Recent Work on Motivational Internalism

Abstract

shared. 1 We use 'to judge' and its derivatives 'judgment', 'make a judgment', etc., to refer to a mental state or act rather than a speech act. These terms are sometimes used to refer to speech acts rather than mental states, in which case internalism posits a necessary connection between moral speech acts and motivation. We will not consider this claim; for discussion, see Joyce Ridge (2006). Also note that we do not use 'internalism' as requiring that the moral judgment is itself a motivational state: only some versions of internalism does, as we shall see.

Are moral judgements adaptations? Three reasons why it is so difficult to tell

“…This raises the contested question of moral judgements' conceptual relation to motivation (Björklund et al 2012). According to motivational internalists, moral judgements are intrinsically motivating.…”

How can neuroscience contribute to moral philosophy, psychology and education based on Aristotelian virtue ethics?

“…Of course, motivational internalism perhaps is perhaps better than motivational externalism in terms of its structure. Motivational internalism explains the mechanism of moral behaviour with a relatively simple and straightforward model (Mele 1989;ShaferLandau 2000;Bjorklund et al 2012); it does not require the complicated involvement of diverse psychological constructs or components, such as a will, to explain how motivation is generated. Also, as shown by the Kohlbergian model of moral reasoning development (Kohlberg 1981(Kohlberg , 1984), the internalism model was perhaps supported by empirical evidence.…”

The argument from moral psychology

“…The important thing to bear in mind is that 'internalism' is an ambiguous label: it is used to refer to several different views about the connection between moral judgements on the one hand, and being motivated on the other (Björklund et al 2012). Indeed, when it comes to understanding the nature of the conceptual connection that holds between our moral judgements and motivation, it is possible to distinguish two main versions of internalism, strong (or direct, unconditional) and weak (or indirect, conditional).…”