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MetaEthicalRationalismandtheAmoralistChallenge:AnExternalist ResponsetoMichaelSmith'sReliabilityArgument
GeraldBeaulieu
Dialogue/Volume46/Issue04/September2007,pp751760 DOI:10.1017/S0012217300002225,Publishedonline:27April2009

Linktothisarticle:http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0012217300002225 Howtocitethisarticle: GeraldBeaulieu(2007).MetaEthicalRationalismandtheAmoralistChallenge:AnExternalistResponsetoMichaelSmith's ReliabilityArgument.Dialogue,46,pp751760doi:10.1017/S0012217300002225 RequestPermissions:Clickhere

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Interventions / Discussions

Meta-Ethical Rationalism and the Amoralist Challenge: An Externalist Response to Michael Smiths Reliability Argument

GERALD BEAULIEU

East Carolina University

The rationalist claim that our moral obligationssupposing that such things existnecessarily provide us with reasons for action is familiar meta-ethical fare. I will attempt to take some of the wind out of the sails of rationalism by arguing that Michael Smiths reliability argument (Smith 1995, pp. 66-76) does not show that externalists such as David Brink are committed to an unattering conception of the virtuous agents motivations. I thereby lend support to Brinks suggestion that amoralist scepticism is intelligible (Brink 1986, 1989, 1997). Let us begin with a brief account of Smiths rationalism. Rationalism is a type of internalism.1 Specically, it is the type of internalism that conceptually links moral rightness with reasons for action. Let us label this type of internalism MR (for meta-ethical rationalism):

Dialogue XLVI (2007), 751-60 2007 Canadian Philosophical Association /Association canadienne de philosophie

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(MR) Necessarily, if it is right for agent A to in circumstances C, then there is a reason for A to in C (and so if A judges that it is right for her to in C, then she judges that she has a reason to in C).2 Smith links MR with moral motivation via what he calls the practicality requirement on moral judgement (let us label this PR), which is rooted in a platitude about the connection between reasons for action and rationally ideal motivation, namely, [the] platitude that an agent has a reason to act in a certain way just in case she would be motivated to act in that way if she were rational (Smith 1995, p. 62).3 Like MR, PR is a type of internalism. In this case, the conceptual (internal) connection is between moral judgement and being rationally moved. (PR) If an agent judges that it is [morally] right for her to in circumstances C, then either she is [moved] to in C or else she is practically irrational by her own lights. (Smith 1995, p. 61) She is practically irrational by her own lights if not moved by her moral judgement because, according to MR, her moral judgement just is a judgement about what she has reason to do. PR, with its rationalist foundation MR, seems to capture nicely the practical nature of moral judgements since it explains how moral judgements typically move us, but does not make the link between moral judgement and being moved so strong that the two can never come apart.4 This all seems reasonable (platitudinous, according to Smith) until we are reminded of the kind of scepticism that challenges the rational authority of morality.5 David Brink points out that amoralists are the standard way of representing this form of moral scepticism, and he cites Platos Thrasymachus in The Republic and Hobbess Foole in Leviathan as examples.6 The amoralist sincerely judges that she is, say, under a moral obligation to do X (that is, she accepts it as fact that she morally ought to do X), but she is completely unmoved by this fact. Moreover, it is not simply that she is unmoved because she is suffering from some form of practical irrationality. She simply does not care about the moral fact in question. Clearly, if there are such people, PR is false. The standard internalist response is to deny that so-called amoralists are actually making real moral judgements. If amoralists are understood as using moral words in a different sense (e.g., right or wrong), they pose no threat to PR since PR is a thesis about genuine moral judgements containing ordinary moral terms, not moral terms.7 The issue is contentious. Smiths main point against Brink is that we cannot settle the issue of whether alleged amoralists make real moral judgements simply on the basis of their facility with moral terms. Consider an analogy. Imagine someone, blind from birth, who is able to reli-

