Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy

Reasons for Action: Internal vs. ExternalFirst published Thu Sep 4, 2008; substantive revision Wed Nov 28, 2012

Often, when there is a reason for you to do something, it is the kind of thing to motivate you to doit. For example, if Max and Caroline are deciding whether to go to the Alcove for dinner, Carolinemight mention as a reason in favor, the fact that the Alcove serves onion rings the size ofdoughnuts, and Max might mention as a reason against, the fact that it is so difficult to get parkingthere this time of day. It is some signperhaps not a perfect sign, but some signthat each ofthese really is a reason, that Max and Caroline feel the tug in each direction. Mention of theAlcove's onion rings makes them feel to at least some degree inclined to go, and mention of theparking arrangements makes them feel to at least some degree inclined not to. According to somephilosophers, reasons for action always bear some relation like this to motivation. This idea isvariously known as reasons internalism, internalism about reasons, or the internal reasonstheory. According to other philosophers, not all reasons are related to motivation in any of theways internalists say. This idea is known as reasons externalism or externalism about reasons.

1. Preliminaries1.1 Varieties of Internalism

1.1.1 Varying M1.1.2 Varying R

1.2 The Philosophical Significance of Reasons Internalism1.2.1 The Humean Theory of Reasons1.2.2 The Central Problem1.2.3 Generalizing

1.3 Explanatory Direction2. Indirect, Theoretical Arguments

2.1 Motivational Arguments2.1.1 The Classical Argument2.1.2 An Argument from Explanation2.1.3 Other Motivational Arguments

2.2 The Analogy to Theoretical Reason2.3 Arguments from Reactive Attitudes2.4 The Conditional Fallacy

3. Direct, Extensional Arguments3.1 For Externalism

3.1.1 Undergeneration Arguments3.1.2 Defenses Against Undergeneration Arguments3.1.3 Overgeneration Arguments

3.2 For Internalism3.2.1 The Significance of Apparent Internal Reasons3.2.2 Three Objections

Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External (Stanford Encyclope... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/

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3.3 Relative Explanatory Power4. The Debate TodayBibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Preliminaries1.1 Varieties of InternalismIt is important to clarify that reasons internalism is a thesis about normative (or justifying) reasons,not about motivating (or explanatory) reasons. A normative reason is a consideration that counts infavor of or against doing something, whereas a motivating reason is an answer to the question,why did she do it?. Clearly, motivating reasons are connected to motivation; reasons internalismmaintains the more interesting claim that normative reasons are also closely connected tomotivation. For the remainder of this article, by reason we will always mean normative reason.

Reasons internalism as we've so far presented it is not yet a thesis. To get a thesis from this vagueidea we must fill in a detailed answer to the question: what sort of relation must reasons bear tomotivation, and in what sense of motivation? So the idea sketched thus far is really a family oftheses, each corresponding to a different way of filling in the following schema:

Schematic Internalism: Every reason for action must bear relation R to motivationalfact M.

Different ways of spelling out relation R and motivational fact M correspond to different ways oftrying to cash out the intuitive thought about Max and Caroline's reasons. Each way of filling in acandidate for R and a candidate for M results in a different thesisa version of reasons internalism(henceforth for this article, a version of internalism). Importantly, since not all versions ofinternalism say the same thing, there is no single question about whether internalism is correct.Rather, there is a family of questions which raise very similar philosophical issues.

Unfortunately, the labels internalism and even reasons internalism are often used for differentkinds of views than the ones that are our topic here. For example, reasons internalism issometimes used as a name for the view that if something is morally wrong then there must be areason not to do it. This view will be important to our discussion; to avoid confusion we willfollow the rival convention of calling it Moral Rationalism.

In the terminology of Darwall (1983), reasons internalism is an existence form of internalism,contrasting with judgment forms of internalism. According to existence internalism, aconsideration is a reason for an agent only if some motivational fact about that agent obtains.According to judgment internalism, an agent is genuinely judging that he has a reason only ifsome motivational fact about that agent obtains; see the entry on moral motivation. Judgmentforms of internalism play an important role in traditional arguments for noncognitivist metaethicaltheories (see the entry on moral cognitivism vs. noncognitivism) but are a quite different issuefrom that discussed here.


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A reasons externalist is someone who rejects reasons internalism, maintaining that at least somereasons for action are not connected to motivation in the way reasons internalism claims.However, since there are many different internalist theses about the way in which reasons andmotivation are related, there is no clear and unambiguous question of whether reasons externalismis correct. Philosophers generally describe their views as externalist if they reject any thesis theyconsider to involve an interesting and controversial dependence of reasons on facts aboutmotivation; it is most likely not fruitful to try here to adjudicate which theses these are.Externalists need not deny that reasons are commonly connected to facts about motivation, butthey can attribute these connections to desires or dispositions that some agents have while otherslack.

1.1.1 Varying M

An important division among versions of reasons internalism is between what we will here callMotivation views and State views. According to Motivation views, the kind of motivational factthat reasons require is a fact about what the agent is or can be motivated (i.e. moved through hisown volition) to do. According to State views, in contrast, the kind of motivational fact thatreasons require is not actually a fact about motivation at all, but rather, that the agent has a certainkind of motivational attitudea certain kind of psychological state which plays a role inmotivation. These states are often taken to be desires, but can include other attitudes such asemotions, intentions, and aversions. Motivation and State views are often run together, but weshall see that they have importantly different implications. Motivation views do not, bythemselves, require the presence of any particular kind of psychological state which does themotivating, and State views do not, by themselves, require that the motivating state which ispresent actually does any motivating.

1.1.2 Varying R

Another very important distinction among versions of Internalism is between Actual andCounterfactual versions. The former claim that if someone has a reason to do A, then it follows bynecessity that she actually is somewhat motivated to do A (on the Motivation version), or actuallyhas a desire that would be served by doing A (on the State version). Counterfactual versions makeweaker claims: that if someone has a reason to do A, then it follows by necessity that she would bemotivated to some degree, or would desire to do A, in circumstances of a particular kind.

Different Counterfactual theories disagree over the nature of this particular kind ofcircumstances: prominent proposals include (i) that the agent be in possession of full information,or at least not have any relevant false beliefs (Smith 1994; Joyce 2001); (ii) that she havecompleted cognitive psychotherapy or that her attitudes have reached a state of reflectiveequilibrium (Brandt 1979); (iii) that she have a vivid awareness of all relevant contingencies(Darwall 1983); (iv) that she deliberates faultlessly from her existing motivations (Williams 1979);(v) that she be practically rational (Korsgaard 1986)a suggestion to which we shall return; and(vi) that she be ideally virtuousa phronimos (McDowell 1995).

Some views which count by our classification as Counterfactual forms of internalism are too weakto be interesting. For example, consider the thesis that if someone has a reason to do A, then itfollows by necessity that were she to be motivated to do everything that she actually has a reasonto do, she would be motivated to do A. This thesis is in some sense a variety of internalismafterall, it posits a necessary connection between reasons and a certain kind of counterfactual about


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motivation. But given the way that the counterfactual is specified, it is trivially true. Similaraccusations can be and have been made about versions of this kind of thesis which invoke virtue,and perhaps also about those invoking rationalitydepending on how rationality is to beunderstood. It should be noted that some philosophers (e.g. McDowell) who accept one or anotherof these weak theses are commonly considered to be externalists by themselves or others,because of their rejection of any stronger, more interesting, internalist thesis.

