Externalism and Internalism: Cognitive vs. Non-cognitive

Debates in morality usually involves many terms, aspects and views by different branches such as externalism and internalism, and one of the most important debates is about which one in these two branches that can show strongly whether it is cognitive or non-cognitive. Internalism has two main viewpoints: one is internalism of motive and the other is internalism of reason. In this essay, my thesis is not to show in details whether externalism or internalism is the one that is more cognitive than the other; rather, my thesis will be to show 2 main areas that can be used in considering for this debate that is related to reason and motive as its two main elements that are related to cognitivist and non-cognitivist views. The two main views are: (a) to consider a particular example of a moral judgment; and (b) to consider some different main aspects between cognitive internalism and non-cognitive internalism presented from other authors such as David Brink and Korsgaard, and to finally see how these two areas collaborate with each other in proving that they apply the same principle that reason is a better way to use to motivate action and therefore internalism that are based on reason as a motivation to conduce action is considered cognitivist internalism that opposes Dawal's comment that: "According to judgment internalism, nothing counts as a genuine normative or ethical thought or utterance unless it has the appropriate connection to motivation. Internalism of this sort has loomed large in twentieth-century arguments for ethical non-cognitivism." (Darwall, 9)

All matters involving morality are very sensitive and nature-inclined matters; by this, I mean that moral matters that are closed to our natural ways of living. For example, all societies seem to agree that human beings must live according to 'family values', and these values are marriage between a man and a woman, care of children, ect. All of these matters come from our natural ways of living as human beings. Thus, when there is a strange way of living arising such as the love between two people of the same sex, a homosexuality, it is immediately judged as 'homosexuality is immoral', and this is called the Fallwell's claim.

In the Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels points out that there is no proof to prove that this judgment is true, or in contrast, the judgment is not reasonable or doesn't have any good arguments to protect it. Rather, to prove that this judgment is right is just to show that 'it is very unnatural to do homosexual actions because homosexuality is against natural values.' Rachels writes:

The case against homosexuality thus reduces to the familiar
claim that it is 'unnatural' or to the claim often made by
followers of Falwell that it is a threat to 'family values'. As
for the first argument, it is hard to know what to make of
it because the notion of 'unnaturalness' is so vague. What
exactly does it mean? (Rachels, 50)

He then gives out three meanings and uses three arguments to rationalize against that judgment as the following: (1) First, 'unnatural' might be taken as a statistical notion. In this sense, a human quality is unnatural if it is not shared by most people. Homosexual cound be unnatural in this sense but so would left-handedness. Clearly, this is no reason to judge it bad. On the contrary, rare qualities are often good. (2) Second, 'unnatural' might be connected with the idea of a thing's purpose. The parts of our bodies seem to serve particular purposes. The purpose of the eye is to see; the purpose of the heart is to pump blood. Similarly, the purpose of our genitals might be said to be procreation. Sex is for making babies. It may be argued that gay sex is unnatural because it is sexual activity that is divorced from its natural purpose. It rests on the assumption that it is wrong to use parts of one's body for anything other than their natural purposes, and this is surely false. The purpose of the eyes is to see; it is therefore wrong to use one's eyes for flirting or for giving signal? Or the purpose of the fingers may be grasping and poking; it is therefore wrong to snap one's fingers to keep time with music? The idea that it is wrong to use things for any purpose other than their 'natural' ones cannot reasonably be maintained, and so this version of argument fails. (3) Third, the word unnatural might be understood simply as a term of evaluation. Perhaps, it means something like "contrary to what a person ought to be". But if that is what 'unnatural' means, then to say that something is wrong because it is unnatural would be utterly vacuous. It would be like saying thus-and-so is wrong because it is wrong. This sort of empty remark provides no reason for condemning anything.

Thus, the judgment that homosexuality is wrong is not reasonable and has no practical facts to support for its correctness. Consequently, most of moral judgments are judgments against natural ways of living, and therefore to prove that they are correct, there are not many reasons that can be taken except that it is not natural to live that way, and surely this judgment is an empty judgment without any valuable concepts beside the value of a natural way of living. What I mean is that there is no such a system of concepts such as Aristotelian doctrine of moral wisdom, intellectual wisdom, virtues, the highest good, activities of the soul, ect. In another word, the moral obligations under Aristotelian doctrine are secured by reasoning, a set of conception values to protect their meanings, and Aristotelian doctrine is of course an internalist theory of morality because it concentrates on the agent's own desires to obtain the highest good as the motives to motivate him or her to perform moral acts.

Now, the next area is to consider important issues involving internalism and externalism as whether they contain non-cognitivism or cognitivism. In this area which contains the main arguments involving this debate, I will use the ideas presented in chapter 3 which has the title "Externalist Moral Realism" in David Brink's book, Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics, as important guiding issues to see whether why he thinks that internalism about motive which is non-cognitive expresses only mental states, and why he prefers moral realism to internalism; however, Brink's moral realism is just a branch that is rooted deeply from cognitivist internalism and cognitivist internalism borrows heavily on non-cognitive internalism's main views about motive and reason. Thus, Brink's view of moral realism can be compatible to the kind of cognitivist internalism's view which I mentioned in my above thesis.

Brink's chapter three starts with the classifications of different characteristics of internalism and their main views as well as externalism and its most important version moral realism. In addition to providing readers with sufficient information concerning his thesis, Brink also gives readers his own arguments and assessments of why he comes to certain conclusions regarding his favor for externalist moral realism. I will summarize his main points, and at the end state my own opinions about Brink's thesis as well as my own thesis as to why I want to use the layout as presented in the above introduction of this discussion.

There is a distinction between internalism about motives and internalism about reasons. The internalist is responsible for a moral action that is affected by the will, so if one recognizes a moral consideration that comes from his/her passions and at the same time not motivated to act accordingly is unconceivable, and this is the view of motive internalism. It can easily explain the authority of moral consideration which is one's moral commitment that are attached to one's own interests and desires. The internalist of this kind claims that moral belief and moral judgment provide with motivation for action and is known as appraiser internalism. Hybrid internalism claims that it is a conceptual truth about morality that the recognition of a moral obligation provides the agent with reason for action. And finally, agent internalism is more objective in the sense that it links reason as motivation for action that is independent of anyone's recognition of these obligations.

Internalism has three distinguishable components. The first claim is that moral considerations provide reason for action. The second claim is that it is a necessary that moral considerations must provide motivation for action. And the third claim is that since it is the concept of morality that determines the rationality, the motivational power cannot come from other things such as the content of morality, facts about agents, except the agent's own desires and interests. Externalism denies all these three claims of internalism and establishes their three claims that moral considerations only contingently motivate or justify; the rationality of morality can be known as a posteriori; and whether the rationality of morality is necessary or contingent depends on things other than the concept of morality.

Externalism seems unable to account for the motivational aspects of morality and for the authority of moral considerations; by contrast, internalism seems to account for the effect that morality has on the will and seems to account for the authority of moral considerations. However, if we must recognize the practical characters of morality of which moral realism is the representative then moral realism is incompatible with internalism; otherwise, it is compatible with internalism. In particular, the moral realism must claim it is a conceptual truth about morality that moral considerations provide reasons for action. According to this view, it must be inconceivable that someone could recognize a moral fact and remain unmoved or fail to reason to act, and on this view, realism combined with internalism. This view is also considered as the amoralist view.

Despite this view, internalism is a premise for many arguments for non-cognitivism because some claims that no general set of facts or cognitive states can necessitate any motivational attitude that people take their moral obligations to follow. Internalism exploits morality because it claims that moral obligations are what everyone has desires to act with; however, others don't have desires to act according to moral obligations. Moral beliefs cannot impose those actions that people have no moral obligations to follow, or moral beliefs cannot create moral obligations that one doesn't have desires to do them because it is not practical to do so. Since there are some people who don't have any moral considerations, the view of internalism that moral obligations motivate actions depends only on those who are motivated by moral considerations is the weakest view of internalism. These are the reasons to reject internalism about motives as the right idea about the connection between morality and motivation.

