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.