toward preferring and performing only those actions that they find intelligible. Agents are autonomous insofar as these intellectual motives enable them to "restrain, redirect, and reinforce [their] other motives for acting, in accordance with [their] own conception of those motives" (p. 173). The search for values consists in the search for intelligible desires, ones that can be part of a standing self-conception that enables us to act in ways that we can both anticipate and understand. This picture suggests that something can be a value for a person only if it can be intelligible to her and thereby enter into her self-governance. But presumably a person can find a desire intelligible only if she is capable of caring about having it.
85. For efforts to derive moral relativism from internalism, see Drier; and Gilbert Harman, "Moral Relativism," Philosophical Review 85 (1975): 3-22,
86. and "Metaphysical Realism and Moral Relativism: Reflections on Hilary Putnam's Reason, Truth, and History," Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 568-75.
87. I borrow this way of expressing the point from Gibbard, p. 12.
88. See my "Naturalism, Normativity, and the Open Question Argument" for further discussion of this final point.