Etica&Politica/Ethics&Politics,
2005, 1
http://www.units.it/etica/2005_1/CERI.htm
Metaethics and Theories of Motivation
Dipartimento
di studi filosofici ed epistemologici
Università
di Roma “La Sapienza”
Abstract One of the central questions in
recent philosophical debate is whether motivation to act comes from cognitive
or non-cognitive mental states. This question clearly is distinct from that of
what is the meaning of moral sentences. Nevertheless, I think that an
understanding of the nature of motivation is essential to an adequate account
of moral language. For although not all motivated (and intentional) actions are
susceptible to moral assessment, yet every action which is morally judged must
be a motivated (as well as an intentional) one. In what follows I will try to
defend ethical non-descriptivism by arguing for the internalist conception of
motivation on which it is based. |
1. Metaethical theories
Four different distinctions
can be drawn between metaethical theories: 1) an ontological distinction
between realism (according to which moral properties and facts do exist which
are either reducible or irreducible to natural ones) and anti-realism (which
claims that there exist no moral properties or facts whatever); 2) an
epistemological distinction between cognitivism (according to which moral
judgements have a truth-value which can be known) and non-cognitivism (which
maintains that they have no truth-conditions at all and cannot, therefore, be
known to be either true or false); 3) a logical or conceptual distinction
between descriptivism (according to which the meaning of moral judgements is
determined completely by their truth-conditions, that is, they are purely
descriptive statements) and non-descriptivism (according to which moral
judgements are not entirely dependent for their meaning on truth-conditions,
that is, they have an expressive function rather than a purely descriptive
one); (4) a psychological distinction between the view that moral judgements
express beliefs and the view that they express non-cognitive attitudes such as
desires.
The ontological distinction
must be rejected because in one sense of the verb “exist” even a
non-descriptivist may admit that moral properties and facts
exist. In this sense, to say that a moral property or fact exists means that we
can talk about it meaningfully, or truthfully, or that we can formulate a proposition
whose subject is the property or fact in question.(1) On the other hand, even a descriptivist may deny
that moral properties and facts exist in rerum natura.(2) The epistemological distinction is just as
unsatisfactory as the ontological one, since the epistemological question must
be distinguished from that concerning the function of moral judgements. One may
agree that they have a truth-value which can be known,(3) while holding that they not only have a
descriptive meaning but also an
evaluative meaning, which is independent of the former and primary to it.
It seems preferable, then,
to draw a logical (or conceptual) distinction rather than an ontological or an
epistemological one. As regards the psychological distinction, however,
I do not think (unlike Richard Hare) that it collapses into the logical or
conceptual. True, since the beliefs and attitudes in question share the
property of intentionality that all mental states have, their full
characterization demands a proposition or “that”-clause which gives
their content; that is to say, the full explanation of these psychological
states demands a logical or conceptual explanation of the words in which they
are or would be expressed. As we shall see, however, the distinction between
beliefs and desires is central to non-descriptivism. For non-descriptivism is
based on a kind of motivational internalism that depends
crucially on that very distinction.
2. Theories of motivation
Theories
of general motivation divide into internalist and externalist ones.
As to motivational internalism, a distinction must be drawn between a strong
and a weak version of it: while agreeing that desire is a necessary element of
the state of being motivated, they disagree about what is the nature and role
played by desire in moving us to act.
Strong internalism holds
that one is motivated to perform an action if, and only if, one wants to
perform it for its own sake or as a means conducive to the desired object, and
believes that performing that action will
contribute to realizing her desire. This view is based on the claim that
desires are non-cognitive states, that is, existences independent of beliefs.
Strong internalists, however, do not obscure the difference between being
motivated to act and having a desire to act. For they do not claim that
motivation depends entirely on desire,
but rather that desire can motivate only when combined with a belief about the means conducive to the desired end.(4) Desires as well
as beliefs have no intrinsic motivating power: since desire and belief are
distinct existences, they do not entail each other; so both of them are needed
if an agent is to be moved to action. Yet strong internalists point out a
disanalogy between desire and belief, that is, the fact that they play quite
different roles in motivation: desire drives the agent and is the very source
of motivation, whereas belief merely gives a direction to the pull exerted by
desire.(5) Weak internalists, by contrast, deny that there
is such a disanalogy and hold that the fact that an agent did something
intentionally and was, therefore, motivated to do it entails that she wanted so
to act: that she had such a desire is merely a logical consequence of the fact
that she acted. According to weak internalism, then, desire comes from belief.(6) On the other hand, motivational externalism
maintains that motivation does not need any desire at all: since beliefs
can motivate all by themselves, one may be motivated to do something even if
one has no desire to do it. This view, however, entails weak internalism. For
if it is a sufficient condition of one’s being moved to do something that one
have a certain belief about it, then it is a fortiori true that the
desire needed to move one to act comes from that very belief.
