1 Motivational Judgement Internalism and The Problem of Supererogation Alfred Archer ...

36 Pages·2015·0.3 MB·English

Motivational Judgement Internalism and The Problem of Supererogation
Alfred Archer
Department of Philosophy/ Tilburg Centre for Logic, Ethics and
Philosophy of Science
University of Tilburg
PO Box 90153,
5000 LE Tilburg
The Netherlands
[email protected]

Abstract: Motivational judgment internalists hold that there is a necessary
connection between moral judgments and motivation. There is, though, an important
lack of clarity in the literature about the types of moral evaluation the theory is
supposed to cover. It is rarely made clear whether the theory is intended to cover all
moral judgements or whether the claim covers only a subset of such judgements. In
this paper I will investigate which moral judgements internalists should hold their
theory to apply to. I will argue that the possibility of the supererogation amoralist,
someone who makes genuine supererogation judgements but remains unmotivated by
them, makes it implausible to be an internalist about moral goodness. As a result,
internalists should restrict their claim to moral requirement judgements. I will then
argue that this creates an explanatory burden for Internalism. In order for their view
to be plausible they must explain why some moral judgements and not others are
necessarily connected to motivation.

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I. INTRODUCTION
Motivational Judgment Internalism (henceforth, ‘Internalism’) is the view that
there is a necessary connection between moral judgements and motivation. According
to this theory, there is a necessary link between making a moral judgement and being
motivated to act in line with this judgement. Motivational Judgement Externalism
(henceforth, ‘Externalism’), on the other hand, is the view that there is no necessary
connection between the two.
This debate is important for the role it plays in other metaethical debates. When
Internalism is combined with a Humean theory of motivation it lends natural support
to Non-cognitivism about moral judgements (See Smith 1994 p.12). The Humean
Theory of Motivation states that beliefs by themselves are incapable of motivating. If
we accept Internalism about moral judgements then we accept that there is a
necessary connection between moral judgements. This suggests, for those who accept
the Humean view of motivation, that they cannot be purely cognitive states. Of
course, things are not this simple and it is possible to combine Internalism with a
cognitivist view of moral judgements (eg Smith 1994). An interesting development in
recent years has been the attempt to develop hybrid views that seek to combine the
strengths of both cognitivism and non-cognitivism.1 Nevertheless, it is fair to say that
anyone attempting to combine Internalism with a Humean theory of motivation and
a cognitivist view of moral judgements will have some explaining to do.
My first aim in this paper is to raise an awareness of an important gap in the literature
on Internalism concerning the kinds of moral evaluations that the proposed necessary
connection might apply to. In §2 I will give a quick overview of the literature on

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Internalism and explain the importance of this gap in the literature. In §3 I will
investigate the different evaluations that Internalism has been claimed to cover. I will
argue that these various evaluations can be grouped into two categories. One way to
understand the internalist claim would be that it covers all first-person moral
judgments about how to act. Another way in which we might understand the
internalist claim would be as a claim regarding some subset of such judgments. In §4 I
will raise the problem of the supererogation amoralist for any version of Internalism
committed to the truth of Internalism about moral goodness judgements. I will then,
in §5, argue that this objection is one that traditional internalist responses are
powerless against. In §6 I will argue that the only form of Internalism that survives
this problem is one restricted to moral requirement judgements. However, as I will
argue in §7, those who defend this form of Internalism owe an explanation as to why it
is only a subset of moral judgements that are internally connected to motivation.

II. MOTIVATIONAL INTERNALISM: THE STATE OF THE DEBATE
Many have found Internalism attractive because it is able to explain the strong
connection that appears to exist between moral language and motivation.2 As a
number of authors have pointed out, there seems to be something puzzling about
someone who claims that an act is obligatory but fails to be motivated to perform it.3
Suppose Jenny tells us that eating meat is wrong. It would be puzzling if she then told
us that she felt no motivation whatsoever to cease being a carnivore. We would be
likely to doubt Jenny’s sincerity in such a case. Internalists claim that the reason why
this seems puzzling and the reason why we are tempted to question Jenny’s sincerity is
that there is an a priori necessary connection between moral judgements and