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ably use colour terms thanks to some device that allows her to detect, through her skin, the surface reectance properties of objects.8 It is not obvious that such a person makes genuine colour judgements. Indeed, it is a philosophically interesting question whether or not she does. To suppose that she does on the basis of her reliable colour judgements alone would be to beg the very question at issue. But, according to Smith, that is exactly what Brink has done in the case of the amoralist. By offering amoralist scepticism as a challenge to rationalism, Brink simply assumes that amoralists succeed in making real moral judgements. What we need, according to Smith, is a substantive argument that will settle the issue one way or the other. And so he offers us his reliability argument to settle the issue in favour of the view that amoralists do not, in fact, make real moral judgements. Smiths reliability argument, which shifts focus from the amoralist to the virtuous agent, runs as follows. He begins by noting that it is a striking fact about moral motivation that a change in motivation follows reliably in the wake of a change in moral judgement, at least in the good and strong-willed person (1995, p. 71). According to Smith, those who accept PR can offer a simple and plausible explanation of this phenomenon, whereas externalists who reject PR (and hence MR) cannot. Suppose that PR is correct. Then the explanation of the phenomenon in question is straightforward. Smith provides us with an example: I initially judge that supporting the libertarian party is the morally right thing to do, but then you convince me that I am wrong, and so I now judge that supporting the social democrats is the morally right thing to do. If I am a good and strong-willed person, i.e., if I am virtuous, we expect that my original motivation to support the libertarian party will vanish, and a new motivation to support the social democrats will appear. Given PR, it is not hard to see why. My original judgement that it is morally right to support the libertarians was a judgement to the effect that I rationally ought to be moved to support the libertarians. At that time, I would have been irrational by my own lights if I was not so moved. But now I have abandoned that moral judgement in favour of another moral judgement which is incompatible with the original. My new judgement that it is morally right to support the social democrats is a judgement to the effect that I rationally ought to be moved to support the social democrats. And so either I am now moved to support the social democrats or else, by my own lights, I suffer from some form of practical irrationality. PR, it seems, nicely explains the reliability phenomenon. The virtue of this explanation, according to Smith, is its compatibility with the idea that the virtuous have non-derivative concerns for that which they judge to be morally right. My desire to support social democratic values is not derived from some other desire, for example, the desire to do the right thing (again, supposing I am virtuous). Rather, it simply follows

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from my judging that it is right to support the social democrats. The explanation offered by externalists who reject PR fails in this respect, according to Smith. Since this externalist denies that moral judgements by themselves move (or to any degree motivate) us on pain of irrationality, he must appeal to something in the virtuous agents desiderative prole in order to explain his reliable shifts in motivation. And the only candidate here seems to be a desire to do the right thing. The shift from my originally being moved to support the libertarians, when I judged it morally right to do so, to my now being moved to support the social democrats after you convince me that that is the right thing to do, is explained by appealing to a desire of mine to do the right thing. The problem is that now my concern for social democratic values is derived from this more general concern to do the right thing.9 Smith believes this is a poor explanation of the virtuous agents reliable shifts of motivation. We want to say that the virtuous care non-derivatively about those things that they judge to be morally right.
Good people care non-derivatively about honesty, the weal and woe of their children and friends, the well-being of their fellows, people getting what they deserve, justice, equality, and the like, not just one thing: doing what they believe to be right, where this is read de dicto and not de re. Indeed, commonsense tells us that being so motivated is a fetish or moral vice, not the one and only moral virtue. (1995, p. 75)

Smith adds, borrowing from Bernard Williams, that the externalists explanation here ascribes to the virtuous agent one thought too many. The virtuous agent, on this explanation, is alienated from his particular moral concerns. He cares about the wrong things. He is not concerned (directly) with the well-being of others, the weal and woe of his friends, and so on. Rather, he is concerned with whatever features of the world are the morally right-making features. And he is concerned with those things under that description. I think that Smith is correct in maintaining that this is an unacceptable picture of the virtuous agent. But the externalist is not committed to it. Contrary to Smiths gloss on the externalists picture, where the virtuous agent cares about doing the right thing and only derivatively about the other important things, the externalist might characterize the virtuous agents motivational prole as follows. We begin by allowing that the virtuous agent has a whole battery of what we might call moral desires. We are not forced at this point to suppose that these desires are derived from a more general desire. We are simply asked to accept what seems uncontroversial, namely, that good people have a whole host of moral concerns. They desire, for example, to do the honest thing, the courageous thing, the sympathetic thing. They have concerns for the well-being of others, the