In other words, belief is the ultimate source of motivation.
As to theories of moral
motivation, there are many different forms of internalism and externalism,(7) depending upon whether what the motivation is
taken to be internal or external to is duty or the sense of duty, or a belief
or judgement attributing a duty. I shall focus my attention on the relation
between moral judgements and motivation. According to judgement internalism,(8) motivation to act morally is internal to moral
judgements; that is, it comes from their very meaning. So it is not
conceptually possible that one sincerely makes (or assents to) a moral
judgement without being motivated to act accordingly.(9) Judgement externalism, by contrast, holds that
the connection between moral judgements and motivation is causal or
psychological, that is, external to the meaning of judgements. So one may sincerely
judge that an action is right while lacking any motive to perform it.
This view is consistent
with descriptivism:(10) since the truth-value of a judgement does not
depend on the speaker’s being in some particular psychological state, the
judgement that an action is right can be true and guide conduct even if the
person who made it has no motive to act accordingly. Such
a view can account for the normative force of moral judgements. It seems,
however, to fail to explain how they can move to action: if the agent is not in
such a psychological state as to be moved to perform the action
recommended by a certain judgement, then she will not be moved to perform that
action while recognizing that the judgement is true. On the contrary, judgement
internalism is consistent with, and indeed essential to, non-descriptivism.
This is one of the reasons why I shall focus my attention on judgement
internalism. The other reason for doing so is that this thesis is of special
interest not just because it represents important common ground between Humeans
and Kantians, but also because it is central to understanding the sense in
which moral judgements are practical.(11)
3. Desires and beliefs
Non-descriptivists
subscribe to Hume’s argument about the inertia of reason: moral
judgements have an intrinsic motivating force; motivation comes from a certain
non-cognitive state of the agent such as a desire, feeling, attitude, or
disposition to action, whereas beliefs (and cognitive states more
generally) have no intrinsic motivating force; therefore, moral judgements are
the expression of non-cognitive states. Thus, a non-descriptivist conclusion
does follow from judgement internalism (which is the first premise of
Hume’s argument),(12) together with strong motivational internalism (which
is the second premise).
There is no symmetrical
relation, however, between metaethical theories, on the one hand, and theories
of motivation, on the other. For although ethical non-descriptivism does entail
both strong motivational internalism and judgement internalism, not all varieties
of descriptivism entail motivational externalism, nor do they entail
judgement externalism.(13) Externalist descriptivists accept the strong
internalist view that it is a necessary condition for one to
be motivated to act that one be in a certain non-cognitive state. Yet they
claim that moral judgements are not intrinsically motivating: their
motivational force arises from something external to their meaning, such as a
psychological state of the speaker. One is motivated to perform the action one
judges one ought to perform only if she has a desire to do so; for the judgement describes a property
of that action, and purely descriptive statements (as well as the beliefs they
express) lack motivating force.(14) Internalist descriptivists, by contrast, accept
judgement internalism; yet they reject the strong internalist
thesis that desire is the ultimate source of motivation. They
hold a weak internalist view of motivation. Because of its conception of
desires as coming from certain cognitive states, weak motivational internalism
is inconsistent with non-descriptivism.
