Abstract
Recent virtue theorists in psychology implicitly assume the truth of motivational internalism, and this assumption restricts the force and scope of the message that they venture to offer as scientists. I aim to contrive a way out of their impasse by arguing for a version of Aristotelian motivational externalism and suggesting why these psychologists should adopt it. There is a more general problem, however. Although motivational externalism has strong intuitive appeal, at least for moral realists and ‘Humeans’ about motivation, it continues to be threatened by Smith’s fetishisation argument and burdened by the inability of its familiar counter-examples to internalism (of the immoral, wicked, listless and amoral persons) to bear full scrutiny. I argue that Aristotle’s example of the continent person (as distinct from the fully virtuous) offers a more persuasive counter-example to internalism. The moral judgements of continent persons do not motivate them intrinsically, yet the continent cannot be counted as practically irrational with regard to morality. If Aristotelian motivational externalism holds true, psychologists can offer full-fledged theories of virtue without the danger of turning the science of psychology into a prescriptive moralism.
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Notes
There are at least two importantly different formulations of this caveat in the literature: one includes ‘practical irrationality’; the other only ‘general motivational disorder’. As I propose to present motivational internalism in its least controversial and most plausible form, I include both.
By ‘intrinsically’ here I mean ‘non-derivatively’ and ‘non-instrumentally’. I do not mean to beg questions against Humean motivational internalists, such as Smith (1994), who do not believe that judgements motivate on their own (but rather through an intrinsic connection to a desire that triggers motivation).
I mean here ‘moral rightness’, not ‘rightness all things considered’.
It should be noted that while openly embracing moral cognitivism, Svavarsdóttir does not seem to have committed explicitly one way or another on the realist issue.
It is in order to mention briefly here the difference between motivational externalism and reason externalism (although I shall leave the latter out of further reckoning in what follows). For the reason externalist, moral judgement does not commit the agent making it to the recognition of the reason-giving force of the judgement. I consider that to be an unfounded claim. Surely a moral judgement about, say, the moral goodness of helping a blind person across the street, provides for any rational agent a recognisable reason for action. Hence, I would add to Railton’s admission the point that all sane motivational externalists will endorse reason internalism (about a necessary connection between moral judgement and the recognition of a justifying reason for action), while insisting on the assumption that the recognition of a justifying reason does not, any more than moral judgement, necessarily carry motivational force (cf. Mason 2008, p. 139).
McDowell (1978, 1979) has also argued that the virtuous and the continent are not making the same kind of moral judgement. His elucidation of this claim (and his interpretation of Aristotle) differs from mine in several respects, however. McDowell suggests that whereas the virtuous person’s judgement that a situation demands a certain action constitutes a motivating belief, the continent person’s judgement that a situation demands a certain action is a belief accompanied by a separate desire. I think that the correct Aristotelian position is that no beliefs can motivate on their own (see footnote 6 above). McDowell understands the judgement of the virtuous in perceptual, intuitivist and particularist terms: as spontaneous, ‘unclouded’, situation-specific sensitivity (see esp. 1979, p. 334). I understand it in cognitivist, theory-laden and generalist terms. The difference between the judgements of the virtuous and continent does not lie in the difference between unclouded and clouded vision but in other factors, as I explain in the following paragraph. McDowell takes the moral judgements of the virtuous to be essentially uncodifiable (1979, p. 336). I have argued, in contrast, that such moral judgements are not essentially uncodifiable although they are, more often than not, factually uncodifiable (see Kristjánsson 2007, Chap. 11).
Incidentally, I do not think that what has come to be known as the ‘Humean’ notion of practical rationality is actually Hume’s true notion; I agree with Karlsson (2006) that Hume’s view is similar to Aristotle’s, and also makes room for cognitive errors of irrationality about ends.
Incidentally, the positive psychologists in question do not seem to realise that, according to motivational internalism, specific moral judgements about the moral good of particular virtues or of particular pathways to happiness entail (on a motivational understanding of prescriptivity) a moral prescription no less than overall moral judgements. Given their internalist assumption, the positive psychologists thus seem to have violated Hume’s is–ought distinction, as they understand it, even with their reserved moral stance of refraining from advancing a fully developed theory of virtue.
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Acknowledgment
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer of the present journal for extended and particularly helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Kristjánsson, K. Aristotelian motivational externalism. Philos Stud 164, 419–442 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9863-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9863-1