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motivation, so that it is impossible to make a genuine moral judgement without being
motivated to act in line with it. Before we evaluate this claim it is worth noting that
internalists tend to only claim the existence of a necessary connection between moral
judgements and a pro tanto motivation to act (i.e. one that is capable of being
overridden by motivation deriving from other sources).4
In response to arguments like this one, externalists have argued that amoralists, people
who make genuine moral judgements but remain completely unmotivated by them,
are conceptually possible.5 This would mean that there is no conceptual connection
between moral judgments and motivation.6
The most common internalist response to the challenge posed by the possibility of
amoralists is to restrict the internalist claim to a subset of moral agents. Different kinds
of agent restrictions have been proposed. Some restrict the claim to rational agents,
others to normal agents and the claim might also be made about virtuous agents.
While these agent restrictions help the internalist respond to the challenge of the
amoralist, they do so at a price. The price that must be paid for using this strategy is
that the further we restrict the internalist claim the less influence the claim will have
for the debate between cognitivists and non-cognitivists. Certainly for some ways of
restricting Internalism it seems reasonable to worry that what started as an interesting
claim about moral judgements, has become a less interesting (at least for those
interested in the nature of moral judgement) claim about certain kinds of moral
agent.7
There is, though, an important question that Internalists have largely ignored. While
there has been a great deal of discussion about the kinds of agents Internalism applies
to, there has been far less discussion about the kinds of moral evaluations this

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connection holds for. One recent development in the literature has been the explicit
recognition of a point that had previously been left implicit, that Internalism is a
theory about first-person judgements (see Manne (2o15 p. 261) and Wedgwood (2007
p.25). However, this leaves open the question of which first-person moral judgements
Internalism applies to. While different definitions of Internalism focus on different
moral evaluations there has been little discussion about which evaluations the theory
should cover. Indeed most contributions in the literature seem oblivious to the fact
that different evaluations have been given and the importance that this has for the
debate.8 The primary aim of this paper will be to investigate whether Internalism is a
plausible view to hold about moral judgements in general or whether it should be
understood only to be a claim about moral requirements.
I will limit myself in this discussion to focussing on the connection to motivation that
most internalists have focussed on up to now, that is a motivation to perform the
action in question. In other words, being motivated to perform the act the agent has
made a moral judgement about. Other forms of internalism have been defended.9 For
the purposes of this paper, however, I will focus on the standard approach, which is to
link moral judgements to motivation to perform the act being judged.

III. A NEGLECTED QUESTION FOR INTERNALISTS
The question for internalists, then, is which first personal judgments about
what to do is their theory supposed to cover? Different definitions of Internalism
make the claim about different forms of moral evaluation. There are, at least, five
different forms of moral evaluation that the internalist claim has been made about.
Some authors have claimed that the connection holds for judgements of moral

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obligation.10 Others have defined Internalism as applying to ‘moral ought’ judgements
(Kauppinen, 2008 p. 5). The claim has also been made about judgements of ‘moral
rightness’ (Smith, 1994 p.61), ‘moral goodness’ (Dreier, 1990 p.11 and Blackburn,
1984 p.187-8) and about all moral judgements (McNaughton, 1988 p.23 and Dancy,
1993 p.7).
The question we must ask then, is whether Internalism might plausibly be held to
cover all moral judgements or whether it is only a subset of moral judgements that are
covered by the theory. Before we go about answering this question, it is worth
remembering that we have already restricted our discussion to first personal
judgements about what to do. As a result, we have already restricted the set of moral
judgements being considered. For example, we will not be investigating whether
judgements concerning the possession of a virtue or vice are necessarily connected to
motivation, as these are not judgements about what to do (though they may lead to
such judgements).11 It is also worth pointing out that among the first personal moral
judgements about what to do will be judgements that an act is morally neutral. For
example, suppose I am trying to decide whether to drink tea or coffee. I may well
decide that it is just morally irrelevant which option I pick. This is, in a sense, a first
personal moral judgement about what to do. This, though, is clearly not the kind of
judgement that internalists have in mind when they claim that there is a necessary
connection between moral judgements and motivation. A more precise version of the
question we will be asking then is the following: which first-personal moral judgements
that provide some form of recommendation might plausibly be thought to be
necessarily connected to motivation?