Because it is uncontroversial that an agent can have reasons to do things that she is not actuallymotivated to do (particularly if she is unaware of those reasons), we will assume that interestingMotivation versions of internalism take Counterfactual forms. State versions of internalism, bycontrast, can be interesting in both Counterfactual and Actual forms.

1.2 The Philosophical Significance of Reasons InternalismThe different versions of reasons internalism are philosophically interesting for a variety ofreasons. But it is impossible to understand why these different theses have received so muchattention as a group without appreciating one problem in particular that is encountered by somekinds of reasons internalism. We call this the Central Problem. We'll first introduce this problem inits most familiar form for one famous version of reasons internalism; we then generalize.

1.2.1 The Humean Theory of Reasons

One of the historically most important versions of reasons internalism is an Actual State viewaccording to which the actual states connected to reasons are desires. Due to its rough affinity toDavid Hume's view of the dependence of morality on the passions, this view is often called theHumean Theory of Reasons, despite controversy over whether Hume himself held any suchview.

The Humean Theory of Reasons (HTR): If there is a reason for someone to dosomething, then she must have some desire that would be served by her doing it.

Although both are often called reasons internalism, there are significant differences betweenHTR and Counterfactual Motivation versions of internalism. One can accept a CounterfactualMotivation view without accepting HTR (e.g. Korsgaard 1986), and one can accept HTR withoutaccepting any (nontrivial) Counterfactual Motivation view (e.g. Schroeder 2007b). However, thesetwo internalist theses are often linked. Consider the following popular view about motivation,which, following Smith (1987), we call the Humean Theory of Motivation (again despitecontroversy over whether Hume himself held it):

The Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM): Desires are necessary and beliefs arenot sufficient for motivation.

If (as Counterfactual Motivation versions of internalism claim) an agent has no reason to do A ifthere is no possibility of her being motivated to do A, and if (as HTM claims) there is nopossibility of an agent's being motivated to do A if she has no desire that could motivate her to doA, then it seems to follow that an agent has no reason to do A if she has no desire that couldmotivate her to do A. This is the classical argument for HTR, which we will evaluate in section2.1.1.


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1.2.2 The Central Problem

The Humean Theory of Reasons, along with other Actual State versions of internalism, isphilosophically important because of a Central Problem motivating much ethical theorizing sincethe 1940s, which derives from a tension between HTR, Moral Rationalism (see section 1.1), andMoral Absolutism:

Moral Absolutism: Some actions are morally wrong for any agent no matter whatmotivations and desires they have.

For example, presumably it was morally wrong for Hitler to order a program of genocide, even ifit served some of his desires and wasn't detrimental to any of them. (The characteristic of moralitythat Moral Absolutism expresses is sometimes described, following Immanuel Kant, as itsconsisting of categorical rather than hypothetical imperatives; see the entry on Kant's moralphilosophy.) If (as Moral Rationalism claims) an action (like ordering genocide) is morally wrongfor an agent (like Hitler) only if there is a reason for him not to do it, and if (as HTR claims) thereis a reason for him not to do it only if he has some desire that would be served by his not doing it,then it follows that whether an action is morally wrong for an agent depends upon what he desires.But that seems incompatible with Moral Absolutism. So it seems we must reject at least one ofHTR, Moral Rationalism, and Moral Absolutism.

In response to this dilemma one could reject Moral Absolutismeither by embracing a form ofmoral relativism, according to which all moral duties vary according to agents' contingentcharacteristics (e.g. Harman 1975), or by embracing a moral error theory, accepting that moralclaims are systematically false because they presuppose the existence of external reasons while inactuality there are none (e.g. Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001). On this view, we might think that it wasmorally wrong for Hitler to order genocide, and hence that he had reasons not to do so, but wewould be mistaken. Alternatively, one could reject Moral Rationalism and deny that the moralwrongness of an act entails that there is a reason not to do it (e.g. Foot 1972). On this view, it ispossible that Hitler's deeds were morally wrong yet he had no reason not to perform them. Manyphilosophers, however, prefer to preserve these commonsense theses about moralityand ourability to say that Hitler had reasons not to act as he didby rejecting HTR, along with otherActual State versions of internalism. The tension among these views is a big part of whatmotivates philosophical interest in whether all reasons are related to motivation in the way thatsome internalist thesis claims.

1.2.3 Generalizing

Philosophers concerned with the Central Problem have mainly directed their criticisms at theHumean Theory of Reasons, but in fact any Actual State version of reasons internalism will leadto a structurally similar problem. Any Actual State version of reasons internalism says that to havea reason, an agent must have some corresponding actual motivational state. But this is preciselywhat makes reasons hostage to an agent's actual psychology, creating the tension with MoralRationalism and Moral Absolutism.

Does the Central Problem similarly arise for Counterfactual versions of reason internalism? Theanswer is: it depends upon the nature of the counterfactual condition a particular version ofinternalism requires. There is no such tension if this is a condition under which any agent wouldbe motivated, no matter what motivations and desires she actually has. For example, Christine


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Korsgaard (1986) advocates a Counterfactual Motivation internalism, and Michael Smith (1994)advocates a Counterfactual State internalism, on which it is necessarily the case that any agentwhatsoever would act in the same way as every other, if they satisfied those counterfactualconditions. Smith grounds his claim in optimism that no matter what desires they started with, ifevery agent was to resolve conflicts between their own desires under the condition of fullinformation, they would converge on the same set of desires. Consequently, what an agent woulddesire under those conditions does not depend on what he is actually like. So what is wrong for anagent can depend on what he has a reason to do (as Moral Rationalism claims), without dependingon what he is like (which would put it in tension with what Moral Absolutism claims). Smith callshis view an Anti-Humean theory of reasons in order to contrast it with Counterfactual Statetheories which do give rise to the problem that confronts HTR.

On the other hand, many Counterfactual versions of reasons internalism do hold that whether theircounterfactuals are true of some agent must be grounded in some actual feature of that agent.These views encounter the Central Problem, because they hold that what an agent has reason to dodepends on whether some counterfactual is true of her, and that whether that counterfactual is trueof her depends on what she is actually like. So, for example, Richard Joyce (2001) accepts Smith'sAnti-Humean theory of reasons, but rejects Smith's claim that under conditions of full informationand the resolution of conflicting desires all agents would converge on the same desires, on thegrounds that the desires an agent would have at the end of this process depend upon the desires hestarted with. (Notice that all Counterfactual versions of internalism of this kind can bere-formulated as Actual State versions of internalismwhere the actual state is being such thatcertain counterfactuals are true of you.)