Moreover, the internalist cannot forcibly hold the extension claim that everyone is motivated by moral considerations because even it is a conceptual truth about morality that recognition of moral considerations motivates, we still ask if such a motivation is justified. Now, internalism defends his position by distinguishing between strong and weak amoralisms. Weak amoralism asserts that agents don't have sufficient reason to be moral while strong amoralism asserts that agents don't have any reason to be moral at all. Since internalism is weak internalism, the internalist who claim internalism about motives could rule out the strong amoralist and so need not to disapprove the weak amoralist. Thus, there are reasons for rejecting internalism about motives as the correct account of the connection between morality and motivation for internalism overstates the connection between morality and motivation, and internalism prevents us from recognizing the amoralist.

Externalism provides more plausible account of the connection between morality and motivation; it makes the motivational force or moral considerations a matter of contingent psychological fact, depending of the beliefs and desires agents happen to have. First because it doesn't make the motivational force of moral obligations a conceptual feature of morality; this means externalism doesn't hold that moral obligations must possess people's actual desires. Second, externalism makes the motivational force of moral judgments and belief a matter of psychological fact, depending on both the contents of people's moral views and their attitudes and desires. Finally, externalism allows us to take amoralism case seriously because it doesn't try to find the motivation force within moral considerations themselves; it thinks that we can imagine someone who recognizes moral considerations and remain unmotivated.

The following paragraphs are more particular considerations about the connection between morality about motive and about reasons. Before making conclusions about how reasonable internalism is, Brink creates five propositions that are the below:

(1) To be under a moral obligation to do x, one must have reason to do x.

(2) One has reason to do x just in case x would contribute to the satisfaction of one's desires.

(3) Hence, one can have a moral obligation to do x only if doing x would contribute to the satisfaction of one's desires.

(4) Not everyone has the same desires.

(5) Hence, there is no single set of moral requirements that applies to everyone, there will be different moral requirements that apply to different people in virtue of their different motivational sets.

To evaluate these propositions, Brink wants us to consider Kant's two themes which are (a) moral requirements apply to agents independently of their contingent and variable desires; (b)the rationality of moral considerations is independent of agent's contingent and variable desires. Proposition (3) follows from (1) and (2) and denies Kant's first theme and asserts that moral requirements must be relative to the agent's desires or motivational set which is known as moral relativism. If everyone were to share all the relevant desires, then there could be a single true morality. If moral relativism is a denial of a single true morality that applies to everyone, then the argument for moral relativism must establish (5) not just (3), but (3) is sufficient to establish moral relativism. Since we know that moral realism considers other characters of morality against one's own desires and interests, (3) is against realism. Moreover, the interest in the debate between moral realism and moral relativism often depends on thinking of the realist as embracing and of the relativist as denying the existence of a single true morality that applies to all moral agents. We have examined that (3) is weaker than (5), but with a closer look, (5) doesn't in fact follow from (3) and (4). In particular, even if there are some descriptions of an action under which an agent does not desire to perform it, there may be other descriptions of an action that show the action to satisfy desires the agent has. For example, I may not desire to forgo my Sunday afternoon nap in order to help you proofread your paper, but it may nonetheless be true that proofreading your paper would contribute to the satisfaction of desires that you like me. So, this fact that people have different desires establish that there may be a set of moral requirements whose fulfillment would satisfy at least one desire of every agent. (1) doesn't make a strong claim that moral obligations provide sufficient reason for action; it makes only the weaker claim that moral obligations provide some reason for action. However, (1) depends upon the assumptions about the connection between morality and rationality in (1) and about the nature of rationality in (2). Premise (1) can be defended by an appeal about reasons, and this form of internalism claims that it is a conceptual truth about morality that moral considerations provide agents with reason for action. But no one thinks that merely believing or judging that one has a moral obligation to do x gives one reason to do x; one's moral belief or judgment may be wrong or in some way unwarranted. Although in favor of moral realism, many times in Chapter 3, Brink still gives trustworthy credits to internalism such as in the following paragraph:

The more plausible we find the claim that an agent's reasons for action depend on his desires, the more plausible we should find that claim that moral obligations do not always provides reasons for action. I think (2) is implausible view about the nature of individual rationality. But if we were to accept it, the independence of duty and inclination should lead us to deny that moral requirements are rational for everyone to follow in all circumtances. This would requires us to reject second Kantian theme, but not the first: Moral requirements would still apply to agents independently of their contingent and variable desires, even if they would not provide agents with reasons for action independently of their desires. Thus, we could still charge people who violate their moral obligations with immorality, even if we could not always charge them with irrationality. (Brink, 75)

And that means that acting immorality is not irrational but considerable because sometimes, one still can recognize a moral consideration but unable to be motivated by it because it is against one's own interests.

In the rest of the chapter, Brink gives out two more important considerations; that is the concepts of a counterfactual desire-satisfaction theory, the objective theories, and the assumption that sacrifice requires compensation (SRC). Counterfactual desire-satisfaction is a theory against the actual desire-satifaction theory which is nothing strange but a term to refer to an agent's desires. A desire-satisfaction theory claims that value is a form of subjectivism, because it makes the value of things depend on whether people happen to desire those things. A counterfactual desire-satisfaction theory claims that what is valuable is what would satisfy the desires one would have if one to occupy some preferred epistemic state. Objective theories claim that what is valuable is neither consists nor depends upon anyone's psychological states, and most will claim that the main constituents of value are things that contribute to a valuable life. A theory of value is purely objective if it contains only objective components. Consequently, according to Brink, reasons that are not based on one's own desires and interests and that can apply Kantian first and second themes are valuable reasons because they are justified, prudential and objective reasons.

And if so, then people have and act on all sort of reasons, and there are many different kinds of behavioral norms which, if adopted, would supply an agent with valuable and explanatory reasons for action. Therefore, these theories of rationality lead to a question that whether all good or justified reasons for action are agent relative, and this agent relative theory assumes that sacrifice requires compensation (SRC); that is, an agent has reason to make sacrifice to benefit another if and only if the agent receives some benefit in return. Is SRC plausible? SRC implies that if I am to have reason to benefit you, then I must benefit from your benefit -- an idea drawn from Hobbes' idea. Or I can have reason to do something that will satisfy your desires because doing so will also satisfy my desires as a matter of a contingent psychological fact. SRC also has different implications about the scope of justified sacrifice on different evaluative assumptions such as a variety of social or other regarding components in a person's good, family relations, friendships, and social relations involving mutual concern and respect that make our lives more valuable than just the satisfaction of our own interests and desires. Thus, Brink concludes that SRC is good, and on such views, the good of others is part of our good, and so we will benefit directly and necessarily by benefiting them. However, as usual, and in some explanatory intervals, Brink reminds us about the important role of the internalist and that it is hard to reject the internalist because there are always problems existing in rejecting internalism:

Perhaps the non-cognitivist will tell us that we can invite others to share our attitudes or prescribe courses of action without believing those attitudes or courses of action are objectively valuable so long as we share enogh closely related attitudes and preferences with our audience. But this reply not only leaves our attitudes unexplained; it makes our moral practices look too much like the practices of some exclusive club. The fact is that we address our moral judgments to audiences whose psychology we are not familiar with or whom we fear hold preferences and attitudes different from our own. (Brink, 79)

Korsgaard also is another author who favors internalism and therefore defends for cognitivist internalism in Chapter 11: "Skepticism about Practical Reason" of her book, Creating the Kingdom of Ends, by using Kant's view to oppose Hume's view that "reason by itself cannot provide any motivation for any action." The following paragraph will say why internalism is not always a non-cognitive view and that Kantian law of pure reason is a better way that can apply to motivate action.