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weal and woe of their friends, and so on. In short, we can and should see the virtuous agent as having a plethora of non-derived desires characterized by thick moral concepts, i.e., moral concepts that include an empirical component, and not just one moral desire featuring the thin moral concept rightness (viz., the desire to do the right thing). It is tempting to suppose that this is all the externalist needs.10 But in fact the externalist needs more. Consider an agent, Bob, who has all of these thick moral desires. Bob judges that it would be morally right for him to attend his sons baseball game. And he is moved to do so because he loves his sonhe has a genuine, non-derivative concern for him. But then suppose that, upon reection, he comes to believe that, morally, he really ought to attend an important meeting. He had promised his colleagues that he would be there, and they are counting on him to show up. So, among Bobs non-derived moral desires are the desire to support his son and the desire to keep his promises. But, by themselves, these might not be sufcient to explain the reliability phenomenon. Suppose that Bobs concern for his son is so strong that it trumps his desire to keep his promise, despite the fact that he now judges that it is right that he keep his promise (at the expense of attending his sons baseball game). The point is that an agent might have all of the relevant moral desires and concerns and still fail to be appropriately moved when he changes his moral judgements regarding what it is morally right to do. But, as Smith rightly insists, virtuous people are reliably moved in accordance with their moral judgements even when the content of these judgements changes. What explains the reliability phenomenon? The externalist needs something elsesomething in the virtuous agents motivational prole that explains why he is reliably moved in accordance with these changes in judgement. But what can he appeal to if not the various non-derivative moral concerns I have described him as having? If moral judgements of the form it is right that I are by themselves motivationally neutral, as the externalist supposes they are, then, in explaining how these judgements reliably move us, it seems we must appeal to something like the desire to do the right thing. But why should this compromise our picture of the virtuous agent? We have already admitted that the various concerns that this agent has are genuine, i.e., they are not derived from the desire to do the right thing. He has the particular concerns independently of the general desire. It might turn out that the motivational force of these particular non-derivative concerns is out of proportion with his all-things-considered moral judgements. But that does not make the concerns any less authentic. And if his desire to do the right thing is strong enough, his motivation will ultimately be in line with his moral judgements. The general desire, in other words, might play an effective regulatory role in the virtuous agents motivational system, which includes both the general desire and the more specic ones.

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Let us take a closer look at how this general desire to do the right thing might operate in the virtuous agents psyche such that it helps explain the reliability phenomenon. As I originally described Bob, he was moved to attend his sons baseball game because his desire to support his son was stronger than his desire to keep his promise. But now suppose that, in addition to these (and other) moral desires, Bob also has the desire to do the right thing. There are two ways that this could help explain the reliability phenomenon given the following two ways that the externalist might characterize the desire to do the right thing: The Desire to Do the Right Thing as an Added Push Bob has a reason to attend the meeting. He wants to keep his promises and he believes that attending the meeting is something that he has promised to do. He also has an additional reason to attend the meeting. He wants to do the right thing and he believes that attending the meeting is the right thing to do, all things considered. He believes this despite his concern to support his son by attending his baseball game, which is scheduled at the same time as the meeting. The force of this latter concern is disproportional when compared with the force of his desire to keep his promises. And so, even though by itself his genuine desire to keep his promises is insufcient for his being moved in accordance with his allthings-considered moral judgement, when added to his desire to do the right thing, Bob is nally moved to attend the meeting. But, crucially, neither the desire to attend to his son nor the desire to keep his promises is derived from the general desire. Bobs desire to do the right thing merely gives an added push, as it were, to his already existing desire to keep his promises. That is what explains why his ultimate motivational drive is in line with his change in moral judgement. Perhaps Smith would still nd this description of the virtuous agents psyche too fetishistic. After all, while Bob is partly motivated by his nonderivative desire to be an honest man and keep his promises, that desire is not enough. It seems we have to ascribe to him one thought too many, namely, the desire to do the right thing. But I do not nd this line of objection particularly compelling at this stage of the argument. What was supposed to be objectionable about appealing to this general desire is that it undermines the authenticity of our particular moral concernsthe latter were supposed to be derived from the former. However, we have seen that we need not accept this story about the origin of our particular moral concerns. And there seems to be nothing obviously perverse about wanting to do the right thing when this desire simply accompanies our particular nonderivative moral concerns, giving them an added push when they are not strong enough to move us in accordance with our all-things-considered moral judgements. Indeed, Bob might strike us as being more fetishistic if he lacked this desire, since the motivational force of one of his moral con-