1.3 Explanatory DirectionA final preliminary distinction between internalist views concerns their direction of explanation.As characterized thus far, the various internalist theses merely posit a necessary connectionbetween the existence of reasons, on the one hand, and facts about motivation or motivationalstates, on the other, and do not distinguish between competing ways of explaining this necessaryconnection. Do we have reasons because we have (counterfactual or actual) motivation or desire,or do we have motivation or desire because we have reasons? (Or is there some third possibility?)The Humean Theory of Reasons is standardly understood to claim not only that we have reasonsonly if we have certain desires, but further that we have those reasons because we have thosedesires. We interpret it accordingly in the rest of this article.

HTR (revised): If there is a reason for someone to do something, then she must havesome desire that would be served by her doing it, which is the source of her reason.

It is natural to understand any Actual State internalist view as claiming this direction ofexplanation. Since there surely can be normative reasons for an agent to act of which she isunaware, it is implausible that a consideration could be a reason for her to act only if she has anactual motivating state because of it.

Counterfactual Motivation views, however, can adopt either direction of explanation, and a varietyof philosophers insist that the existence of reasons explains the relevant facts about motivationrather than vice versa. Consider the popular thesis that if there is a reason for someone to dosomething, then necessarily if she is fully rational she will be motivated to do it. The most trivialaccount of this kind suggests that fully rational simply means motivated by all one's reasons. Ifthis is the truth in internalism, however, it places no constraints whatsoever on what can and


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cannot be an agent's practical reason; for this reason it is often called an externalist thesis. But theexplanatory priority of reasons over motivation can also yield a nontrivial version of internalism.Consider again the thesis appealing to a condition of full rationality. If by rationality we mean asubstantive psychological capacity involving particular desires or dispositions that enable us torespond to reasons, then we have a form of internalism that places substantive constraints on whatcan and cannot be a reason. For example, Christine Korsgaard (1986) advocates such a nontrivialversion of internalism, taking the counterfactual about motivation under the condition ofrationality to be explained by a substantive (non-trivial) account of practical rationality. Accordingto Korsgaard, an agent is only rational if she is consistently motivated in accordance with somegeneral principles that provide her conception of her practical identity. Given this account ofrationality, the internalist thesis above tells us that only those considerations that would motivatesuch a principle-governed agent can be reasons for her to act.

2. Indirect, Theoretical ArgumentsIn evaluating whether any particular variety of internalism about reasons is true philosophers havebrought many different kinds of resources to bear. In sections 2.12.3 we look at indirect,theoretical arguments which bear one way or another. Then in part 3 we consider more directarguments, based on intuitive judgments about what reasons there are.

2.1 Motivational ArgumentsA central consideration adduced in support of internalist theses is the conceptual link betweenreasons and explanation. In an influential early discussion of reasons for action, Donald Davidson(1963) observed that a common form of explanation of why an agent acted as she did involvesciting the reasons she had to act that way. He argued that because actions are always to beexplained in terms of psychological states, we can identify reasons for actions with the desire-belief pairs that cause them. Since Davidson's concern was with what explains actual action,rather than with what justifies prospective action, his discussion might seem to concern motivatingreasons rather than normative reasons. But Davidson took his reasons to rationalize or justify aswell as to explain action, and many philosophers subsequently concluded that the two kinds ofreasons had to be closely, conceptually, connected.

A common and plausible view is that to be an agent's motivating reason for acting, a considerationhas to be something which that agent takes to be a normative reason for acting (Dancy 2000; seeSetiya 2007 for objections). At the very least, it seems that it must be possible for an agent to bemotivated by her normative reasons (Nagel 1970). This possibility is in tension with thecommonly drawn distinction between motivating reasons as psychological states and normativereasons as facts or propositions (Smith 1994), which places these types of reasons in differentontological categories.

This view, which understands motivating or explanatory reasons in terms of normative reasons,offers no obvious support to any version of internalism. It holds that if an agent has a motivatingreason for acting, then she is motivated by something she takes to be a normative reason. But itdoes not follow from this (and is often denied by proponents of this view) that she has or thinksshe has a normative reason only if she is relevantly motivated, as internalism requires. Views thatrather understand normative reasons in terms of explanatory reasons, however, yield a distinctkind of argument for some form of internalism. Bernard Williams advances just this kind ofargument in his classic but commonly misunderstood article Internal and External Reasons. We


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first (section 2.1.1) sketch the Classical Argument, attributed to Williams on the standard readingof his article, and then (section 2.1.2) sketch an alternative argument that Williams may haveintended instead.

2.1.1 The Classical Argument

Williams claims that normative reasons have an explanatory dimension. On a standard readingwhat he means by this is that a consideration can be a normative reason for some agent only if it ispossible (i.e. would under certain conditions be the case) that the agent be motivated to act for thatreason, and for it thereby to be explanatory of his acting. This first premise of the classicalargument is, of course, just a statement of some version of Counterfactual Motivation internalism.Here a Counterfactual Motivation form of internalism is assumed as a conceptual truth in order toargue for an Actual State internalism; any argument proceeding from such a premise naturally hasno force for those externalists who deny even the Counterfactual Motivation internalist thesis. Thesecond premise of the argument is HTM, the Humean Theory of Motivation. If the existence ofreasons entails the possibility of motivation, and the possibility of motivation entails the existenceof desire, then the existence of reasons entails the existence of desireas the Humean Theory ofReasons maintains.

This argument, however, has many widely observed weaknesses. First, it depends on HTM, so itdismisses an idea that many philosophers have accepted; namely, that beliefs (either in general orof a specific kind, such as beliefs about reasons) can motivate action by themselves andindependently of desire (e.g. Nagel 1970; Darwall 1983; Dancy 2000).

A second problem arises about how to understand the relevant sense of possibility of motivation,which links the two premises. To say that motivation is possible is equivalent to saying that undercertain conditions it would be actual. To understand the relevant sense of possibility, we thereforeneed to identify the relevant conditions under which, according to the argument, there would bemotivation. The problem is that the two premises seem to require for their plausibility differentconditions, and therefore different senses of possibility. In the case of the first premise,connecting the existence of reasons with the possibility of motivation, the existence of reasonsplausibly entails the possibility of motivation in only a very weak sense: perhaps nothingstronger than that the agent would be motivated if he were rational, or perhaps virtuous. In thecase of the second premise, linking the possibility of motivation with the existence of desire, amuch stronger sense of possibility is arguably needed: something like there being someconditions under which the agent with his actual psychological state would be motivated.

If we were to read the former, weaker sense of the possibility of motivation into this secondpremise, we get the claim that a rational, or perhaps virtuous, version of the agent would only bemotivated to act in some way if the actual agent has some actual desire that could produce thatmotivation. This premise would be false if agents could be irrational or vicious precisely becausethey lack certain desires, a common view we discussed in section 1.3. Suppose we try instead tounderstand the first premise in terms of the stronger sense of possibility suggested for the secondpremise. This yields the claim that an agent can have a reason to act in some way only if there aresome possible conditions under which he would be motivated to act in that way due topsychological attitudes that he actually has. Interpreted in this way the first premise begs thequestion against Williams' externalist opponent, because it seems already to be a statement of anActual State version of internalism.


