Paper on
Bernard Williams’ Internal and External Reasons
Before making a critical evaluation of Williams’ thesis
about internal and external reasons in moral, I will shortly
present what I consider to be the main points of his
arguments. Afterwards, I will stress upon the weakest
assumptions and I will maintain that his claim that external
reasons in moral are either reducible to internal reasons or
inappropriate is not sound.
The
internal reasons for an action could be formalized as
‘individual X has a reason to do Z, where Z will serve X’s
motive’; that is, the internal reasoning is linking the
action Z with an internal motive which X already has, where
Z is discovered through this reasoning. Therefore, internal
reasoning tries to find means for satisfying X’s internal
motives. This model, which assumes that between motives
and reasons is a mere
relationship of ends/means is named by Williams the sub-Humean
model of internal reasoning; the internal motives of an
agent are named the agent’s subjective motivational set
(S). The elements of subjective motivational set are
indeterminate, but one could say that between them are
desires, dispositions of evaluation,
patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties,
various projects and commitments of agents. Maybe
surprisingly, needs are excluded from S.
About this model
one could say that:
(I)
“An internal reason statement is falsified by the absence of
some appropriate element from S”.
- a) This
statement implies for sub-Humean model that all the members
of S may give rise to internal reasons.
- b) For a more than sub-Humean
model, this statement implies that one should exclude the
false beliefs from S (because internal reason concerns
all the agent’s rationality, not
only moral explanation).
For a more than
sub-Humean model, I b implies that:
(II)
“A member M of S will not give to an agent a reason for Z-ing
if either M’s existence is dependent on false belief, or
agent’s belief in the relevance of Z-ing to M’s satisfaction
is false.”
II implies, for a
more than sub-Humean model, that:
(III)
- a) An agent could have false
internal reason about himself.
·
b)
An agent could be ignorant about an internal reason about
himself.
(IV)
“Internal reason statements can be discovered in
deliberative reasoning” starting from S’ elements.
As a
result, the practical deliberation in Williams’ internal
reasoning model (which is not the sub-Humean model) has
three functions. First, it points out new actions that an
agent should do, starting from agent’s S. Second, it could
give additional reasons for an action Z which is already
motivated. Last, it influences S’ content by uncovering the
false elements in S.
The
external reasons for an action could be formalized as ‘there
is a reason for individual X to action Z, where reason gives
X motive to perform Z’. That is, the reasoning by itself
provides a motivation for performing an action; however, the
external reason is different from the Kantian categorical
principle because the external reasoning is not by necessity
related with ethics, and because the relation between ‘X has
a reason to Z’ and ‘X ought to do Z’ should be proved.
Despite the claim implied by the external reason theory (i.e.,
reason could motivate), Williams assumes by definition that
an external reason could not motivate. As a result, in order
that an external reason to motivate an agent, the agent
should believe that an external reason could motivate
him. However, believe is an internal reason statement.
Therefore, the external reason could be either a link
between an element of S and an action, but in this case the
external reason is identical with the internal one; or it
could give rise to a new motive in order to act, which is
either impossible (because of external reason definition) or
it must involve a belief (which is part of internal
reasoning) - therefore is confounded again with the internal
reasoning. As a conclusion, in all the relevant cases for
ethics, external reasons are reducible to internal reasons.
The
second main argument against external reason theory pointed
out by Williams is that this theory could not affirm that an
agent is irrational when agent is not convinced by an
external reason, simply because the agent could claim that
he is not convinced and not performing a certain action
because it may be the case that the external reason which is
supposed to convince him is false, and therefore it would be
irrational for him to let himself to be convinced. Moreover,
Williams says that there would be no difference between
false and truth external reasons if it is to convince one.
In
the following I will dispute the arguments against
external reason and those for internal reason, my
thesis being that his arguments point out rather that
internal reasons are in fact reducible to external ones, but
not vice versa.
First, Williams affirms that the external reasons he is
talking about are not to be confounded with the categorical
judgements, and this is for two reasons. On one hand, the
set of external reasons is larger than the set of moral
reasons (e.g., the sciences’ reasons are external
reasons, too). On the other hand, even if some of the
external reasons are related to ethics and decisions, the
relation between ‘having an external reason for Z-ing’ and
‘ought to do Z’ has still to be explained. Nevertheless, if
the first argument seems to be sound, the second one is not
demonstrated, but assumed as a premise. As already noted,
Williams says that, by definition, there could be no
relation between an external reason and a decision to act.
The link between external reason and decision to act is made
by belief, which is part of internal reasoning.
Surprisingly, belief is not enumerated as part of an
individual’s subjective motivational set. However, either if
belief is part of internal reason, that is, it is a
connection between a decision and an S’ element, or if
belief is part of S, belief is depended on S. As I will
show, at the same time S is dependent on external reason in
Williams’ text, and therefore he is self-contradictory in
demonstrating this point (letting aside that he assumes
through definition what he has to prove - namely, that he is
using a circular demonstration).
As
regarding the second main argument against external reason
theory, my comment is that if he could claim that there is
no difference between true or false external arguments for
an individual who has to take a decision, then he should
maintain also that there is no difference between true or
false internal reasons in taking a decision. And this is for
the same cause, namely that an agent could say that he is
not to take a decision regarding Z-ing simply because he
could not be sure that the internal reasons or the S’
elements that buttress Z-ing are correct. As a direct
result, internal reason theory is no more able to say that
an agent is irrational when a (supposed true) internal line
of reasoning than the external reason theory does not
convince him to act.
In
what regards the argument for internal reason theory, the
first problem is the assumption that all the motives, which
an internal line of reasoning could find, have to be
internal motives. Williams is, again, assuming what he has
to prove.
The
second observation against internal reason theory concerns
the content of an agent’s subjective motivational set S. As
I said sooner, if an agent is to be put under the accusation
of irrationality if it is not convinced by an internal line
of reasons, then the internal reasoning has to ensure the
agent that it is rational to follow its results; the means
for this is the proof that the internal reasons are true.
This is done, basically, through eliminating the false
elements from S (see the third function of practical
deliberation). Nevertheless, the method used to eliminate S’
false elements is problematic; there is not a
straightforward way to certify that the internal reasoning
is the one which discovers that a certain element of S is
false. If an element M of S is false, there are three cases.
1.
In the first case, M is false because some other
elements of S contradict it; at this point, it is not clear
if internal reasoning or external reasoning decides its
falseness. The problem is that there are no clear rules to
determine which of two conflicting S’ elements are false: it
is the number? it is their
reference to other S’ elements, in which case we have
infinite regression? it is
something else (what)? Therefore internal reason is not
necessarily independent from external reason.
2.
In the second case, M is false because of something
external to S. Because the internal reasoning have been
defined as that kind of reason that makes the connection
between a decision for action and an element of S, it means
that in this case one could not use the internal reasoning
but the external reasoning for deciding if M is false or
not; therefore internal reasoning depends upon external
reasoning.
3.
The third case is that M is false because both other
S’ elements and non S’ elements. In this case, internal
reasoning depends upon external one, too.
In
conclusion, as the elements of an agent’s subjective
motivational set are the core of internal reasoning theory
and as these S’ elements could depend upon external reasons,
I would oppose to William’s claim that external reasons are
reducible to internal ones, counter-affirming that his
arguments buttress indeed the thesis that internal reasons
are reducible to external ones.
Cristian Vasilescu
2000
Bibliography:
Bernard Williams, The Truth in Relativism, chapter in
"Moral Luck", Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981, pp. 132-143