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cerns, viz., his concern for his son, is disproportional. He would be unduly focused on his son were it not for the regulative role played by his desire to do the right thing. This suggests another option for the externalist. Rather than (or, perhaps, in addition to) characterizing the desire to do the right thing as an added push, the externalist might try characterizing it as a constraint on other rst-order moral desires. The Desire to Do the Right Thing as a Constraint If we choose this characterization, it might be more appropriate to label the general desire that the externalist must countenance the desire to avoid doing the wrong thing (rather than the desire to do the right thing). Bob really loves his son. However, he recognizes that there are times where he is obliged to attend to other things. His love for his son would be out of control, he might say, if he refused to pay attention to anything else. Now, grant that Bobs desire to support his son is stronger than his desire to keep his promises. Still, when he judges that keeping his promise (at the expense of attending to his son) is the right thing to do, his desire to avoid doing the wrong thing might curb his desire to attend to his son. He will thus be moved to attend the meeting in order to keep his promise. And this is all to the good, from his perspective, since that is what he judges morally best, all things considered. An analogy might be useful here. Consider our aversion to pain. It is reasonable to ascribe to at least most of us a desire to avoid pain. This is an important general concern of ours. But we are not pain-avoidance fetishists. Our many and varied desires and concerns are not derived from this general desire. I did not acquire a desire to pursue studies in philosophy because I thought that doing so would be an effective means to avoiding pain. Nonetheless, if I came to believe that my frequent headaches were the effect of too much philosophizing, I might curtail my studies somewhat. My desire to pursue philosophical studies is authentic, genuine, non-derived, but for all that it can still be subdued in light of its coming into conict with a more important general concern of mine. In a like manner, the desire to avoid doing the wrong thing in the virtuous agent places certain restrictions on his various rst-order moral desires. Bobs genuine, non-derived desire to support his son is subdued somewhat by his general aversion to doing the wrong thing. Thus, in response to Smiths unattering conception of the desire to do the right thing, the externalist has at his disposal two alternative ways of characterizing it. He may characterize it in terms of an extra desire that provides an added push to the virtuous agents particular non-derivative moral desires, or as a constraint on those desires. Perhaps he might see it as one desire playing both roles. The characterizations I have suggested challenge Smiths reliability argument since (1) they explain why the virtuous agents motivations shift along with his moral judgements, and

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(2) they do so in a way that does not make the virtuous agent out to be a moral fetishist. The virtuous agent cares about honesty, the well-being of others, and so on. And these concerns are not derived from some more general desire to do the right thing or aversion to doing the wrong thing. Nonetheless, this general desire can gure into our description of the virtuous agent in a healthy way. In particular, it helps out when there is a conict between two (or more) rst-order moral desires either by giving one of those desires an added push, or by constraining one of the desires. And this added pushing and constraining will get the agents ultimate motivation in line with his all-things-considered moral judgements, even when the content of these judgements changes, if the desire is strong enough, as it is in the case of the virtuous agent. If this argument is on the right track, Smiths reliability argument will not convince us that externalism must be rejected in order to preserve a satisfying account of the virtuous agents motivational prole.11 Notes
1 As Smith notes internalism is a vague label in the philosophical literature, used to refer to several quite different claims about the connection between moral facts or judgements on the one hand, and having reasons or being motivated on the other (1995, p. 60). For a useful and philosophically engaging discussion of the various types of internalism see Darwall 1992. 2 MR is thus, in Darwalls terms, a version of both existence and judgement internalism. Darwall explains that [e]xistence internalism is a metaphysical claim. It is the nature of unqualied normativity [e.g., moral rightness], it holds, to be necessarily related to motivation (1992, p. 157). Judgement internalism, on the other hand, is a thesis relating moral judgement to the having of reasons or being moved to act. 3 Smith uses motivated in a way that might be better captured by moved where if an agent is moved to then she s (so long as no external factors prevent her from doing so). This corrected usage allows us to reserve being motivated to for having some propensity towards ing even though the agent might not in the end. In what follows, this distinction will be observed. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion. 4 Certain non-cognitivists (e.g., A. J. Ayer, R. M. Hare, and C. L. Stevenson) argue that agents are necessarily moved to act in accordance with their moral judgements because moral judgements just are, on their view, expressions of how the agent is moved. But it seems we must allow for cases where an agent fails to be moved in accordance with her moral judgement. These cases are all too common. At the same time, we do not want the connection between moral judgement and being appropriately moved to be random. We want to make sense of the practical nature of moral judgements. That is, we want an account of why moral judgements typically move us and what goes wrong when they do not. PR, by relying on MRs claim that moral judgements are judgements