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It seems that there is no interpretation of possibility of motivation for which it is plausible thatboth premises are true and avoid begging the question against externalism. The ClassicalArgument therefore seems to have either implausibly strong premises, a problematic inference, orboth.

2.1.2 An Argument from Explanation

But Williams may not have intended to offer this argument. On a rival and unorthodoxinterpretation (Finlay 2009), Williams' claim that practical reasons have an explanatorydimension is to be understood not simply as placing a constraint on what can be a reason, but asproviding the essential meaning of our thoughts and claims about practical reasons. On thisanalysis the concept of a reason for action just is the concept of an explanation of action,following Davidson. To think that the fact that the Alcove serves onion rings the size of doughnutsis a reason for Caroline to go there, is to think that the fact that the Alcove serves such onion ringsis an explanation of Caroline's going there.

As Williams observes, any view of this Davidsonian kind has to overcome an obvious problem.We can have reasons which do not motivate us to act (e.g. if we are unaware of them), and we canact in ways for which we lack any actual practical reasons (e.g. if we are mistaken about what ourreasons are). Identifying an agent's practical reasons, it seems, neither entails nor is entailed bygiving an explanation of her actions. On this reading, Williams suggests that this problem arisessimply due to agents' error and ignorance, and he offers a way to fix the Davidsonian approach. Tothink that a fact is a reason for an agent to act is not to think it is an explanation of an action thatshe actually performs, but rather it is to think it an explanation of an action that she would haveperformed (or would have been somewhat motivated towards performing) if not for her error orignorance. The concept of a practical reason must be the concept of an explanation ofcounterfactual (motivation towards) action: action under the condition of full and valid reasoningand exercise of imagination from a belief-set purged of error and ignorance (sound deliberation).He claims that the idealization contained in this counterfactual condition is enough to make thesereasons normative and not merely explanatory.

From this understanding of the concept of a practical reason, Williams (on this interpretation)believes he can prove that all external reasons statements are false by considering the specialcase of first personal reasons beliefs: an agent's beliefs about what considerations are reasons forhimself. This argument requires a further assumption: that R is a reason for an agent to do A onlyif he could, through sound deliberation, come to recognize it as a reason for his doing A. Thisassumption seems reasonable given the conceptual premise, that the notion of a reason for actionis just some notion of an explanation of action. A reason for an agent would then plausibly be anexplanation for that agent, and it is plausible that what can be an explanation for an agent isrestricted to what the agent is able to come to recognize as an explanation.

Williams is concerned with what the agent comes to believe when he comes to believe that someconsideration R is a reason for him to do A. Granted the conceptual premise, an internal reasonsstatement is a claim that some consideration is an explanation of why by virtue of the contents ofthe agent's actual motivational set he would be motivated to do A under the conditions of sounddeliberation, while an external reasons statement is a claim that some consideration is anexplanation of why independently of the contents of the agent's actual motivational set he wouldbe motivated to do A under those conditions.


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While Williams is commonly interpreted as challenging the possibility of an agent beingmotivated to do A by the belief that he has an external reason R to do A, on this reading heexplicitly accepts that such motivation is possible; a disposition to be motivated by the belief thatyou have an external reason could be an element of your motivational set, making the fact that youhave an external reason itself an internal reason for you to act. (It is an advantage of thisinterpretation that this is what Williams actually says.)

Unfortunately, the fact that an agent's belief that R is an external reason to do A can motivate her todo A does not suffice to show that R is a reason to do A. It only shows that the fact that R is areason to do A is a reason to do A. That is because it does not show that R can explain the agent'smotivation to herself; it only shows that the fact that R is a reason for her to do A can explain hermotivation to herself. So what Williams wants to know is, how could it be true that R is a reasonto do A? If it were true, realizing that it was could motivatebut what could make it true?

According to this reading, the problem Williams sees for external reasons is the following. Forthere genuinely to be external reasons, he observes, it must be possible that some such externalreasons beliefs are true. This requires that the consideration R which an agent accepts as his reasonmust actually be a genuine explanation of his acting under the condition of sound deliberation,independently of any facts about his motivational set. But this condition cannot be met, becausenothing could be explanatory of an agent's action independently of the contents of his motivationalset: his desires and dispositions. From this it follows (given the conceptual premise) that nomotivationally external considerations could genuinely be practical reasons for an agent.

Hence, while many writers have come to the defense of external reasons by appealing to adisposition to be motivated by beliefs about reasons, if this interpretation is correct then Williams'argument is directly aimed against this kind of solution. A disposition of this kind could explainwhy a consideration R could motivate an agent once he believed that it was a reason to act, but itcould not make it the case that R itself was a genuine explanation of his acting, and therefore areason for him to act. To use Williams' own example, if Owen Wingrave comes to believe that thefact that military service is a family tradition is a reason for him to enlist, that belief may indeedmotivate him to enlist, and explain his doing so. But if he has no desires or dispositions that wouldcause the belief that military service is a family tradition itself to motivate him to enlist, then thefact that military service is a family tradition cannot itself be a genuine explanation of hisenlisting, and therefore his belief that it is a reason for him to enlist is false.

Although Williams' article is commonly seen as the classic defense of HTR, on this reading it onlyrestricts agents' reasons to their dispositions to be motivated, and not more narrowly to their actualdesires. This is because dispositions are sufficient, and actual desires not necessary, in order toexplain why somebody would be motivated under counterfactual conditions. This argument istherefore stronger than the Classical Argument because of its independence from HTM, whichcontroversially claims that motivation requires desire. But the view supported by this argument isnot a weak, Counterfactual Motivation version of internalism; rather it is a more general kind ofActual State view, claiming a connection between reasons and all psychological states relevant tothe explanation of action. Indeed, Williams' skepticism about external reasons would then bedirected not against those who reject Counterfactual Motivation accountshe just assumes thathis opponent agrees with him that reasons must be able to motivatebut against manyphilosophers who have championed some Counterfactual Motivation version of internalism, likeNagel (1970) and Darwall (1983). These philosophers argue that the order of explanation runs inthe other direction: that the possibility of being motivated to do A can be explained by theexistence of a reason to do A, while Williams' view is that the existence of a reason to do A must


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be explained by the possibility of being motivated to do A.

The weakest point in this version of Williams' argument is probably its fundamental, conceptualpremise: that the concept of a practical reason is the concept of an explanation of action undercertain conditions. Even if we grant the controversial claim that the concept of a practical reason isthe concept of an explanation we can still resist this analysis. Suppose, for example, that theconcept of a reason to do A is the concept of an explanation of why to do A, or of why doing A is agood thing to do. To say that R was the reason for which the agent did A would then be to say thatR was the explanation of why to do A which motivated the agent to do A. This rival accountrespects the conceptual relation between reason and explanation on which Williams andDavidson insist, but doesn't analyze practical reasons as any kind of explanation of action. If thisis what our concept of practical reasons is, then a different argument will be needed if we are torule out the possibility of external reasons.