According to Korsgaard, practical reason is not understood as pure reason but understood as a reason to motivate us to act. Since practical reasons involve also reasons from one's own interests that are most urgent and essential in motivating a person to act, there are doubts about the scope of reason as called motivational skepticicism of whether formal principles or pure reasons can have any contents and can give substantive guidance to action. One of the most important things that Korsgaard makes is involved in the theory of means/end reasons that draws on an apparent motivational source, and according to her, being motivated by the consideration that an action is a means to an end demands that the motive force attached to the end must be transmitted to the means in order for this to be a consideration that motivates a human body; otherwise means/end reasoning will not meet the internalism requirement. Like Brink's idea about the irrationality of the amoralist challenge, Korsgaard's use of means/end rationality allows for at least one form of true irrationality that is the failure to be motivated by the consideration that action is the means to an end. Kant in the Groundwork imagines such a human being in such a condition of being able to reason theoretically but not practically. The necessity of rational considerations lies in those considerations themselves, not in us, so we will not necessarily be motivated by them but we can act in comply with their suggestions. We are human beings capable of doing rationality but we don't necessarily have it as a desired condition inside us. We can exploit means/end reasoning to apply a deliberative process that doesn't belong to a subjective motivational set but does belong to an objective motivational set. And at this point, Korsgaard's idea is compatible with or has similar traits to Brink's objective theories. Thus, theoretical or pure reason must be capable of convincing us and at the same time capable of motivating us to act in order to satisfy the internalism requirement. Kant is the philosopher who thinks that human beings are imperfectly rational, and like Aristotle, he wants to use education or formal principles to teach human beings to listen to reason. Since theoretical argument or reason is a deliberative process, to have the motivational aspect, it must be capable of convincing us to act in accordance with its guidance. If we say that we come to accept the principle through reasoning then there are grounds for saying that all rational persons could be brought by this principle to understand that they have reason to act, and this what internalism requires. Korsgaard then gives out an example of an agent who wants to consider a certain principle as a guidance to live by it will wonder if it will violate her own interests. If she thinks that it is better to act on such a principle then she may approve it and proceed to be motivated by it. Thus, the internalism requirement based on reason is correct, and it doesn't exclude utilitarianism or intuitionism which are considered to rather incline towards externalism. The force of the inernalism requirement is that it doesn't refute ethical theories but it wants to make a psychological demand on them.

In summary, Brink and Korsgaard, both don't deny that internalism's views are totally implausible because the internalists are the ones who have the most practical characteristic in the connection between moral consideration and its motivation for action, and even the moral realists, they cannot hold their assertions against internalism in all aspects; there are areas where the internalist become more plausible than the realist, and there are areas in which the moralist is more plausible than the internalist. But Brink thinks that non-cognitive internalism that demands our attitudes or mental states to have effects on motivational morality cannot have normative or a valuable ethical theory because it doesn't have any objective value since we cannot invite others to share our own attitudes if we cannot hold that these attitudes are correct or valuable. And Korsgaard thinks that internalism about reason is better than internalism about motive since internalism about reason contains more cognitive views and is based on pure reasons or general principles that can guide every rational person to acknowledge and to be otivated by them.

In conclusion, the example of a moral judgment that defends homosexuality is an example of a judgment that uses reasoning and valuable objective arguments against the natural ways of living that can fall into the self-interest or desire case of non-cognitivist internalism because every human being on this earth is inclined towards natural ways of living, and he or she will more likely to have natural ways of living as his or her own desires and will be motivated by them as moral guides. People can exploit or abuse their desires if they are approved by non-cognitivist internalism that it is a conceptual truth that moral considerations based on desires provides agents with reason for action, and the results of this exploitations may lead to social crimes, sexual violence, incest which become the cases that in turn oppose family values. Thus, unless natural ways of living are proved to have objective values, they are still considered as basic human desires existed inside each person and can become considerations that belong to a subjective motivational set but not an objective motivational set.

The particular case of moral judgments in favor of homosexuality are based on the reasons that are drawn from facts to oppose the natural concepts of vague family values that are laid out by some people, and it shows that it considers different moral requirements that can be applied to different people rather than just a set of particular people. Thus, reasoning, values, and objective ends play important roles in providing motivations for morality, and better moral judgments come from considering different moral requirements that can apply to different people who have different interests or desires. And this particular case of homosexuality uses reasoning, objective values but not internal interests or internal desires as shown with the common sexual desires that are used as the natural ways of living related to "family values" to extablish it own set of reasons why homosexuality should not be considered as immoral. The internalist is cognitive in one way what it rests on reasoning to provide motivations for moral actions, but it is non-cognitive when it does consider only one agent's interests or desires as the motivations for moral actions.

Referenceces

Brink, David. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Dore, Clement. Moral Skepticism. McMillan Academic and Professional LTD, 1991.

Korsgaard, Christine M. "Chapter 11: Skepticism about Practical Reason". Creating the kingdom of Ends. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 311-332.

Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 3rd ed. The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1999.

Dawall, Stephen. "Chapter 3: Externalist Moral Realism." The British Moralist and the Internal "Ought". Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Williams, Bernard. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Harper & Row Publishers, 1972.

Korsgaard's Skepticism about Practical Reason

Korsgaard is one of the critics who favors very much internalism and in her article "Skepticism About Practical Reason", she gives readers many valuable ideas and definitions about what a practical reason is and how it should be applied as one of the most important ethical principles that guide human actions. In this article, Korsgaard mentions many philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Nagel and Williams as the ones whose ideas are related to practical reason that are close to her topic; however, Hume and Kant are the two traditional philosophers who get more of her attention than others. Essentially, her main ideas revolve around the doubt of how strong human action can be directed by reason and desire as well as the doubt about the scope of reason as a motive for human action which she calls motivation skepticism. In short, she tries to argue that motivational skepticism must not always be based on content skepticism. The below paragraphs will discuss about how successful Korsgaard's job is in presenting her arguments.


First of all, Korsgaard says that skepticism about practical reason involves Hume's ideas about the relationship between reason and desires and that Hume uses desire as means to get reason obey it without telling whether a desire is rational or irrational. In another word, to say that a desire is rational or irrational is a non-sense, but our standard rules that come from reason is effective in choosing the means to our ends. However, there is a limitation of practical reason in playing its role in choosing a means; that is it prevents reason from determining the ends and from ranking them. Self-interests that make us like the greatest good are not necessarily to be a stronger desire or a stronger reason than the desire of a smaller good or any particular good; thus, reason by itself doesn't classify or select our ends.


Korsgaard says that Hume has proved against the modern philosophers who assert that we must regulate our conducts by reason by the following arguments: (a) reason by itself cannot provide any motivation for any action; and (b) reason never oppose passion in the direction of the will. Since all reasons either concern the abstract connection of ideas or the connections of cause that we learn from experience and since the abstract connection of ideas are mathematical subjects no one supposes that they give rises to any motives. And we are moved by the perception of the causal connection only if there is a motive that exists previously in a case of event. The argument that reason cannot oppose a passion in the direction of the will depends on the argument that reason by itself cannot give rise to a motive, and only if reason leads us to a motivation that opposes a passion then it can oppose a passion. What Hume means is the possible content of principles of reason that carry out action and the scope of its motivational force, and the answers for these matters are what Korsgaard wants to provide.


The reason why an action is right and the motivation that we have for doing an action are two different things, but this falls out of the position of an internalist who asserts that the reason why an action is right is the reason that motivates us to act and is called practical reason. Nagel gives out an example of this idea by using Hobbes' theory that the reason for an appropriate action and the motivation to do it belong to our interests, but the institutionists don't believe in practical reason because human beings can be moved by a special psychological mechanism: a belief that the conclusion of sound arguments are true. Kant is one of the institutionists whose position is in the question that whether he is an internalist or an externalist. Falk asserts that the difference between internalism and externalism as one of whether the moral command arises from a source outside the agent or from within. If the difference is described in this way then Kant's attempt to derive morality from autonomy makes him a paradigmatic internalist. On the other hand, Kant's view that moral commands are indifferent to our desires and interests that it is categorical makes him a paradigmatic externalist. Since Kant takes the classified characteristic of autonomy and the imperative to be necessarily connected, Korsgaard also wants to take his view into consideration for her arguments.



Bernard Williams is also an internalist who argues that there are two kinds of reason claims: an internal claim and an external claim also asserts that only internal reasons really exist by giving an example that a person has a reason to do action A is a person who has a motive to do A, and this claim is of an internal claim. He points out that an external-reason claim does not imply the existence of a motive, and it cannot be used to explain anyone's action: that is, we cannot say that the person P did the action A because of reason R for R does not provide P with a motive for doing A, and the motive for doing A comes from inside P but not from a reason created by outside forces. Nagel's argument is also the same as William's argument about the agent's perspective that unless reasons are motives, they cannot explain actions, and unless reasons are motives, we cannot be said to be practically rational.