If we are to refute
descriptivism, therefore, we must argue for something more than judgement
internalism. What metaethical conclusion does follow from it depends, in
my opinion, on how desire is understood. If one adopts the weak
motivational internalist view that desire derives from belief, then it follows
from the thesis that moral judgements have an intrinsic motivating force,
together with the thesis that some desire is necessary for one to be
motivated, that moral judgements express beliefs (or other cognitive states);
that is to say, they are purely descriptive statements. By contrast, from the
strong motivational internalist view that desire
is a non-cognitive state, together with judgement internalism, it
follows that moral judgements are the expression of the speaker’s non-cognitive
states, that is, they are not purely descriptive statements. Note that
formulating strong motivational internalism in terms of the view that desires
(as well as beliefs) lack the capacity by themselves to motivate makes it clear
that in order to defend non-descriptivism, we must
show that desires are distinct from, and independent of, beliefs. To
put it another way, an enquiry into the nature of desire and its motivational
role is crucial to non-descriptivism. Such an enquiry, however, has been
neglected by non-descriptivists.(15)
The view that desire is a non-cognitive
state can be argued for by appealing to the notion of a direction of fit
of a mental state.(16) For this
notion helps understand what difference between the nature of desire and
of belief prevents us from analyzing desires (or, at least, some of them) in
terms of beliefs. Beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit, that is, they
must fit actual states of affairs; for beliefs aim to track the truth, and must
be forsaken if the states of affairs they represent do not correspond with the existing ones. Desires, by contrast, have a world-to-mind
direction of fit, that is, they are states with which world must fit. Desire
does not aim at truth but at satisfaction: if the actual state of affairs is
different from that which is represented by the content of one’s desire,
then one does not have to forsake that desire (unless it is physically
impossible to realize it), but rather to try to change the actual state of
affairs.(17)
The appeal to the notion of
a direction of fit in order to account for the difference between desire and
belief is not an ad hoc strategy. For even a committed externalist like
Jonathan Dancy points out that there is an asymmetry between the roles that
these two mental states play in motivation and maintains that such an asymmetry
can be explained in terms of opposite directions of fit.(18) In Dancy’s view, however, to say that desire
plays a dominant role in motivation in comparison with the role of belief is
not inconsistent with the claim that beliefs can give rise to desires: the question of what roles beliefs and desires play in motivation is distinct
from that of what is their genealogy. Therefore, to say that the desire that
moves someone to act comes from one of her beliefs does not entail denying that
the role played by desire in exerting a pull on the agent is primary to the
role played by the belief from which desire comes.(19)
4. The akratic and the amoralist
It is
usually objected to ethical non-descriptivism that because it assumes
that moral judgements have an intrinsic motivating force, it fails to explain akrasia and amoralism.
Akrasia is an incapacity to be motivated to
act, and to act, in accordance with
one’s own evaluative (moral
or non-moral) judgements. Such an incapacity is a sort of
irrationality in that the agent acts contrary to her moral convictions:
while admitting that the reasons for acting in accordance with her judgement
are stronger than the reasons against doing so, she is not motivated to do so
and intentionally acts contrary to her judgment, thereby acting on a desire she wants not to have more
than she wants to. Akratic behaviour seems hard to be explained by non-descriptivists
because of their internalist view about the connection between moral judgements
and motivation. For were this connection to be a conceptually necessary
one, that is, a connection coming from moral judgements’
being the expression of certain non-cognitive states, then it would be hard to
explain how could one judge that one ought to do something, yet fail to
do it. The judgement, were it to be sincere, should be sufficient to move one
to act even though one also had a desire which pulled her in the opposite
direction. So, were the agent to act intentionally and of her free will, then
she should act in accordance with the judgement.
It has been claimed that
non-descriptivists fail to explain akratic behaviour because they do not
distinguish between motivation coming from moral evaluations and motivation
coming from desires. (20) Were it the case that people were moved to action
by their own desires, as strong motivational internalism maintains, then it would
be hard to explain the conflict, which often occurs in our daily lives,
between motivation arising from one’s own sincere moral judgement and
motivation arising from the pleasure one expects from acting contrary to one’s judgement. What would one be saying
if, while so acting, one were to say that one wanted to act in accordance with
her judgement? It does not make
sense to say that one intentionally performed a different action from
the one she wanted to perform, if the verb “want” is taken in a formal sense
in which wanting is being motivated. For the fact that an agent who
intentionally performed an action
wanted to perform it is a merely logical consequence of the fact that she did
so. If, therefore, someone who intentionally did something contrary
to her own judgement said that she wanted to act in accordance with it, then
the motive she had to do so must have been weaker than her motive to do what
she actually did. On the contrary, it makes perfectly good sense to say that
one intentionally performed a different action from the one she wanted to
perform, if “want” is taken in an evaluative sense, in which if one wants to do
a more than one wants to do b, then one ascribes a greater value to a than to
b. According to the opponents of non-descriptivism, the evaluative sense of
“want” must be distinguished from the motivational one, in which if I want to
do a more than I want to do b, then I am motivated more strongly to do a than
to do b. Akratic behaviour can only be explained by giving up the claim that the motivational force
of a desire is proportional to
the value that the desirer ascribes to the desired object.