2.1.3 Other Motivational Arguments

A different kind of argument specifically for the Humean Theory of Reasons tries to reason fromsome kind of Counterfactual Motivation internalism by raising questions about the concepts ofaction and motivation in play (Finlay 2007). Necessarily, a rational agent is motivated byrecognition of her reasons. But this motivated behavior is not merely caused by her reasons; it is avoluntary response to them. A rational agent responds voluntarily to her reasons.

A connection is then forged between voluntary behavior and desire. Arguably, a behavior is onlyvoluntary if it is caused by being aimed at. On one theory of desire, aiming at p entails desiringsomething (either p itself, or something to which p is taken to be a means). It follows that arational agent's recognition of a reason entails the presence of a relevant desire. This does not yetrule out externalism, which is compatible with this result if any of a number of different claims aretrue. The internalist can try to close off these escapes, however. (i) One possible externalistsolution is that being rational involves having certain desires; the internalist can argue in responsethat rationality is rather a procedural virtue which doesn't necessarily involve having any particulardesires. (ii) Another solution is to suggest that a rational agent's ability to recognize reasons islimited by her desires; the internalist can plausibly respond that being (ideally) rational is, bydefinition, to be able to recognize all one's reasons. (iii) Perhaps most promisingly, an externalistcan suggest that a rational agent can respond voluntarily to her reasons by virtue of their causingher to have a new desire (Darwall 1983). The internalist may counter by arguing that because wecannot desire at will, the causation of such a desire would be a nonvoluntary response to therecognition of a reason, and therefore any behavior motivated by that desireeven if voluntarywould not qualify as a voluntary response to the reason.

This line of argument has not yet received much attention; opponents may reasonably questionwhether motivation by reasons must always be voluntary (this seems implausible in the case oftheoretical reasons, or reasons for belief, for examplesee section 2.2 below for this analogy),and also whether voluntary behavior must be caused by desire. For yet a different promisingargument for internalism on the basis of the connection between reasons and motivationalcapacities, see section 4 of (Markovitz 2011).

2.2 The Analogy to Theoretical ReasonExternalists often appeal to the parallels between practical reasons (reasons for action) and


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epistemic or theoretical reasons (or reasons for belief) to make their case against certain forms ofinternalism, particularly the Humean Theory of Reasons (Millgram 1996). They seem to bedifferent species of the same genus: while practical reasons are facts that support or justify certainactions, theoretical reasons are facts that support or justify certain beliefs. Both sorts of reasons aresubsumable under the class of normative reasons, or facts that support certain behaviors.

But externalists object that it is implausible that reasons for belief entail or depend upon factsabout desire or motivation. Rational belief is responsive only to evidence, and beliefs formed onthe basis of desires (like a husband's wishful beliefin the face of all the evidencethat his wifeis not cheating on him) are irrational. So not all normative reasons are internal reasons.Internalism about practical reasons might therefore seem arbitrary and unmotivated. Once we'veallowed external reasons that count in favor of believing certain things, why not allow externalreasons that count in favor of doing certain things? Elijah Millgram (1996) suggests that just asnew experiences can reveal to us hitherto unknown reasons for belief, so too new experiences(involving unexpected pleasures) can reveal to us reasons for action independent of our antecedentdesires and dispositions.

Internalists have two options here. They can deny that genuine reasons for belief can be external,extending their internalism to theoretical reasons, or they can seek to motivate differentialtreatment of the practical and the theoretical cases. To pursue the former course, internalists mightargue that we ascribe reasons for belief on the assumption of a desire for knowledge or truth (seeKelly 2003 for discussion). They can further argue that a person is simply not in the business offorming beliefs if he does not have something resembling a desire for truth (Velleman 2000).Alternatively, internalists might argue that we ascribe reasons for belief on the assumption thatwhatever the contents of a person's desire-set, it will include some item that would be served bybelieving that for which there is evidence.

The second strategy would involve identifying a relevant difference between practical andtheoretical reasons to explain why internalism is true of reasons for action, but not of reasons forbelief. For example, Markovits (2011) argues that the practical case is different because there is noanalogue to the plausible case of foundational beliefs in the epistemic case. A different strategymight focus on differences in the nature or aims of action and belief. Suppose for example thatwhile believing by its nature aims at tracking the truth, acting by its nature aims at satisfying somedesire of the agent. We could then reasonably maintain that practical but not theoretical reasonscan only be internal.

2.3 Arguments from Reactive AttitudesAn important part of the debate about internal and external reasons has centered on reactiveattitudes, or attitudes that we have towards agents in response to their behavior, of which blame isthe paradigm. Some have observed in defense of Moral Rationalism, for example, that if an agentdoes something we consider morally wrong, then we blame (or resent) him. But blame, thesephilosophers claim, involves the judgment that the agent had reasons not to do what he did.Consequently blame is unwarranted when such judgments are unwarranted (Nagel 1970, Smith1994). Therefore, since moral wrongdoing is sufficient to warrant blame, moral obligations mustentail reasons. Furthermore, Moral Absolutism tells us that the moral wrongness of certain actionsis independent of agents' desires and dispositions. Since wrongness entails the appropriateness ofblame, which in turn entails existence of reasons, we can conclude that there must be reasons thatare independent of agents' desires and dispositions: i.e. external reasons.


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A difficulty for this argument comes from the fact that outside of morality we do not, in general,blame or resent people for failing to comply with their practical reasons. If an agent doessomething foolish or imprudent, for example, we might react with pity or scorn, but not withanything as strong as blame. It seems that the appropriateness of blame requires some conditionother than noncompliance with reasons. This does not show that noncompliance with reasons isnot one of the necessary conditions for blame, of course, but it opens the possibility that once weidentify the further necessary conditions we might find that they are also, by themselves, sufficientconditions for appropriate blame. The internalist might suggest, for example, that the missingcondition is partly that the judge have desires or concerns that are harmed by the resentedbehavior. Proponents of the argument from blame may respond that it is inappropriate to blameharmful non-agents (like trees and tigers) and agents whose harms are unintentional. However itmay be possible to excuse these from blame without accepting that noncompliance with reasons isa necessary condition for blameworthiness; for example, with the weaker condition that ablameworthy act stems from having a character from which certain concerns or motivations areabsent (Arpaly 2003). Trees and tigers don't have a character in the relevant sense, and harmsthat an agent causes unintentionally do not stem from his character. If something like this is asufficient condition for blameworthiness, then this argument from reactive attitudes fails.

Bernard Williams does not resist the claim that the appropriateness of blame entails reasons,however, and offers a way of explaining the appropriateness of blame when an agent appears tohave no relevant internal reasons to act otherwise than she did. Blaming in these cases functions asa proleptic mechanism: it itself changes the situation for the agent so that she now has an internalreason that she otherwise would have lacked (1989). This is a reason she has in virtue ofsomething like a disposition to have the respect of other people. By blaming or being disposed toblame an agent for unethical behavior, we give her a reason to act ethically. Note that this accountunderstands the appropriateness of blame as at least partly instrumental. Blaming is appropriate ifit has some motivational grip on the agent. This view is resisted by many who see the question ofthe appropriateness of a reactive attitude as primarily an issue of desert. Arguably, blame isappropriate only if it is deserved, and not if it is merely effective in influencing people's behavior.

