The real problem with internalism about reasons

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 443-473

  Brewer, Talbot ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

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EID: 24944467071     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2002.10716526     Document Type: Review

References (40)

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. 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
9. These passages are pointed out by Philip Pettit and Michael Smith in 'Backgrounding Desire,' The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 575
10. 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
11. Williams, 'Internal and External Reasons,' 103
12. Williams, 'Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,' 39
13. 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)
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. See Williams, 'Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,' 39. (The passage is quoted above.)
18. or Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985), esp. Ch. 7-10
19. This way of developing my argument was suggested to me in anonymous comments from an editor of this journal
20. 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
21. 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
22. Bernard Williams, 'Replies,' in Altham and Harrison, World, Mind and Ethics, 186
23. See David Sobel, 'Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action,' 467-75
24. See Williams, 'Internal and External Reasons,' 102. Sobel discusses this example in 'Subjective Accounts,' 470-2
25. 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
26. Korsgaard, 'Skepticism about Practical Reason,' reprinted in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) 311-34, esp. 317
27. 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
28. 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
29. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), esp. Lecture 1, 7-48
30. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 17
31. 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
32. and Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1970), 29-30
33. Gary Watson makes this point in 'Free Agency,' The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 211
34. 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
35. 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
36. Dennis Stampe makes a similar point in 'The Authority of Desire,' The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 348-53
37. Cf. Quinn, 'Putting Rationality in Its Place,' 242-3
38. See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 45, 370-2
39. 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
40. 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