It seems to me that this
objection to non-descriptivism might well be doubted. Granted,
non-descriptivists would fail to account for akrasia, were they to reject the
distinction between the evaluative and motivational senses of “want” (or
“desire”), that is, were they to identify desire with a motivational state and
to hold that having a desire is tantamount to being motivated. In my opinion, however,
non-descriptivists are not committed to accepting such a view of desire.
Rather, this view is embraced by the very opponents of strong motivational
internalism (such as Thomas Nagel). Moreover, if we regard moral judgments as sentences which
express desires or other non-cognitive states, then it is not at all hard to
explain the case of an agent who sincerely judges that she ought to perform a
certain action, but wants to do something contrary to it and acts on this
desire instead of that expressed by her judgement. Such a case can be described
in terms of a conflict between two different (or even opposite) kinds of
desire, that is, between a non-evaluative desire, on the one hand, and an
evaluative desire, on the other.(21) Finally,
non-descriptivists would be unable to explain akratic behaviour,
were they to claim that moral judgements have such a motivating force as to
override all the other desires the agent has. Note, however, that to say that
it is not conceptually possible for one to judge that one ought to do something
without being motivated to do it is not the same as saying that one’s judgement
entails a stronger motivation than any other motive one might have to act
otherwise. Hare is the only non-descriptivist to claim that moral judgements
have the property of overridingness.(22)
Unlike the akratic, the
amoralist has no motivation at all to act in accordance with moral
judgements. Note that the reason why the amoralist acts contrary to a certain
moral judgement is not that she has two opposite desires, the non-evaluative
one overriding the evaluative. Nor does amoralist’s indifference to morals
depend on her being unable to use moral language properly; for she does know
full well how to use it. The point is that when the amoralist makes a
judgement, she is using moral terms in
an “off-colour” or “inverted commas” sense:(23) in her mouth these terms no longer have their standard evaluative meaning, but
only their descriptive meaning. That
is, when making a moral judgement, the amoralist simply quotes others’ judgement
without accepting it. Unlike the akratic, who is unable to be moved to act on her own judgements, the amoralist is
not unable to be morally motivated: were
she to use moral language in an evaluative sense, then she would be
moved to act morally. The point is, however, that the amoralist rejects the
very institution of morals.
According to David Brink,
non-descriptivism fails to take amoralism seriously.(24) For if moral judgements are by their very meaning motivating, then the agent who is not at all moved to act on the judgement she made or assented to must have misunderstood its meaning. Non-descriptivists could only
allow the conceptual possibility of amoralism
if they embraced a weak form of
judgement internalism, according to which the motivational force of moral
judgements needs not override the motives an agent may have to act otherwise.(25) I do not agree with this objection. First, as I
have already said, Hare is the only non-descriptivist to ascribe overridingness
to moral judgements. Secondly, he rejects Brink’s characterization of the
amoralist as someone who does use moral words evaluatively while not being
motivated by her own judgements.(26) Nor would Hare accept the
stronger view according to which the amoralist does not reject every moral
value.(27) On this view, in rejecting morality the amoral
agent appeals to values that can be shared by those who adopt the moral point
of view. The amoralist rejects moral values not because they are moral values,
but because they are incompatible with her own values. Note that this conception of amoralism relies on the
assumption that features such as strength and self-reliance are values that those
who embrace a moral perspective can share with the amoralist. Now, those
features may be regarded as positive values, but some argument has to be
provided for the view that they are morally significant. So it seems
preferable to characterize the amoralist as someone who rejects moral
judgements entirely, rather than as someone who recognizes their normative
force without being moved by them. Such definition allows one to claim
that amoralism is compatible with the truth of the view that there is a
necessary connection between making or sincerely assenting to a moral judgement
and being moved to act on it. This is just the kind of judgement internalism on
which non-descriptivism is based.