It is also possible to appeal to reactive attitudes in arguing against external reasons. Williamsargues that externalism cannot accommodate the obscurity and indeterminacy in the practice ofblame: that is, the pattern predicted by his internalist account that blame sometimes responds toreasons and at other times tries to create them, and that its appropriateness turns on whether theagent can be influenced psychologically in either of these ways.

Russ Shafer-Landau finds in Williams' article the suggestion of a further argument, turning on thefairness constraint on appropriate blame (2003: 1812). Blame is only appropriate if it is fair, andit is only fair to blame someone for their behavior if they had the capacity to act otherwise thanthey did. But an agent's capacity to act is limited by her desires and dispositions, and thereforeblame is only appropriate if an agent's desires and dispositions gave her the capacity to actotherwise. This is a challenge for externalism because of the suggested connection between blameand reasons we discussed above: an agent is blameworthy for her action only if in so acting shefailed to obey her reasons.[1] It follows that an agent's reasons must be limited by her desires anddispositions; some form of internalism is true.

This argument can succeed only if supported by a plausible version of the ought implies canprinciple. But in basing an agent's capacity to act on her desires and dispositions, the version of theprinciple that the argument seems to presuppose treats ought, or the fairness of blame, as


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depending on the psychological capacity to act rather than on the mere physical capacity to act.Externalists would reject as implausible the psychological version of the principle, and therefore toassume it for purposes of an internalist argument would be question-begging against theexternalist.

2.4 The Conditional Fallacy(Nontrivial) Counterfactual Motivation versions of internalism are sometimes accused ofcommitting a conditional fallacy. To commit this fallacy is to claim that it is necessary for anagent's having a reason to do A that he would be motivated under certain conditions to do A, whenthere are some reasons that the agent can have only if precisely those conditions do not obtain. Forexample, some versions of internalism appeal to counterfactuals involving full rationality, butsometimes agents have certain reasons precisely because they are not fully rational. Smith (1994)offers the case, due to Gary Watson, of a defeated squash player who, because he is prone toirrational anger that could cause him to smash his opponent's face with his racquet, has a reasonnot to cross the court to shake the winner's hand. When the conditions specified by the relevantinternalist thesis do obtain, the reason is then not present to motivate the agent, falsifying thecounterfactual. For example, were Watson's squash player to be fully rational, then it would nolonger be true that if he crossed the court he might hit his opponent, and therefore he wouldn't bemotivated accordingly not to cross the court. The relevant internalist thesis then yields the falseresult that the irrational squash player has no reason not to cross the court.

In defense of his own internalist thesis, involving counterfactual motivation under the condition ofsound deliberation from full information, Williams (1995) raises an objection of this kind againstMcDowell's rival claim involving the condition of full virtue. He observes that being less thanfully virtuous gives agents reasons to act that they otherwise wouldn't have had and that thereforewould not motivate a fully virtuous agent. Others object to Williams' own counterfactualsinvolving sound deliberation that there are reasons that agents have precisely because they are notcapable of deliberating soundly, which his version of internalism therefore fails to accommodate.

It is plausible that objections of this kind will be effective against any nontrivial CounterfactualMotivation version of internalism. This problem has prompted some to switch from aCounterfactual Motivation model to a Counterfactual State model, and others to be more carefulabout specifying just what state they have in mind. The idea is that an agent S has a reason to do Aonly if, were she in certain counterfactual circumstances, she would desire S in her actualcircumstances to do A (Smith 1994). Michael Smith calls this the advice model (in contrast to theexample model), and it plausibly avoids the problems connected with the conditional fallacybecause it builds in sensitivity to the relevant conditions in the actual cases that generate thereasons. For example, if a fully rational version of Watson's squash player were to contemplate thesituation of his actual, less than fully-rational self, he would be aware of his actual self'sdisposition to irrational anger, and would therefore want his actual self not to cross the court toshake the winner's hand. The advice model may therefore yield the correct result that the actualplayer has a reason not cross the court. However, as Bedke (2010) emphasizes, this leaves animportant puzzle about why each agent's counterfactual, more fully rational self, would havedesires about what her actual self does.

3. Direct, Extensional ArgumentsFortunately we do not ordinarily need to turn to a metaethical theory to tell us what reasons we


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have. People have a robust set of intuitions about what is and what is not a reason for a givenagent to perform a given action. All nontrivial versions of reasons internalism and externalismhave substantive implications concerning the extension of agents' reasons, and for the most parttheory here is answerable to common sense and aims at accommodating it. Some of the mostsignificant and compelling arguments for and against versions of internalism are thereforeextensional, that is to say, based on what reasons agents actually have. An internalist account'spredictions about what is and what is not a reason for a particular agent can be tested against ourprior judgments about what reasons there are.

3.1 For Externalism

3.1.1 Undergeneration Arguments

We have already encountered one of the most powerful sources of extensional opposition tonontrivial versions of reasons internalism in the form of the Central Problem. The Central Problemis that it seems that some actions are wrong for everyone no matter what they are like, and thattheir wrongness for someone requires that that person have a reason not to do them. But manykinds of internalismin particular Actual State viewssay that an agent has a reason only if shesatisfies a certain condition, and hence that her reason depends on what she is like. We can evenframe the Central Problem by divorcing it from Moral Rationalism and Moral Absolutism, andsimply insisting that for at least some actions (perhaps paradigmatic wrong actions among them),there is a reason for anyone not to do those actions, no matter what she is like. This leads to adirect argument against many forms of internalism: that they undergenerate reasons, by providingnegative verdicts in cases in which intuitively there really are reasons.

Because this sort of argument has not always gotten a grip on those skeptical about the objectiveauthority of morality, one important development since the 1970s is the observation that a similarsort of problem arises for prudential reasons (e.g. Nagel 1970). If I am going to travel to Israel insix months' time and will regret not knowing any Hebrew once I get there, then I have a reason tostudy Hebrew now, even if I don't now care about my future regrets or about whether I will knowHebrew while I am in Israel. Yet internalist theses place constraints on what I now have a reason todo, on the basis of what my actual psychology is like now, or on the basis of what counterfactualsare true of me now. So they appear to have a problem in getting these intuitive judgments aboutreasons right. This argument is thought to produce extra dialectical leverage, because theseintuitions about prudential reasons are thought to be harder to give up than correspondingintuitions about moral reasons.

3.1.2 Defenses Against Undergeneration Arguments

Two lines of response are open to the internalist here. One, proposed by Mark Schroeder (2007b)in defense of the Humean Theory of Reasons, denies that internalism is genuinely incompatiblewith the inescapability of some moral or prudential reasons. If there are some actions that wouldserve any possible desire (or, on an alternative internalist account, that any agent would bemotivated towards under the relevant counterfactual conditions), then the internalist canaccommodate reasons that any agent has no matter what they are like: such reasons are massivelyoverdetermined. In this way the internalist can seek to reconcile Moral Rationalism with MoralAbsolutism (see section 1.2). The idea is that even if internalism is true, it might still be the casethat we all have reasons to avoid moral wrongdoing, no matter what we are likebecause reasonsto avoid moral wrongdoing are generated from any set of desires or dispositions. While this


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solution is formally available, it remains to be seen whether it can plausibly generate the robust setof moral and prudential reasons posited by ordinary intuitions, and it appears reasonable to bepessimistic on this count; plausibly there are actual or possible sets of desires and dispositions thatwould not support any reasons to avoid breaking promises made to those powerless to retaliate, orto confess to one's crime for which somebody else has already been convicted, for example.