Practical reason claims that if they are really to present us with reasons for action, then they must be capable of motivating rational person, and Korsgaard call this the internalist requirement. Reason is the faculty that judges of truth and falsehood, and it can judge our ideas to be true or false; however, passion is an original existence not a copy of anything: it cannot be true or false and therefore it cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. Passion can be unreasonable by Hume in two cases: one is when passion is founded on the supposition of the existence of objects that don't exist; and the other is when in exerting any passion in action, we choose insufficient means for the designed end and deceive ourselves in our judgment of cause and effects. There is no case in the two cases that Hume considers is a true irrational case: relative to their beliefs, people never act irrationally. However, Korsgaard says that there is something else one might mean in the second case which is that knowing the truth about the relevant causal relations, we might choose insufficient means to our end and fail to choose sufficient and available means to the end, and she calls that a true irrationality. Hume indeed says this:


.... the moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or
the insufficient of any means, our passions yield to our reason
without any opposition.


But it looks as if a theory of means/end rationality ought to allow for at least one form of true irrationality, namely, failure to be motivated by the consideration that the action is the means to an end. It is possible to imagine a sort of being who could engage in causal reasoning could engage in reasoning that would point out the means to the ends, but who was not motivated by it. Kant, in a passage early in the Groundwork, imagines a human being in just such as condition of being able to reason theoretically but not practically. He is talking about what the world would have been like if nature had had our happiness as her end, but in fact nature didn't have our happiness as our ends in all situations. Kant says that:


... if, over and above this, reason should have been grated to
the favored creature, it would have served only to let it
contemplate the happy constitution of ist nature.


The favored creature is portrayed as able to see that his actions are rational in the sense that they promote the means to his end of happiness; but he is not motivated by their reasonableness; he acts from his inctinct. Reason allows him to admire the rational appropriateness of what he does, but this is not what gets him to do it -- he has the sort of attitude toward all his behavior that we in fact might have towards the involuntary well-functioning of our bodies. The motive force attached to the end must be transmitted to the means in order for this to be a consideration that sets the human body in motion. A practically rational person is not merely capable of performing certain rational mental operations, but capable also of transmitting motive force along the paths laid out by those operations. Otherwise even means/end reasoning will not meet the internalism requirement.


But the internalism requirement does not imply that nothing can interfere with this motivational transmission. There seems to be plenty of things that could interfere with the motivational influence of a given rational consideration: rage, depression, distraction, physical and mental illnesses, and all of these things could cause us to act irrationally; that is, to fail to be motivationally responsive to the rational considerations available to us. The necessity of rational considerations lies in those considerations themselves, not in us: that is, we will not necessarily be motivated by them. Rather, their necessity may lie in the fact that, when they do move us, they move us with the force of necessity. But it will not be the case that they necessarily move us. So a person may be irrational, not merely by failing to observe rational connections but also by being "willfully" blind to them, or even by being indifferent to them when they are pointed out. In this respect, practical reason is no different from theoretical reason. Many things might cause us to fail to be convinced by a good argument. For Korsgaard, to be a theoretically rational person is not merely to be capable of performing logical and inductive propositions, but to be appropriately convinced by them: the conviction in the premises must carry through to a conviction in the conclusion:


Thus, the internalism requirement for theoretical reasons is that
they be capable of convincing us insofar as we are rational. In
order for a theoretical argument to have the status or reason, it
must of course be capable of motivating or convincing a rational
person, but it does not follow that it must AT ALL TIMES be
capable of motivating or convincing any given individual. Many
things can interfere with the functioning of the rational operations
in a human body; thus there is no reason to deny that human beings
might be practically irrational in the sense that Hume considers might
be practically irrational: that, even with the truth of our disposal, we
might from one cause or another to be interested in the means to
our ends. (Korsgaard, 321)


Her speculation is that skepticism about practical reason is sometimes based on a false impression of what the internalism requirement requires. It does not require that rational considerations always suceed in motivating us. All it requires is that rational considerations succeed in motivating us insofar as we are rational. And this means that theoretical reasons and practical reasons are equal only when we have a reason inside us that motivates us to do what theoretical reasons require us to do. One can admit the possibility of true irrationality and yet still believe that all practical reasoning is instrumental. But once this kind or irrationality is allowed in the means/end case, some of the grounds for skepticism about more ambitious forms of practical reasoning will seem less compelling, and the case of prudence or self-interest will show what Korsgaard wants to present to us. And an important matter in Korsgaard discussion in her thesis is the similarity between Kant's ideas and Hume's ideas in theoretical reasoning. she says that Hume thinks that there is a "general appetite to good, and aversion to evil" and that a person will act prudently insofar as this calm and general passion remains dominant over particular passions. It is under the influence of this end that we weigh one possible satisfaction against another, trying to determine which conduces to our greater good for Hume says it is not contrary to reason to prefer an acknowledged lesser good to a greater one. In the case where a person chooses a lesser good, what the argument in favor of prudence would vary from theory to theory; here, the point is this: there is no doubt whether preferring a greater good is rational because someone may fail to be motivated by thinking that something will serve her greater, preferring a greater good may be irrational. Not everything that drives us to conclusion is a theory, and not everything that drives us to action need to be a desired end. Rationality is a condition that human beings are capable of, but it is not a condition that we are always in. Thus, Aristotle and Kant are the two who most concerned with the methods of education. Human beings must be taught to listen to reason because Kant says that we are imperfectly rational.


The fact that a practical reason must be capable of motivating us might still seem to put a limitation on the scope of practical reason: it might be thought that it is a subjective matter which considerations can motivate a given individual and that, therefore, all judgments of practical reason must be conditional in form. In Hume's argument, this kind of limitation is captured in the claim that motivation must originated in a passion. In the means/end case, we are able to be motivated by the consideration that action A will promote purpose P because we have a pre-existing motivational impulse, a passion, attached to purpose P. This does not limit practical reason to the means/end variety, but it might seem to impose a limitation of this sort: practical-reason claims must be reached by something that is recognized as a rational deliberative process from interests and motives one already has. Internal reasons are reasons reached by deliberation from the subjective motivational set: they can motivate us because of their connection to that set. Means/end deliberation, where the end is in the set and the means are what we arrive at by the motivating deliberation, is the most characteristic source of reasons for action. Anything reached by a process of deliberation from the subjective motivational set may be something for which there is an internal reason, one that can motivate. Williams, by contrast, points out that external reasons exist regardless of what is in one's subjective motivational set, and that there must be some rational process, not springing from the subjective motivational set and therefore not relative to it, which could bring us to acknowledge something to be a reason and at the same time to be motivated by it. Reason must be able to produce an entirely new motive, the thing that Hume said could not be done.


Thus, Williams takes a piece of practical reasoning must start from something that is capable of motivating us and drops the only kind of reasoning is means/end. If one accepts the internalism requirement, it follows that pure practical reason will exist if and only if we are capable of being motivated by the conclusions of the operations of pure practical reason as such. Williams seems to think that this is a reason for doubting whether pure practical reasons exist: if we can be motivated by considerations stemming from pure practical reason, then that capacity belongs to the subjective motivational set of every rational being. However, one cannot argue that the subjective motivational set contains only ends or desires; for that would be true only if all reasoning were the means/end variety. Nor can one assume that the subjective motivational set consists only of individual elements; for that is to close off without argument the possibility that reason could yield conclusions that every rational being must acknowledge and be capable of being motivated by. Korsgaard then gives out an example that we consider the case of an agent who after being raised to live by a certain principle, comes to question it. Some doubt or argument has made her consider eliminating the principle from her subjective motivational set. Now what will she think? The principle does not admit of an ultimate justification, so she will not find that, but this doesn't necessarily mean that she will reject the principle. She may find that she thinks that people should have and act on such a principle that is in some rough way a good idea, and so she may retain it and even proceed to educate those under her influence to adopt it. More to the point, what this kind of case shows is that for Williams as for Hume, the motivational skepticism depends on what Korsgaard calls the "content skepticism". Williams doesn't think that there are unconditional principles of reason that can apply to action that could not be motivated by them; he only thinks that there are none.