5. Motivated desires
Weak
internalists agree that someone who acted on her moral judgement wanted
to do so. According to them, however, saying that one had such desire is the
same as saying that the belief voiced in the judgement was
sufficient to move her. Moral judgements describe certain properties of actions
and have a motivating force which springs from the very beliefs they
express; for it is a belief that generates the desire that one must have in
order to be moved to act. And if it is true that beliefs are capable of
generating desires, then it follows, from the combination of the thesis
that moral judgements are intrinsically motivating with the thesis that
motivation does not come from any desire (although
desire is a necessary condition of one’s being motivated), that moral
judgements are descriptive statements, that is, they are the expression of
beliefs.
Weak
internalism is a coherentist theory of motivation, since it denies that any
desire which moves to action is a basic one: every element of the agent’s motivational structure is
coherent with some other element of it. In other words, there is no desire on
which all the other desires depend. This view, however, seems to invite a
regress. For saying that the justification of a desire depends, at least in
part, on another desire is tantamount to saying that the former is not fully
justified unless the latter is, which in turn can only be justified via another
desire, and so on. In order to avoid such a regress, therefore,
coherentists have to admit that there are at least some desires which cannot
be justified or supported by other (justified) desires; that is,
they have to acknowledge that at least some desires are directly
justified. Yet coherentists reject the very idea that there is any directly
justified desire. For they claim that justification is a function of certain
relations between justified elements: every desire is at least in part
justified by its relation to another desire. Note that such a claim forces
coeherentists to acknowledge a circularity in the agent’s motivational
structure. For support is a transitive relation, and human beings’ sets of
desires are finite. So, if every desire belonging to the set of justified
desires is supported by at least another desire belonging to that set, then
every justified desire is at least in part self-justified, that is, it is
justified at least in part by itself. Such a conclusion is not acceptable to
coherentists (or weak internalists), since they reject the very notion of
self-justification. How, then, can weak motivational internalism be argued for?
Nagel has tried to
defend it by drawing a distinction between two kinds of desires: unmotivated
desires (such as the appetites and in certain cases the emotions), which simply
come to us, and motivated desires, which are arrived at by decision and after
deliberation.(28) According to Nagel, strong internalism fails to
draw such a distinction. Nagel maintains that the claim that a desire underlies
every intentional act is true only if the term “desire” is taken in so broad
a sense as to cover motivated as well as unmotivated desires. When one does something intentionally, one is motivated to do it because one thinks that there
is a (justifying) reason to do so. There is no need, according to Nagel, to
appeal to any distinct desire in order to explain motivation to act. Desire,
although it is a logically necessary condition (because it is a logical
consequence) of the motivational
efficacy of the agent’s beliefs, is not necessary either as a condition
contributing to such efficacy, or as a causal condition. That the agent has the
appropriate desire simply follows from the fact that certain
considerations move her to perform the action she actually performs.(29)
It seems to me that Nagel’s
account of the role of desire in motivation is quite
puzzling. The first puzzle relates to the persistence of Nagel in the
attribution of a desire to the agent even in cases in which the motivational
burden is carried by reference to some cognitive state.(30) The second puzzle concerns the concept of a
motivated desire. To appeal to this concept in order to refute strong
motivational internalism is to assume that deliberation (by which an agent
arrives at certain motivated desires) does not start from any unmotivated (i.e.
basic) desire. For if deliberation were grounded on such mental states, then
the motivation it generates would turn out to come ultimately from some
unmotivated desires. To employ the concept
of a motivated desire, therefore, Nagel must provide an argument for the view
that cognitive states are the starting points of practical deliberation.
6. Motivating cognitive states
There is, however, another way to argue for the view that desires are
not independent of beliefs, thereby refuting strong internalism. Weak internalists might try to
point to certain cognitive states having both the mind-to-world direction
distinctive of beliefs and the world-to-mind direction distinctive of desires.
Were this strategy to succeed, strong internalism would be refuted by
appealing to the very notion that is central to it.
John McDowell has pursued
such a strategy by focusing his attention on the virtuous agent’s mental state.