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One answer to this question is that they all are. According to this view, any positive or
negative first personal moral judgements about how to act will be accompanied by a
corresponding positive or negative motivation.
Wide Judgement Internalism (Wide Internalism): Necessarily, if an agent makes a positive
first personal moral judgement concerning an act that she could perform φ then she
will be pro tanto motivated to φ. Necessarily, if an agent makes a negative first personal
moral judgement concerning an act that she could perform ψ then she will be pro tanto
motivated not to ψ.12
According to this view, there is a necessary connection between moral judgements
and motivation, as all positive and negative first personal moral judgements about
what to do will motivate agents to act accordingly.
We might think that this is how all Internalists intend their view to be understood.
However, some discussions of Internalism seem to suggest that it should be
understood in a narrower way. For example, William Frankena describes the debate
between internalists and externalists as, “A problem with the analysis of judgments of
moral obligation,” (1958 p.40). Similarly, Michael Cholbi describes Internalism in the
following way: “If an agent judges that she is morally obligated to φ, then, that agent
is, to at least some minimal extent, motivated to φ,” (2011 p.28). These authors could
be interpreted as making a claim about all moral judgments and focussing on the case
of moral obligation for simplicity. Nevertheless, I think an equally acceptable
interpretation would be that it is a claim specifically about moral requirement
judgements. Similarly authors who define Internalism in terms of moral ought
judgements, moral rightness judgements or moral goodness might also be understood
to either be making a wide claim about all first personal moral judgements and

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focussing on one evaluation for the sake of simplicity or as making a narrow claim
specifically about the evaluations they pick out in their definitions. An alternative
answer, then, to the question of which moral evaluations Internalism covers is the
following:

Narrow Judgement Internalism (Narrow Internalism): Necessarily, if an agent makes a
positive first personal moral judgement of sort S concerning an act that she could
perform φ then she will be pro tanto motivated to φ. Necessarily, if an agent makes a
negative first personal moral judgement of sort S concerning an act that she could
perform ψ then she will be pro tanto motivated not to ψ.
According to this view, there is a necessary connection between some subset of
positive and negative first personal judgements about what to do. There are, of
course, a range of possible views about what the appropriate subset would be. One
option would be to focus, as Cholbi and Frankena do, on moral requirements.
According to this view whenever an agent makes a first personal judgement about
what she is required to do she will be motivated to act in line with her judgement.
Alternatively, we might restrict the internalist claim to moral ought judgements, moral
rightness judgements or moral goodness judgements. We might wonder what the
difference between these different judgements is. This is a question that there is some
disagreement about in the literature. Some philosophers take ‘morally ought to’ to be
equivalent to ‘morally required to’ while others have argued that this is not how
‘ought’ should be understood.13 Similarly, we might think ‘morally right’ is equivalent
to ‘morally required’. Alternatively we might take it to mean ‘morally permissible’.14
We will return to this issue in §6, for now though it is enough to point out that for at
least some philosophers these judgements may not be equivalent.

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The following chart displays the options available to internalists:
Fig. 1 Options for Internalists

Does
 Internalism
 Apply
 to

All
 Moral
 first
 personal

moral
 judgements
 about

what
 to
 do?

Yes
  No

Narrow

Wide
 Internalism

Internalism

What
 Evaluations
 Does

Internalism
 Cover?

Moral
  Moral

Moral
 Ought
  Moral
 Goodness

Rightness
  Requirement

Judgements
  Judgments

Judgements
  Judgements

IV. INTERNALISM AND THE SUPEREROGATION AMORALIST
In the previous section I laid out a range of options for how internalists might
answer the question of which moral evaluations their view covers. In this section I will

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argue that we have good reason to reject any form of Internalism that is committed to
the following view:
Goodness Internalism: Necessarily, if an agent judges that it would be morally good for
her to φ then she will be pro tanto motivated to φ. Necessarily, if an agent judges that it
would be morally bad for her to ψ then she will be pro tanto motivated not to ψ.
The reason I will argue that any view which endorses Goodness Internalism should be
rejected is that any such view is committed to the implausible claim that there is a
necessary connection between judgements of supererogation and motivation.
A supererogatory act is one that goes beyond the call of duty.15 These acts are morally
good but morally optional, meaning that they are neither required nor forbidden. 16
Any internalist view that includes moral goodness judgements then is committed to
the view that there is a necessary connection between supererogation judgements and
motivation. This is a bad result, as positing a necessary connection to motivation for
these judgements seems far less plausible than for other moral judgements.
To see the problem for these forms of Internalism consider the supererogation
amoralist, someone who makes genuine supererogation judgments but remains
completely unmotivated by them. This is problematic, as it seems possible to judge
that an act is supererogatory and remain completely unmotivated to perform it.
Suppose Judy says the following: “it would be beyond the call of duty for me to give
away all of my disposable income to charity.”17 Now imagine we find out that she has
no motivation to do so. This does not seem odd in the way that Jenny’s eating meat
seemed odd. The reason for this is that we do not expect people to be motivated by a
judgement that an act is supererogatory. Suppose we asked Judy why she isn’t acting

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