From considerations concerning the necessity that reasons be internal and capable of motivating us which are almost identical to Williams', Nagel argues that investigations into practical reason will yield discoveries about our motivational capacities. He thinks that if we then are able to show the existence of reasons, we will have shown something capable of motivating us. As Nagel points out, this approach also characterizes the moral philosophy of Kant. By the end of the Second Section of the Groundwork, Kant has done what he set out to do: he has shown us what sort of demand pure reason would make on action. Working from the ideas that reason is general must be universal, that reason seeks the unconditioned, and that its binding force must derive from autonomy, has shown us what a law of pure reason that could applied to action would look like. However, until it has been shown that we can be motivated to act according to the categorical imperative, it has not been completely shown that the categorical imperative really exists-- that there really is a law of pure practical reason. Kant does try to argue that we can be motivated by the categorical imperative appealing to the pure spnontaneity of reason as evidence for our intelligible nature and so for an autonomous will. Korsgaard says:


In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant turns his strategy around.
He argues that we know that we are capable of being motivated by
the categorical imperative and therefore that we know in a practical
sense that we have an autonomous will. Again, explorations into
practical reason reveal our nature. It is important; however, that
although in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant does not try to
argue that pure reason can be motivated, he has detailed things to
say about how it can be motive -- about how it function as an incentive
in combating other incentives. (Korsgaard, 330)


At the end of the essay, Korsgaard says that what she has attempted to show is that motivational considerations do not provide any reason for skepticism about practical reason. If a philosopher can show us that something that can be recognized as a law of reason, there is no special reason to doubt the human beings might be motivated by that consideration. However, she also realizes that the idea that an acknowledged reason can never fail to motivate is a strange idea and that it is based on some sort of misunderstanding, but she has also suggested that a misunderstanding of the internalism requirement is a possible account. The correct response is that if someone discovers what are recognizably reasons that can affect conduct, and those reasons fail to motivate him, then that only shows the limits of our rationality. Kant maintained that, if we thought about it, we would see that we are not immune to the laws of pure practical reason: that we know we can do what we ought. But there is no guarantee of this; for our knowledge or our motives is limited. The conclusion is that, if we are rational, we will act as the categorical imperative directs, but we are not necessarily rational. Thus, if there is a motivational skepticism about practical reason then it must depends on skepticism about the possible content of rational requirements as to whether this content could become a motivation that moves our inner desire to act.


In summary, I think although Korsgaard acknowledges that Kant's view about practical reasons as universal laws of reason can provide additional features that Hume's views do not have, Korsgaards still thinks that Kant hasn't shown that his categorical imperative really exists, and the most important point of all is that Kant didn't try to argue that pure reason could motivate people and that all he tried to prove was that how it functioned as an incentive in combating with other incentives. Finally, I think Korsgaard is reasonably successful in answering Hume on kant's behalf.






Rerferences


Korsgaard, Christine M. "Ch. 11: Skepticism about Practical Reason". Creating the kingdom of Ends. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 311-332.

Disccussions of Plato's Republic: Kraut's Forms vs. Vlastos' Practices

Socrates is a great philosopher who has good ideas about what should be the main educational subjects for a city, or a state or a country and of the highest class of people whom he calls the "guardians", the soldiers and the citizens. However, I consider his ideas are too ideal and have a few flaws or discrepancies in them. For example, the education of wisdom is more applicable to the guardians than to the citizens and the soldiers, and the education of just which means "to do one's own". But, in his plan, Socrates affirms that he wants to use all of the four virtues such as wisdom, courage, moderation and just to educate the "whole city" which means the inclusion of every one from guardians to citizens. How can he accomplish such a plan while being just means "to do one's own" and being wise means "to know everything and to have the best knowledge of many things"? Certainly, I see that when one tailor knows how to make the best clothes, he or she won't be able to learn other subjects such as history, geology or philosophy, etc. Thus, when one does his own profession, he won't be able to be wise or to obtain wisdom as Socrates thinks he could. Therefore, Socrates' theory of the republic has flaws in it, and this is the reason why I believe that the discussion of philosophy in Republic, specifically in Books V,VI and VII is central to Kraut's article more than to Vlastos' article on the study of Republic. The following paragraphs will introduce Kraut and Vlastos and the main ideas in their articles and explain why Vlastos justifies Socrates' Republic more than Kraut.


Vlastos is in his article "Justice and Happiness in the Republic" says 2 special things about justice and the relationship between justice and wisdom: (1) that justice is not only to do one's own but to also have a just disposition, and (2) that wise and brave hardly apply to polis and person in the same way in all respects. Those ideas can be found in the following paragraph extracted from his article:


So the thesis is that one has more to gain in happiness from being a just
man than from any good one could obtain at the price of becoming unjust.
Now performing a single just act, or some odd assortment of just acts,
is by no means equivalent to being a just man or , in Plato's phrase, "having
justice in the soul." So in "justice pays" justice is a property not of actions
as such, but of agents; it stands for the active disposition to behave justly
towards one's fellows. (Vlastos, 113)


What Vlastos means is that if one only acts justly by not stealing or cheating, he may have do it because he is forced to do so; otherwise, he will be punished for stealing or cheating, but it is not because he knows in his soul that he should not steal or cheat. In the other case, he may think that it is not wrong to steal or cheat and if he has an opportunity to do those things without being put in jail or punished, he will do them.


Althouth Vlastos does not agree with Plato and Socrates that justice is all about the phrase "to do one's own", he still agrees that one should have just acts such as to do one's own; he thinks that one needs to have a genuine motivation of why he should do his own things or that he needs to have a righteous mentality in all actions that he does not only because he must do it because he is obliged to but he should do it because he wishes to do just acts by himself not by being compelled by laws or external forces. Furthermore, Vlastos adopts the following form of argument about justice:


Because each shall have one's own is what judge should aim for,
but each shall have one's own if each does one's own, and what
judges should aim for is justice; therefore, each shall have one's
own and that each shall do one's own is justice. (Vlastos, 121)


He then proceeds to argue that jusice is not only doing one's own but also having one's own things, but Plato and Socrates did not say much about the property rights:


Thus consider how he tackles the question of whether or not the rulers
of his state should have private property. Common morality supplies no
answer. It does say that depriving unlawfully another of his property
("stealing") is unjust. Who, if anyone, should own property it does not
say. Plato here applies his own criterion of "doing one's own": his guardians
would be "more excellent cratfmen of their own work" (421C1-2) without,
than with, private property. This settles the matter: real estate and chattels
are not to be "theirs". In the last analysis, all questions of what does, or
does not, "belong to one" would be adjudicated in this matter. (Vlastos, 122)


Another matter brought up by Vlastos is the discrepancies between the three elements of virtues: justice, courage and wisdom that he writes in the following paragraph:


Second, he is misled by the false analogy on which he relies in
generalizing from the cases of "wise" in (B) and "brave" in (C)
to all moral predicates in (D), including "just". (Vlastos, 132)


What Vlastos means is that a person cannot have all three virtues of wise, just and brave because processing them causes conflicts. For example, a person who specializes only on his profession as a dancer will not learn scientific subjects and therefore will not be wise although she or he is just since he or she only does what belongs to his/her own profession of dancing; neither will he or she be brave because he/she is an artist, not a soldier. Thus, through this example, we see that Vlastos deprecates Plato's and Socrates' ideas presented in Republic regarding the 4 main virtues that are taken as the primary elements for an excellent education for a city or a state. It is obviously that the discussion in Plato's Republic is not central and is subject to be criticized by Vlastos in his article.