According to McDowell, the virtuous agent is someone who sees the action she
ought to perform in a favourable light; that is to say, she is able to
recognize those features which make that action a morally good one, and to be
motivated to perform it. The virtuous agent’s psychological state is both a
belief and a desire: it is a cognitive state, since
it consists of a peculiar way of seeing the action that
ought to be performed; yet it is also a motivating state, since to see a
certain action in a favourable light is the same as being motivated to
perform it. (31) McDowell points out, however, that such a mental
state does not consist of two distinct mental states (that is, the belief that
the action in question has certain features that make it right and the desire
to perform it), since otherwise some account would have to be given of the relation between them.(32)
McDowell agrees that those
who act in accordance with a moral judgement may have some desire that
will be realized by so acting. Yet he claims (as Nagel does) that desire
is not a condition contributing to the motivational efficacy of the agent’s
beliefs about the action at issue, which beliefs cast it in a favourable light.
The desire that motivates the agent is not intelligible independently of the
way she sees the action: to say that she wants to perform it is the same as
saying that she is moved by her own beliefs about it. The action
performed is a result of the agent’s exercising the capacity to see
in a certain distinctive way her circumstances of action. It is such capacity
(which is, according to McDowell, a sort of sensitivity) that enables the
virtuous person to grasp the relevant facts of her own deliberative
situation, and to decide how to act. Beliefs are neither distinct from desires,
nor lacking in motivating force, as
both the non-descriptivist
and the externalist descriptivist
would have it.(33) What holds for the virtuous agent’s psychological
state also applies, according to McDowell, to perceptual states:
perception that some features of an action are morally relevant cannot be
analyzed into a cognitive and a non-cognitive element.
It is to be noted that
there is a parallel between McDowell’s rejection of the distinction between
beliefs and desires (or between cognitive and non-cognitive elements in the
virtuous agent’s psychological state), on the one hand, and his rejection of
the distinction that non-descriptivists draw between descriptive and evaluative
meanings of moral terms, on the other. Indeed, McDowell calls himself an
“anti-noncognitivist”.(34) Were it possible to separate the
descriptive meaning of moral words from their evaluative meaning, that is, to
apply words like “right” to whatever kind of
action, then a non-virtuous agent might see the action recommended by a
certain moral judgement in just the same way as the virtuous agent sees
it without yet being moved to perform it. McDowell, however, points out
that it is not that these two agents have the same beliefs about non-moral
features of the action in question, while differing from each other
just in that only the virtuous agent wants to perform it. For it
is not possible, according to McDowell, to see that an action has
certain right-making features without having any pro-attitude toward performing
it. The point is that the two agents have different beliefs about the same
action, and the way the virtuous agent sees it is not
neutral from an evaluative standpoint. (35) So her desire to perform
the action can only be understood by seeing that action as she sees it. (36)
It might
be objected to McDowell, however, that if the connection between believing that
an action has certain features and being motivated to perform it were
grounded on the agent’s having a virtuous character, then
beliefs would turn out not to be what moves her, but rather the expression of
her capacity to be motivated to act morally. McDowell does not
explain how someone who sees her own deliberative situation in
the way distinctive of the virtuous could thereby come to have a disposition to
act morally. What McDowell says seems to suggest that only those who
already are virtuous can come to have the cognitive and motivating state
peculiar to the virtuous, that is, to see the situation they find
themselves in as the virtuous person would do.
Most importantly,
McDowell’s account of the virtuous agent seems to be inconsistent with
the possibility of akrasia (or, to use Michael Stocker’s term, (37) of other “depressions”, such as apathy, despair,
and a feeling of uselessness or futility). If the virtuous agent’s
belief that a certain action has some features which make it a morally wrong
one could not be distinguished from the desire to perform it, then, were
she to lose her desire to act morally, it would be at least possible that she
also lose the cognitive capacity to see that action in a
favourable light. If, for example, someone who has always wanted to make
shy persons feel at their ease loses such desire, then it follows from McDowell’s
account that she will be no longer able to grasp their shyness. I do not agree
with such an account of akrasia. For the akratic is unable to perform the
actions she ought to perform, while recognizing that she
ought to perform them and believing that the reasons for them are stronger
than contrary ones. The akratic sees these actions in the same way as
the virtuous agent would see them, and faces with a
conflict just because she is still able to see what she ought to do and
what is the moral cost of her not doing it. McDowell should show that akrasia
undermines the agent’s cognitive capacities. What is more, he should
provide reasons in support of the view that capacity to see what ought to be
done is a cognitive capacity.