Generally, however, internalists bite the bullet and reject the data of these intuitions. They mightsimply challenge whether those intuitions really exist or, more audaciously, maintain that they areall false. It is not denied that speakers ascribe external reasons to agents, and so internalists arecompelled to offer diagnoses of this practice. The bluntest is to adopt an error theory, and suggestthat these practices manifest a mistaken understanding of the kinds of reasons that there are. Thisforces a confrontation between internalism and ordinary practice; most internalists dislike the oddsin this matchup and seek to explain away the evidence.

A provocative diagnosis of external reasons claims is as a bluff or a rhetorical device designed toinfluence the behavior and attitudes of others (Williams 1979). On this view external reasonsclaims are all false but stem from an attempt to apply nonrational persuasion on others rather thanfrom error; recently some philosophers have argued that we either do (Kalderon 2005) or should(Joyce 2001) use moral claims as convenient fictions for this purpose. In later work (1989),Williams proposes, more temperately, that they may be optimistic internal reasons claims: likelyfalse statements made in the hope that they may become true through the intended audience'scontemplation of them.

A more conciliatory strategy is to claim ambiguity in the notion of a reason. In one sense thereare external reasons; we might call them institutional or pseudo-reasons (Mackie 1977; Joyce2001). But the spirit of internalism is preserved in the claim that these are not genuine practicalreasons, about which an internalist thesis is correct. Recognizing the legitimacy of ascribing theseother kinds of reasons may suggest softening the distinction between internal and external reasonseven further; it has been proposed that what counts as a genuine reason is determined by theconcerns characterizing the context of discourse (Finlay 2006). So, for example, we mayappropriately judge that the pain a certain action would cause is a reason for a sadist not toperform the action, because the salient concern in the context is our compassion for others. Thisview would prompt us to abandon existence internalism about practical reasons (reasons claimsare made relative to the concerns salient in the conversation, and not necessarily to the motivationsof the agent). On this view of reasons, however, an agent can have reasons that count as genuine ina given context, but that he can ignore without irrationality. Such a view can preserve the spirit ofinternalism by claiming that the rational force of these reasons for any agent depends upon hisdesires or motivations.

These strategies aim to reconcile internalism, as much as possible, with the apparently externalisttendencies in ordinary practices of ascribing reasons. Externalists claim they are unsuccessful;ordinary practice is committed to genuine (and genuinely authoritative) external reasons, andrightly so. But internalists remain optimistic. The issue is very much unresolved.

3.1.3 Overgeneration Arguments

The literature is also full of extensional arguments against theories which resemble internalism,but on the grounds that they overgenerate, rather than undergenerate, reasons. Many famous andcolorful examplesabout people who want to eat saucers of mud, or count blades of grass, or who


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have a disposition to turn on radiosare offered to show that not every desire or motivation is ofthe right kind to generate practical reasons. Strictly speaking, however, such cases only createobjections to views which postulate a sufficient condition for the existence of reasons, andinternalism itself postulates only necessary conditions, and no such sufficient condition, asBernard Williams makes clear (1989), for example.

There may, of course, be philosophical reasons why many theorists who accept some version ofinternalism as a necessary condition on reasons are also inclined to accept a sufficient condition ofthis kind, and we will consider one such philosophical reason in the next section. So these mayend up being good indirect arguments against internalism. But no sufficient condition is part ofinternalism by itself, so there are no direct overgeneration arguments against internalism.

3.2 For Internalism

3.2.1 The Significance of Apparent Internal Reasons

So far we have considered extensional arguments against internalism. But there are alsoextensional arguments in favor of internalist theses. Setting aside peculiarly moral reasons,common sense suggests that ordinary practical reasons exhibit a high degree of agent-relativity. Itis also natural to think that in at least many cases, different agents have different reasons becausethey want different things. If A desires chocolate ice cream, and B desires strawberry ice cream,then intuitively A has a reason to purchase the chocolate, and B has a reason to purchase thestrawberry. Many have thought that the Humean Theory of Reasons is more than suggested by thissort of extensional data.

The idea behind this reasoning is that if we have to agree that some reasons depend on desires,then we should give serious consideration to the theory according to which all reasons do, as beingsimpler and more explanatory than the theory according to which some reasons derive from ourdesires but others do not. This may even provide a promising analytical hypothesis about whatclaims about reasons mean, or reductive hypothesis about what reasons are. This kind of argumentis anticipated by Williams' claim that the issue is whether there are both internal and externalreasons, or internal reasons only (1979; see also Schroeder 2007b). We now discuss three kinds ofexternalist objection to this argument.

3.2.2 Three Objections

One line of objection holds that no reasons derive from our desires. It seems plausible that they doonly because desire is closely connected to something else, which often is a source of reasons:something like pleasure or enjoyment (Bond 1983, Millgram 1997, Scanlon 1998). Reasons thatseem to derive from desires can arguably be more plausibly explained by pleasure, which can alsoserve to explain reasons that desire cannot explain: reasons deriving from pleasures that the agentdoes not actually desire. It may therefore be a better and more explanatory hypothesis thatsomething like pleasure grounds our agent-relative reasons. However proponents of this kind ofobjection often take hedonic states like pleasure to be merely one instance of somethingpossessing intrinsic value, and offer as rivals to HTR theories of reasons as based on intrinsicvalue (see the entry on intrinsic vs. extrinsic value).

In response, Humeans can observe that in ordinary cases agents want pleasure, and that therebyHTR can accommodate such reasons. This line of objection needs a case in which an agent has a


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reason to do not just something that she does not already desire to do, but something that wouldnot serve any desire whatsoever that she already has. Since any given action may serve manydifferent possible desires, and agents who do not desire (e.g.) pleasure are rare and peculiar, it isdifficult to control for these kinds of factors. Externalists can claim that an agent would have areason to do what is pleasurable even in the absence of any such general desire, but this issomething that an internalist may be able to deny without absurdityalthough here intuitionsseem to differ radically.

A related objection consists in the complaint that agents can have desires that clearly do notgenerate any practical reasons because they are for worthless objects. Prominent examples in theliterature include a desire to drink a saucer of mud or a can of paint, and a disposition to turn onradios whenever they are off. As noted in section 3.1.3, these examples can't provide directcounterexamples to any sort of reasons internalism, because reasons internalism itself places onlya necessary condition on reasons and not a sufficient condition, and these examples are proposedcounterexamples to a sufficient condition. But they are highly relevant to the theoretical argumentfor internalism that is our concern in this section. If we advance as our case for internalism theexplanatory power of the thesis that reasons depend on desire or motivation, then it is a significantproblem if this relation isn't consistent and desire or motivation don't always generate reasons.Some explanation of this inconsistency is needed, and when we find it we may find that it revealsthat something other than desire or motivation is the genuine source of our reasons.