On the other hand, the discussion of Plato's Republic is central and is not subject to be seriously criticized by Klaut in his article; the following paragraphs will talk about how Klaus interprets and defends the meanings of Plato's Republic:


First, Kraut does not consider that Republic is a theory that has conflicting ideas as Vlastos; he writes:


I will try to identify and explain the fundamental argument of Plato's
Republic for the astonishing thesis that justice is so great a good that
anyone who fully possesses if is better off... Plato's attempt to defend
this remarkable claim is of course the unifying thread of the dialogue,
but his argument ranges so widely over diverse topics that it is
difficult to see how it all fits together... (Kraut, 311)


As we can see in the above statement, Kraut thinks that Plato's theory is good and the proofs of it are unified in the whole book. He then lays out the four attempts that Plato make as the following:


1) First, at the end of Bood IV, we learn that justice is a certain harmonious arrangement of the parts of the soul.


2) Second, in Book IX, Plato compares the five types of people he has been protraying in the middle books -- the philosophical ruler, the timocrat, the oligarch, the democrat, and the tyrant -- and declares that the happiest of them is the philosopher, since he exercises kingly rule over himself.


3) Third, Book IX immediately proceeds to argue that the philosophical life has more pleasure than any other, since the philosopher is in the best position to compare the various pleasures available to different types of people and prefers philosophical pleasures to all others.


4) And fourth, the pleasures of the philosophical life are shown to be more real and therefore greater than the pleasures of any sort of life. (Kraut, 312)


So, Kraut tries to prove that Plato succeeds in establishing an ideal city in which the citizens and its rulers have things in common such as the same virtues and the development of the type of the rulers in this ideal society match with the development of an excellent soul in each individual. Kraut also says that the thesis Plato undertakes to prove is phrased in strongly connected various ways: "It is better (ameinon) to be just than unjust (357b1); justice must be welcomed for itself if one is to be blessed (makarios, 358a3); the common opinion that injustice is more profitable (lusitelein) must be refuted (360c8); we must decide whether the just man is happiest (eudaimonesteros) than the unjust (361d3); justice by itself benefits (ominanai) someone who possesses it whereas injustice harms (blaptein) him (367d3-4); we must determine the advantages (opheliai) of justice and injustice (368c6)" (Kraut, 313)


In addition to the above excellent points that praise Plato's theory of justice, Kraut also thinks that to approve Plato's theory as a good one is to reject Aristotle objections against Plato; he writes:


According to Aristotle, we can discover what kind of life we should
lead only by determining which good or goods we should ultimately
pursue. He considers competing conceptions of this highest good
and takes the Platonist's answer to be that it is not some humdrum
object of pursuit like pleasure or virtue but is rather the Form of the
Good. Aristotle of course rejects this answer... So interpreted, the
Platonist is not simply saying that the Form of the Good is an indispensable
means or determining which among other objects are good; it itself is
the chief good. (Vlastos, 320)


And Kraut gives example for this account by taking an excellent friendship as a self-sufficient good and anyone who possesses this form of goodness will become worthwhile because he or she is connected with such a valuable object. Kraut thinks that when one admires another friend or wants to be a friend to someone who has excellent virtues and intellectual life, he himself also becomes virtuous and intellectual individual like his friend. Kraut writes:

Even if one is not a close friend of such a person, one may have
great love and admiration for him, and one may take pleasure in
studying his life. That is the sort of relationship Plato thinks we
should have with Forms -- not on the grounds that loving and studying
are good activities, whatever their objects, but on the grounds that
the Forms are the preeminent good and therefore our lives are vastly
improved when we come to know, love and imitate them (Kraut, 321)

Next, Kraut thinks that Plato's Forms exhibit the highest kind of orderly arrangement. He writes:

Plato equates health, the good condition of the body, with a certain
harmony among its element; and he argues that justice, the good
condition of the soul, is also a certain kind of harmony among its
parts; and so the thought suggests itself that he takes the goodness
of anything of a certain kind to be the harmony or proportion that
is appropriate for things of that kind. According to this suggestion,
the goodness of Forms consists in the fact that they possess a kind
of harmony, balance, or proportion; and their superiority to all
other things consists in the fact that the kind of order they possess
gives them a higher degree or harmony than any other type of
object. (Kraut, 322)

Finally, Kraut interprets Plato's last point about why the life of a philosopher is the best life and bring the best benefits to himself and every one else. Kraut thinks that Plato succeeded in proving that the life of a philosopher who is a just person was the best by showing an example that the life of a tyrant who is an unjust person caused misery for himself and every one else. Kraut writes:

We should recall, however, that Plato promises to do more than
merely show that justice is a great good. He has to show that it
is a greater good than injustice, so much so that even if the normal
consequences of justice and injustice arereversed, it will nonetheless
be better to be just than unjust. The paradigm of justice must be
punished because he is thought to be unjust; and the paradigm of
injustice is to receive the honors and rewards because he appears
to be just. How can Plato show that even in this situation it is
better to be just?
The answer lies partly in the way he describes the situation
of the completely unjust person, that is the tyrant. (Kraut, 325)

Kraut says that tyrannical power inevitably gives rise to continual fear of reprisals and an absence of trust in one's associates (576a, 579a-c), and that the failure to impose any order on one's appetites makes one the victim of frequent and disorganized internal demands (573d). So, in order to achieve great power and intense sexual pleasure, the tyrant must lead a chaotic life filled with anguish, fear, and frustration. He writes further that:

Fear, frustration, and chaos are the price philosophers must
inevitably pay for having a love of the Forms and for giving
this passion dominant role in their lives. On the contrary,
those who are in the best position for studying forms will have
modes and therefore easily satisfied appetites, and will be
free of the competitive desire for power that typically sets
people at odds and destroys their tranquility. (Kraut, 326)

In conclusion, through the above presentations regarding Vlastos' and Kraut's main arguments on Plato's Republic, we see that Vlastos considers Plato's theory of vitues and an ideal polis is not very practical because it contains conflicts in practicing the virtues such as justice causes conflicts with wisdom and courage, and Vlastos' most arguable point is that justice is not only "doing one's own" but also "having a right disposition of the soul" and "having one's own". Unlike Vlastos, Kraut is more likely to agree with everything Plato presents in his Republic, and he gives out his four main supportive arguments to defend for Plato's theory: (1) first is the excellent comparison between the virtues of a polis with the virtues of an individual soul and the match in the development of these virtues that can cause an orderly established ideal city in which citizens and the rulers are having the same education and virtues; (2) the second is the appraisal of the Forms in Plato's theory against Aristotle's objection of these Forms; (3) the third is that the Forms are the highest kind of orderly arrangement; (4) and finally, the life of a philosopher of a just person is the best life. Thus, we see that Kraut agrees with all the main aspects in Plato's theory of the republic while Vlastos thinks that Plato's theory is lacking many important points and impractical.



References

Kraut, Richard. "The Defense of Justice in Plato's Republic". The Cambridge Comparison to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Vlastos, Gregory. "Justice and Happiness in the Republic". Platonic Studies. Princeton University Press, 1973.

Anna's The Morality of Happiness

According to Aristotle, virtue is the excellence of the soul, and it should be a stable condition but not an unthinking or vulnerable one; in addition, it is the activity of the soul based on rationalization, choice and deliberation. However, Aristotle's theory of virtue has been considered to belong to ancient ethics because modern ethics doesn't recognize virtue as a state of the soul, or a disposition, but rather it is a sense of duty and must be motivated. Julia Anna is an author who favors much more Aristotle's viewpoints on virtue than the modernists, and in her book, The Morality of Happiness, she gave strong arguments along with precise proofs cited from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and her ambitious compliments for Aristotle to protect Aristotle's ideas. Speaking specifically, she lays out in the second chapter that virtue is a disposition and that there are four main issues revolving the affective aspects of virtue in the ancient ethics that modern ethics doesn't completely agree with; and briefly, these issues: (1) self-control is a higher state of virtue; (2) the development of virtue as an internal conflict or stress that is thought to be a good challenge for acting virtue; (3) arguments have great effects on the soul; and (4) whether I have virtue is not "up to me". All these issues that the modern ethics see as serious problems turn out to be no problem at all to Annas, and she made a lot of arguments in trying to prove for her strong beliefs in Aristotle's accounts of virtue. I will, in the following paragraphs show Annas' main arguments and comments, and I will also express my own ideas and thoughts about Annas' defenses as well as my own comments as where I stand in relation to Annas and the modern views.