7. Conclusion
Metaethics is closely
related to theory of motivation. My point in this paper has been that an
enquiry into motivation, the role played by desire in it, and the nature of
desire itself is essential to a defence of the non-descriptivist view that
moral judgements are not purely descriptive statements, but rather the
expression of certain non-cognitive attitudes. This view relies on two distinct
theses, both of which concerning motivation: judgement internalism, which holds
that moral judgements have an intrinsic motivational force, and strong
motivational internalism, according to which motivation comes via desires that
are independent of any cognitive states. I have argued that proponents of the
former thesis can explain both akratic and amoralist behaviour, contrary to
what the externalist claims. Then I have argued for the latter thesis, by
rejecting both Nagel’s argument for the view that the desire needed for
motivation comes from a belief, and McDowell’s argument for the view that such
a desire cannot be distinguished from belief.(38)
(1) Cf. R.M. Hare, Ontology in Ethics (1985), in his Essays in Ethical Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 86-87.
(2) John L.
Mackie is the most famous proponent of an “error theory”, according to which
moral judgements have a truth-value, but are uniformly false because the moral
properties they ascribe to actions, persons, or states of affairs do not exist
(see his A Refutation
of Morals, “Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy” 24 [1946]: 77-90, and Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong: Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977).
(3) Cf. R.M. Hare, Objective Prescriptions (1993), in his Objective Prescriptions and Other Essays (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 4.
(4) Hume himself, to whom this theory can be traced
back, insists only that beliefs lack motivating
power, without pronouncing on whether a desire can by itself motivate action
(cf. A Treatise of Human Nature [1739-1740], ed. by L.A.
Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888, pp. 118-119).
(5) Cf. R. Audi, Acting for Reasons, “The Philosophical
Review” 95 (1986), p. 513.
(6) Cf. M. Smith, The Humean Theory of Motivation, “Mind” 96 (1987), p. 36.
(7) The distinction between internalist and
externalist views about moral motivation was introduced by William D. Falk, who adopted the former (cf. ‘Ought’
and Motivation [1947-1948], in his Ought, Reasons, and Morality. The Collected Papers
of W.D. Falk [Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1986], p. 40).
(8) The term is S.L.
Darwall’s (cf.
Internalism
and Agency, “Philosophical
Perspectives” 6 [1992], p. 155;
see also his Reasons, Motives, and the
Demands of Morality: An Introduction, in S.L. Darwall-A. Gibbard-P. Railton, eds, Moral Discourse and Practice. Some Philosophical Approaches [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], p.
308).
(9) Cf. R.M. Hare, Internalism and Externalism in Ethics (1996), in his Objective Prescriptions and
Other Essays, p. 96.
(10) Cf. W.K. Frankena, Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral
Philosophy, in A.I. Melden, ed.,
Essays in Moral Philosophy (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1958), p. 56.
(11) Cf. R.
Audi, Moral
Knowledge and Ethical Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 224.
(12) Cf. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 457. It is a debated question, however, whether
Hume really was a judgement internalist. For a negative answer to this
question, see C. Brown, Is Hume an Internalist?, “Journal of the History of Philosophy”
26 (1988): pp. 69-87.
(13) Externalist descriptivism is the view held by
G.E. Moore, H.A. Prichard, W.D. Ross, and W.K. Frankena, and, more recently, by
P. Railton, D. Copp, and D. Brink. On the contrary, W.D. Falk, and, more
recently, T. Nagel, J. McDowell, D. Wiggins, and M. Smith have developed
different forms of internalist descriptivism.
(14) Cf. W.D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 226-227.
(15) A.J. Ayer (Language, Truth and Logic [London: Gollancz, 1936],
ch. 6) and C.L. Stevenson (The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms, “Mind” 46 [1937]: pp. 14-31) were not very
specific in identifying the candidate non-cognitive states voiced in moral
judgements. P.H. Nowell-Smith rejected the term “desire” (or “wanting”) in
favour of “pro-attitude”, since he regarded the former as too vague to cover
all of the non-cognitive states (cf. Ethics [1954] [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957], p. 99). For
Hare moral judgements express universal preferences (cf. Moral
Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point [Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1981], pp. 91, 94-116, 185, 220-228). Simon Blackburn
(How To Be an Ethical Anti-Realist [1988], in his Essays in
Quasi-Realism
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993], pp. 168-169) and Mark Timmons (Morality
without Foundations. A Defence of Ethical Contextualism [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999], pp. 138-144) are quite catholic about the possible candidate
non-cognitive states expressed by moral judgements. For Allan Gibbard moral
judgements are expressions of commitments to norms regulating guilt and anger
(cf. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. A Theory of Normative
Judgment
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], pp. 6-9, 41-47, 126-129, 147-150, 172-173).