Meta-Ethical Rationalism and the Amoralist Challenge 759 about reasons for action, explains that failure to be moved in accordance with ones moral judgements is due to a breakdown in rationality. There are, of course, more sophisticated versions of non-cognitivism. Allan Gibbard, for example, argues that moral judgements (or, more generally, judgements about rationality) express the agents endorsement of a system of norms (see Gibbard 1990). To be sure, Smith is concerned with more than defending platitudes in The Moral Problem. His central project in that work is to construct a solution to what he calls the moral problem which is, summarily, the problem of reconciling the objectivity and practicality of morality without abandoning a Humean account of motivation. This is a daunting task and I believe that Smith offers a powerful, if not entirely satisfying, solution to the problem. My reasons for the dissatisfaction have less to do with the qualms about rationalism raised in this article and more to do with Smiths metaphysical distinction between normative and motivating reasons. For the type of concern I have in mind here see Dancy 1994 and 1996. See Brink 1986, 1989 (especially chap. 3, pp. 37-80), and 1997. We might add to this list of characters (among others, of course) Glaucon from The Republic. In Book II of The Republic, Glaucon wants to know what reason one has to be moral. He seems to accept that there is a fact of the matter about what actions are morally right, but asks what reason one has to actually be moral rather than simply appear moral to others. Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, devotes the rest of the work to providing an answer to this question. This would be odd if Glaucons question was simply confused as it would be if MR were true. For a discussion of this see Tenenbaum 2000. Smith cites R. M. Hare as offering a paradigm example of this kind of response. According to Hare, when an alleged amoralist judges that, say, lying is wrong, she is to be understood as judging that lying is the kind of thing that others judge to be wrong. Smith agrees with Brink that this response does not take seriously the amoralist challenge. After all, we might imagine an amoralist who has insight into moral questions. That is, his judgements about what is right and wrong might be more accurate than most peoples. In that case, we cannot say that his judgements are about the judgements of other people. However, unlike Brink, he thinks that the response is on the right track. We simply need a better story about why amoralists do not really make moral judgements. The example, of course, presupposes that colours are reliably indexed to objective features of the world. For a defence of subjectivism about colours see Hardin 1988 and McGilvary 1994. I should note that while Smith avoids here an appeal to derived desires, his solution to the moral problem ultimately appeals to desires that are independent of the facts that our moral judgements purport to represent. Again this is a result of his sharp distinction between normative reasons, which he argues are facts about which we can have beliefs, and motivating reasons, which he

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argues are belief-desire pairs (following Hume and Davidson). See note 5 above. 10 Terence Cuneo, for example, attempts this strategy in Cuneo 1999. 11 My thanks to Emily Carson, David Davies, Jeff Speaks, and Sarah Stroud for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References
Brink, David O. 1986 Externalist Moral Realism. Southern Journal of Philosophy, Suppl. 24: 23-41. 1989 Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997 Moral Motivation. Ethics, 108, 1 (October): 4-32. Cuneo, Terrence D. 1999 An Externalist Solution to the Moral Problem. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59, 2 (June): 359-80. Dancy, Jonathan 1994 Why There Is Really No Such Thing as the Theory of Motivation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 95: 1-18. 1996 Real Values in a Humean Context. Ratio, 9, 2: 171-83. Darwall, Stephen L. 1992 Internalism and Agency. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 6. Ethics, pp. 155-74. Gibbard, Allan 1990 Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hardin, Larry 1988 Colors for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. McGilvray, James 1994 Constant Colors in the Head. Synthese, 100:197-239. Smith, Michael 1995 The Moral Problem. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Tenenbaum, Sergio 2000 Ethical Internalism and Glaucons Question. Nous, 34, 1: 10830.