A Defense of Moral Motivation Externalism

Abstract

First, I argue that moral reasons are not necessarily overriding. Then I show that since moral reasons are not necessarily overriding, moral judgements are not necessarily motivating. The corollary is that motivation cannot be an a priori criterion of determining which beliefs are or are not genuinely moral. I then defend moral judgment externalism (motivation depends on external factors to the moral judgment, such as favored conditions, and, for this reason, the connection between moral judgment and motivation is contingent) from classic and contemporary objections. Since my view about practical reason is committed to the existence of external reasons, I begin by respond to long-standing problems for reasons externalism: the alienation and explanatory constraints. After that, I tackle a specific opponent in the semantic field: the moral twin earth problem. I respond to the problem by evaluating some answers to the open-question argument, and more specifically the moral realist proposal which argues that moral terms should be defined synthetically like terms used in science. In theory, then, moral terms, just like names used to designate natural kinds, are causally regulated by extensions in the world and behave like rigid designators. However, the moral twin earth argument seeks to show that the moral realist semantic is an implausible explanation of the determination of the reference of moral terms because it cannot accommodate internalist semantic intuitions. Even when the realist seeks to establish the meaning of the moral terms using the causal method, he falls into an uncomfortable position because his moral semantic theory does not accommodate both the objective and the motivational essence of morality. Finally, I develop a theory for mitigating the problems raised by moral twin earth by resorting to the notion of referential intentions. My hope is to develop some argumentative updates that would improve the ability of moral realism’s semantic theory to determine reference across different hypothetical linguistic communities.