These cases are taken to show that desires are only connected with reasons if they are alsoconnected with something else, for example intrinsic value, and they do not yield reasonsotherwise. Against this the internalist can again challenge intuitions and defend the consistency ofthe connection, by insisting (e.g.) that a desire to drink a saucer of mud is sufficient for having areason to do so. Such a reason need not be a good or strong one, after all, and the peculiarity ofclaiming that there is such a reason may be explained away as being merely pragmatic. In cases inwhich the reasons for an action are dwarfed by the considerations against it, it is usual to reportthat there is no reason for the action at all; there is a reason to do A typically communicates thatthere is a relatively weighty reason to do A. Whether or not agents have desire-based reasons inthese circumstances remains a contested issue.

A different version of this same sort of objection works by granting a special connection betweenreasons and desire but suggesting that this exists because desires involve judgments or perceptionsthat something is a reason (e.g. Anscombe 1963, Stampe 1987, Quinn 1993, Millgram 1997,Scanlon 1998). Scanlon labels these desires in the directed-attention sense; on this view,(apparent) reasons are explanatory of desires, and not the reverse. This hypothesis would explainwhy agents tend to have relevant desires whenever they believe themselves to have reasons, but itdoes not seem well-placed to explain why agents would have these desires whenever they actuallyhave reasons. If we are disposed to ascribe reasons to others in correspondence with their desires,the Humean hypothesis is better.

A third kind of objection (Hampton 1998) insists that though it is true that some reasons derivefrom our desires, this is only because of more fundamental reasons which themselves do notderive from our desires. Proponents of this view hold that there is a fundamental reason to do whatyou desire and that changes in what you desire simply affect what you need to do in order to goabout doing so. This view admits that our desires can sometimes affect our reasons but insists thatthey only do so because there is a further reason, which does not depend on any desire.Philosophers who accept this view are unmoved by the argument that Actual State forms of reasoninternalism can provide a more unified explanation of reasons. They don't deny the existence of


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internal reasons (which do derive from desires), but do hold that internal reasons are simplyderivative from and hence are explained by a special case of external reasons (which do not derivefrom or depend on desires at all). A similar dialectic goes for Actual State views which appeal to amore general kind of state than desire.

3.3 Relative Explanatory PowerAny evaluation of whether Actual State reasons internalism is simpler, more elegant, orexplanatorily more powerful than any possible externalist view will have to turn on an evaluationof this kind of externalist explanatory strategy. If internal reasons could be simply derivative fromexternal reasons, and external reasons could be independently explained, then Actual State reasonsinternalism will have very little traction on these grounds. If the derivation of internal reasonsfrom external reasons turns out to be unsuccessful, however, or external reasons themselves aredifficult to explain, then Actual State reasons internalism will gain traction as an explanatoryhypothesis. Schroeder (2007b) attacks the derivation of internal reasons from external reasons;here we can go on to consider whether external reasons are themselves harder to explain thaninternal ones.

Many philosophers have held that external reasons are, in fact, harder to explain than internalones; even some who were no skeptics about external reasons, like Immanuel Kant (see the entryon Kant's moral philosophy.) So what makes external reasons so puzzling? One idea is that theyare puzzling because they leave so little on the basis of which to explain why they are reasons forthe people for whom they are reasons. Internal reasons are shared only by certain peoplepeoplewith the requisite desires. So Max's desires can be used to explain why he has the internal reasonsthat he has. But categorical external reasons like those Kant was concerned about (and which arerequired in order to reconcile Moral Rationalism with Moral Absolutism) are supposed to bereasons for any agent, no matter what she is like. So the only thing to which we can appeal inorder to explain why Max has these reasons is the fact that Max is an agent. Some philosophershave accordingly invested great energy in developing robust enough accounts of agency to be ableto explain moral reasons. For example, Christine Korsgaard (1996) maintains that reasons derivefrom the demands of autonomy, or being regulated by stable principles that define ones' self,which she identifies as a necessary condition for acting at all.

However, even accounts that derive reasons from the nature of agency may ultimately vindicatesome form of internalism. David Velleman (1996), for example, argues that agency ischaracterized by a particular higher-order inclinationto behave in, and out of, a knowledge ofwhat you're doing. Although this is a kind of desire, it is distinct from the contingent desires thatmight be satisfied by particular actions and which internalists usually identify as the source of ourreasons. Velleman accordingly describes his view as a fainthearted externalism, but it remains aform of internalism according to the scheme presented here.

Some advocates of various forms of internalism have complained that advocacy of externalreasons amounts to nothing more than bluff (Williams 1979). A natural way to understand thisidea is as the complaint that external reasons theorists leave us with too few constraints on whatreasons could be, and hence are able to make whatever claims about reasons they want (so long asthey endorse them in a serious enough tone of voice, perhaps), with no independent way ofchecking their plausibility. This complaint could be a fair one against externalists who are willingto offer no general theory about or constraints on reasons, but it is unfair in general. Externalistsmay simply look for discipline and unity in their views about reasons from a source distinct from


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facts about motivation or motivational psychology. Value-based theorists, for example, tie theirclaims about reasons to commitments about what is valuable. So their claims about what we havereasons to do are checked by the plausibility of the corresponding theses about what is valuable.

4. The Debate TodayThe debate over internal and external reasons is very much alive today, open on nearly all of thefronts that we have considered in this article. Or more accurately, we should say that the debatesover internal and external reasons are very much alive today. As we saw, there are importantdifferences between State and Motivation forms of internalism, between Counterfactual andActual forms of internalism, and between versions that give rise to the Central Problem and thosethat do not. There are also important further differences in precisely how to formulate any givenversion of reasons internalism, and we have not precisely formulated any single version in thisarticle.

What is clear is that there are two main varieties of internalist view, each of which faces its ownclass of problems. Most internalist views encounter the Central Problem, and hence have difficultyin allowing for some of the important reasons that we pre-theoretically are inclined to think thatthere are. Though other arguments have been offered against them, this challenge is at the heart oftheir difficulties. We saw that some Counterfactual versions of internalism avoid the CentralProblem, by claiming that the relevant counterfactuals are not grounded in any features of agents'actual psychologies, but rather are explained in some other way. The challenge facing these viewsis to provide such an explanation without collapsing into triviality, as with the view that therelevant counterfactual condition is that the agent is motivated by all of her reasons.

Externalist views, on the other hand, avoid the Central Problem and hence do well with moralreasons, but critics worry that external reasons are more mysterious, and that such theories cannotprovide as attractive an explanation of why some reasons do appear to be internal. An attractiveway forward may have to show entrenched parties how to achieve some of the importantadvantages of each side of the debate.

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Related Entriescognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral | Kant, Immanuel: moral philosophy | moral motivation |reasons for action: justification vs. explanation | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic


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Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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