(16) This
notion, which was introduced by
G.E.M. Anscombe (cf. Intention [1957] [Oxford: Blackwell, 1976], p. 56), is central to
Michael Smith’s argument for strong motivational internalism (cf. The Moral Problem [Oxford: Blackwell, 1994], p. 116).
(17) For a rejection of the definition of direction of
fit in terms of the locus of responsibility for correspondence between an
attitude and the world, see J.D. Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2000), pp. 111-112.
(18) Cf. J. Dancy, Practical Reality (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), p. 14.
(19) Cf. ibid., pp. 82-84.
(20) Cf. M.
Staude, Wanting, Desiring, and Valuing: The Case against
Conativism, in J. Marks, ed., The Ways of Desire. New Essays in Philosophical Psychology on the
Concept of Wanting (Chicago: Preceding
Publishing, 1986), p. 189.
(21)
Cf. F.O. Oppenheim, Non-cognitivismo,
razionalità e relativismo, “Rivista di filosofia” 78 (1987), p. 29.
(22) Cf. R.M.
Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 67, and, more explicitly, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 168-169,
and Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point, pp. 53-61, 152-155.
(23) This is
one of the cases where moral words are used with no evaluative meaning at all
(cf. R.M. Hare, The Language of Morals, p. 124).
(24) Cf. D.O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations
of Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 46; see also his Externalist
Moral Realism,
in N. Gillespie, ed., Moral Realism: Proceedings of the 1985 Spindel
Conference,
“The Southern Journal of Philosophy”, Supplement 24 (1986), p. 30.
(25) Cf. D.O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations
of Ethics,
p. 48.
(26) Cf. R.M.
Hare, Internalism and Externalism in Ethics, p. 104. For a characterization of the amoralist
similar to Brink’s, see R. Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism. A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 121.
(27) Cf. D. McNaughton, Moral
Vision. An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford-Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1988), p. 140.
(28) Cf. T. Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1970), p. 29. A similar, albeit not identical, distinction has been drawn by
Stephen Schiffer between “reason-providing” and “reason-following” desires (cf.
A
Paradox of Desire, “American Philosophical Quarterly” 13 [1976], p. 197). T.M. Scanlon
expresses Nagel’s distinction in terms of a distinction between mere urges and
“desires in the directed-attention sense” (cf. What We Owe to Each Other [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1998], pp. 38-39).
(29) For a similar view see P. Foot, Reasons
for Action and Desires (1972), in her Virtues and Vices and Other
Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 149.
(30) This objection has been raised by Mark Platts
(cf. Moral Realities: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology [London: Routledge, 1991],
p. 53).
(31) Cf. J.
McDowell, Are
Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?, “Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society”. Supplementary Volume 52 (1978), p. 18.
(32) In order to avoid such a difficulty J.E.J. Altham
has introduced the term “besire” (cf. The Legacy of Emotivism, in G. Macdonald-C.
Wright, eds, Facts, Science and Morality: Essays on A.J. Ayer’s
Language, Truth and Logic [Oxford: Blackwell, 1986], p. 284).
(33) Cf. J. McDowell, Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following, in S.H. Holtzman-C. Leich
eds, Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 154.
(34) Cf. J. McDowell, Virtue and Reason (1979), in R. Crisp-M.
Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997), p. 162.
(35) Cf. J. McDowell, Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical
Imperatives?,
p. 22.
(36) Cf. J. McDowell, Virtue and Reason, p. 159.
(37) Cf. M.
Stocker, Desiring
the Bad: An Essay in Moral Psychology, “The Journal of
Philosophy” 76 (1979), p.
744.
(38) My thanks to Tommaso
Piazza and Sergio Filippo Magni for their comments on this paper.