First, Annas discusses what a virtue is: is it an emotion, a capacity or a disposition? To answer for this question, Annas takes Aristotle's definition of virtue in Nicomachean Ethics that virtue is a disposition, not a feeling or a capacity; moreover, it is a more stable than a less stable "disposition", but generally, it is considered as a characteristic. Having finished characterizing virtue, Annas proceeds to the first view point of ancient shools that is attacked by modern schools; i.e., the characterization of virtue. Modern schools think that if a person must perform virtue in a stable state, then it is just as what he or she can do is to follow a habit. To defense for this attack, Annas again uses Aristotle's definition of virtue that it is a state involving choice, rationalization and action. Thus, a virtue is not like a habit because a person must choose to do right or wrong before he or she does it. Making choice is developed further by Annas as having three strategies: entering a choice, repeating a choice, and developing a choice.


All of these strategies prove that virtue is not a passive form because Aristotle rejects candidates who practice virtue in a passive way by letting their feelings affect or lead their ways of doing right or wrong things. What Aristotle means is that if a person lets feelings control what he does then doing the right things by following feelings is less desirable than having a knowing or an understanding that can make one deliberately do something right for it involves knowledge and choice. For someone who may do the right thing but may act on it reluctantly with pain and stress is not as good as a person who acts gladly with pleasure. Another example is that a person's honesty doesn't mean that she can't help having it, but it means that she has chosen to be honest.


A further problem is the self-control problem in which modern ethics thinks that a conflicting person who beats down his bad feelings is admired more than people whose feelings encourage just actions. Annas is using Aristotle's opinions to prove that modern ethics misconceives it since Aristotle thinks that "the person who is self-divided and finds doing the right thing painful is lacking something desirable which the undivided, non-agonizing person has; self-control is a lower stage than virtue." (Annas, 53).

For this issue, I think Annas and Aristotle are not wrong that self-control people are not perfectly virtuous people, rather they have to struggle to obtain virtues, but my question is: Does the struggle shows that they are making choices or actively fighting to be better persons? What I mean is that by feeling that it is hard for them to become virtuous, and then by knowing that to be virtuous is better although it causes us to have difficulty, they make a choice to be virtuous; thus, they have changed themselves and have shown that they actively fight with themselves to be better people. That is considered to me a great achievment since a person who is not tempted never knows whether he or she can become virtuous or not. In addition, once people have overcome the difficulties, they will never come back to the ways they were before because they have experience on how to cope with difficulties, and they will continue making more progresses, knowing strongly and precisely how to obtain good things and to avoid bad things. Thus, eventhough, Annas and Aristotle succeed in defending that a person who originally possesses good virtues is better than a person who does not, I still think that in circumtances where challenge or attempt happens, a person with good virtues may not know how to cope better than a person who doesn't have a virtue but knows how to obtain it by choice, hard struggles and by refraining himself from following bad choices. Unfortunately, Annas doesn't think so. Annas doesn't think that internal conflicts or stresses are good challenges for virtue because as I already pointed out above that self-conflicted people are not considered better than non-agonizing people or people who have perfect virtue by Aristotle.


Occasional makings of choice is the second important issue that Annas discusses next; thus, she says that it takes time to practice, to develop to become a virtuous person. By this, Annas means that initial intellectual conversion is not enough; if one's character has already so developed that acting in accordance with one's new beliefs is repugnant or difficult then it takes time and practice for one properly to become a virtuous person. The whole issue of this idea involves in making further choices and developing virtue, and both Stoics and Epicureans retain the insistence on subsequent practice and habit. The Epicureans says that 'all the other virtues have come by nature from intelligence', and many Epicurean social practices are best explained as having the aim of the student's internalizing the beliefs required for virtue, so that they become emotionally accepted and part of the agent's attitude and outlook. And the Stoics emphasize that virtue has to be built up gradually; thinking of it as a skill or craft, they take it to be formed as the different insights that one has over the area come to be 'practice together'. However, Annas takes Aristotle's ideas that if arguments were self-sufficient for making people decent, they would justly have won many great rewards. "Rather, having a virtue is having one's character developed in such a way that one not only grasps what the right thing to do is but takes pleasure in doing it... Virtue is a state of agent's character and emotions, not merely a disposition to act in certain ways." (Annas, 55). Here we see that Annas comes back to the issue of characterization of virtue and the stable state of virtue, but she also mentions that we are not only constantly aware of what we want to do but also we should develop it to become our habit in which we have precise feelings of whether what we are doing is right or wrong.


Now, Annas jumps from an idea that having selected what is right to do occasionally, we must turn what we have known and learned into a characteristic so that it will stick with us and become a stable virtue. And this point of view of the ancients creates another objection for the modern schools who think that a habit acts like a feeling and therefore we cannot avoid it because it is how we feel. Thus, they say that based on the ancient definition of habituation, whether I have a virtue or not become "up to me" because once I have it as a habit, it is not up to me to make any more choice on what I should do any more concerning it because I already have inside me an excellent 'disposition' that is instrinsic as a habit. Once again, Annas gives out more arguments to protect for the ancient conception of habitualization. Annas says,


When I wonder about where my life is going and whether I can change it,
I am asking if my life as a whole might change direction. And when I ask
whether I could acquire one of the virtues, I am not asking whether I could
become generous now... So I cannot now be virtuous. But it is still up to
me whether I become virtuous or not; for once I am convinced that it is
important to become virtuous, I can take steps to enable myself to act
virtuously -- by thinking harder before the appropriate occasion and
conciously resolving to do so, for example. (Annas, 56)


I see that at this point, Annas is returning to her previous idea that the development of virtue is an important strategy in obtaining virtue, and by development, Annas has meant deliberation, occasional makind of choices and practicing doing the right things. I think I should intervene at this point what I have mentioned earlier in the fifth paragraph that whether self-control is perhaps better than perfectly virtuous? I also think that Annas is returning to the habit issue that she already tried to defend against in the third and fourth paragraphs above that virtue should not be considered as a habit for didn't Aristotle says that a virtue that followed a good instinct feeling or a good instinct disposition was not a fully developed virtue?


On page 56, Annas makes a better argument by saying that "there is a clear intuitive distinction between the way it is up to me to do a certain action, and the way it is not up to me to have a certain feeling about it. The ancients seem to make an impossible demand: I am generous only if I not merely do the generous thing but have generous feelings; but I cannot choose to have generous feelings in the way I can choose to do a generous action, so it seems that whether or not I am virtuous is not wholly up to me." According to this passage, what Annas wants to stress is that a virtue is not an "up to me" feeling, but it is a stable state that I create for myself. That means either I deliberately choose to act virtuously or I act virtuously because I have a natural trend or an innate characteristic that urges me to always do the right things. That is why she has said that 'it is still up to me whether I become virtuous or not', and "by making this into a consistent pattern in my life I can bring it about that acting virtuously is less and less effort on each occasion, and the more I get used to it, the more comfortable I will feel with it, and the more pleasant it will be for me." (Annas, 57)


Now, we can see clearly Annas' most important point of view that a virtuous person not only does the right thing but has the right feelings and emotions about what she does. Thus, feeling and emotion are very important for being virtuous because a virtuous person should not do the right things reluctantly or with an unhappy state. And this is what Annas calls an internalization or habituation: "I begin copying what someone does in order to acquire the right habits for myself; I internalize them." (Annas, 57) And again, this is of course taken by Annas from another account of Aristotle's in his Nicomachean Ethics that virtue requires habituation, practice and development. Annas writes,


Rather, I must continue to appreciate how my behaviour is changing,
and monitor in an intelligent way the modifications of attitude and
feeling as they develop; for letting my behaviour become mechanical
will defeat the aim of the process, which is to make the way I am one
which I endorse rather a mindless pattern of acting. (Annas, 58)


Conclusively, I already presented all of Annas' main arguments regarding a virtue as a stable state which a person deliberately has by making choice, and obtain knowledge about; it should also be developed into a habit but not a mechanical or mindless one, and it should be practiced occasionally. What I finally think is that although Annas has tried to demonstrate sufficiently good arguments and presentations to defend ancient views of virtue based on Aristotle's accounts, I see that Annas has not completely defeated modern objections against those view points because she has put herself in a circle way of argumentation because the internalization or habituation of a virtue is a very ideal way of obtaining virtue, especially if in circumtances where there are external challenges or trials that can impede one to become virtuous then although he or she understands very well or has right feelings about a virtue, it is still hard for her or him to actualize it -- sometimes people are forced to commit doing wrong things by external oppression or power. Besides, Annas has first made a claim that a self-control and self-divided person was not better than a perfectly virtuous one. and if so then the concept of internalization or habituation is just an alternative way to say that one should have self-control and should struggle inside one's mind to make one become virtuous. Furthermore, once one has made oneself become virtuous by habituation, it was no longer "up to" one to be virtuous because one has already know what one should do and how one should live; thus, making choice is no longer applicable to a person whose virtue has been internalized. But Annas has seemed to prove the other ways around from early education, making choice, developing it to the last step which is internalization as she follows Aristotle's suggestions.




References


Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford University Press. 1993.

Reflections [1]

There are two kinds of essence; a natural essence and a learned essence. What we have learned would become our learned essence , and therefore can be called the posterior essence. The natural essence is not the learned essence, but is the one without choices; natural essence is the original essence, the one that we are born with, and therefore should be called the a priori essence.

Unrealistic seekers in a realistic world are the intellects.

There are 2 kinds of action: actions that follow an accommodation of a true personality and actions that dissimulate.

Subjectivity is a direct expression and diversity is an indirect expression. Through individual expressions, diversity springs out because systematic thinking is not encouraged.

The soul has its own laws, the laws that a body can't never comprehend.

If it is true that a working group will bring better results then there would be no geniuses.

What is called freedom is freedom to act, not freedom to get expected results, and this freedom is a dead-end road because there is an entering door but there is no exit.

Language is the sign of a living world, and it expresses the development of life.

Every ethical doctrine provides some main principles on which one can utilize as a guide to base his or her judgments on.

We can't take away the freedom of each individual because although there is a universal guide and general principles, when they comes to apply to each individual, they lose their power.

Problem solvers don't just seek to solve problems according to an ontological viewpoint because problem solving is more than just about existence; it is the relationship between cause and effect.

It seems that for each effect, there may have 2 opposite ways to explain for its cause, and for each cause, there are more than 1 way to explain its effects.

The will acts in the absence of the intellect means that physical pleasure will take the control of the will because there are only 2 kinds of pleasure: spiritual pleasure and physical pleasure, and the absence of the first kind means the presence of the latter.

When reading Dostoevsky novels, we see that there are real lives presented in novels, and when reading the bible, we see that there are fictional stories presented in real lives.

Life and thoughts are undeniably intertwined. That means we find real life's situations presented in thoughts and eminent, intellectual thoughts invented through life.

There are different truths, assumptuous truths, and true assumptions. True assumptions are assumptions that are based on reasoning, or facts such as a scientific theory that are being proved by experiments and reasoning while the asssumptuous truths are truths that are based on concepts or relations of ideas which sometimes are just intellectual guesses or suggestions.

Aristotle's Politics

In Book IV, Politics, Aristotle classifies constitution into two main kinds: oligarchy and democracy for the reason that the same people who are both rich and poor are impossible, and the democracy is the constitution in which the free is in authority while oligarchy is the constitution in which the few is rich. In addition, there are deviations from these two main constitution; they are monarchy or tyranny, and aristocracy from oligarchy; and polity from democracy. He says:


It is also evident which of these deviation is worst and which second worst.
For the deviation from the first and most divine constitution must of necessity
be the worst. But kingship either must be in name only and on in fact or must
be based on the great superiority of the person ruling as king. Hence tyranny,
being the worst, if further removed from being a constitution; oligarchy is second
worst (since aristocracy is very far removed from this constitution); and democracy
the most moderate. (1289,40 - 1289b,45;103)


Since oligarchy is the second worst, "it is not right to speak of one kind of oligarchy as better than another, but as less bad" (1289b,10; 104) Thus, there is one kind of oligarchy that is less bad, aristocracy, for the following reason:


Nevertheless, there are some constitutions that differ both from constitutions
that are oligarchically governed and from so-called polity, are called aristocracies
For a constitution where officials are elected not only on the basis of wealth
but also on the basis of merit differs from both of these and is called aristocratic.
For even in those constitutions where virtue is not a concern of the community,
there are still some who are of good repute and held to be decent. Hence
whenever a constitution looks to wealth, virtue, and the people (as it does in
Carthage), it is aristocratic, as also are those, like the constitution of the Spartan,
which look to only two, virtue and the people, and where there is a mixture of
these two things, democracy and virtue. (1293b,5 - 15; 114)


So, we see that the reason why aristocracy is considered better than other kinds of oligarchy is because its constitution involves virtue. And the reason why virtue is important is as explained by Aristotle's following statements:


That is why is said in the Republic, though, sophisticated, is not adequate.
For Socrates says that a city-state is constituted out of four absolutely
necessary classes, and these, he says, are weavers, farmers, shoemakers,
and house builders.... as if every city-state were constituted for the sake
of providing the necessities, not for the sake of what is noble, and had
equal need of both shoemakers and farmers. Yet even in these communities
of four classes, there must be someone to assign and decide what is just.
So it indeed one should regard the soul as a more important part of an
animal than the body, then, in the case of city-states too, one should regard
things of the following sort to be parts, rather than those dealing with our
necessary needs... (1291a, 11 - 29; 108)


For non-aristocratic constitutions, Aristotle argues that some kinds of rule by the"multitude" are not bad forms of government because of the first reason that I already stated above that democracy is the most moderate between the two extremes: oligarchy and tyranny. Although decmocracy does not mean "multitude", it is the only kind of constitution in which the multitude are in authority. And there are many kinds of democracy or "multitude": [1] the first is the majority because both the poor and the rich can participate due to the fact that it is based on equality and freedom. [2] The second kind is based on property assessment, and it is for anyone who is rich. [3] The third kind is where all unconstested citizens and the law rules. [4] The fourth kind is the best citizens and the law rules. [5] The last kind is the multitude, not the law; in this kind, POPULAR LEADERS arise and people become a monarch. This is the worst kind of democracy or "the multitude". Wee see that all of these kinds of democracy concern only at property assessments and the equality between rich and poor as well as freedom, but they are not aiming at virtue; thus, Aristotle does not consider them as the best kinds. Instead, he chooses a mixture of oligarchy and democracy; Aristotle says that, "For aristocracy is regarded as a sort of oligarchy, on the grounds that it is a sort of rule by the few, whereas a so-called polity is regarded as a sort of democracy just as the west sind is regarded as northerly, and the east as southerly." (1290a, 15-19; 105). And for the reason that since virtue is important not property assessment, polity which pursues virtue is the best possible constitution in all kinds of democracy:


For polity, to put it simply, is a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. It is
Customary, however, to call those mixtures that lean toward democracy
polities, and those that lean more toward oligarchy aristocracies, because
education and good birth more commonly accompany who are richer.
(1293b, 33 - 1293b, 37; 115)


Thus, we see that Aristotle considers education and good birth are qualities that are more important than wealth and freedom since all other branches of democracy focus only on the distribution of wealth and freedom. And the reason why education is important is because Aristotle thinks that through education, one can learn to do the right actions, and that deliberation is a result of a thoughtful mind, and all of these elements belong to virtue which is called wisdom. For good birth, he believes it has something to do with virtue too because one who is born virtuous naturally has the same value as the one who gains virtue through learning and education:


But there are in fact there grounds for claiming equal participation in the
constitution: freedom, wealth and virtue. (The fourth, which they call good
birth, is a consequence of two of the others, since good birth is a combination
of old money and virtue.) Hence it is evident that the mixture of the two,
the rich and the poor, ought to be called polity, whereas a mixture of the three
most of all the others (except for the true and the first kind) deserves to be
called an aristocracy. (1294a, 14 -24; 116)





References


Aristotle. Politics. Trans. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998.