Describe the distinction between Internalism and Externalism about moral motivation. Does Smith's argument against externalism work?

Résumé du document

Moral motivation has always been the ground for fierce battles between different ways of thinking. The link between a belief and the will to act in accordance with the belief is indeed a mysterious problem. Many answers were found, and two schools emerged and opposed on the ground of moral motivation: the internalists and the externalists. Internalists thought the connection between the belief and the act was necessary: if you believe something is right, you will act appropriately. On the other hand, externalists advocated this link was contingent, and that believing something is right does not always imply the act. Within these schools even, some striking disagreement existed: between the Humeans and the Kantians, between cognitivists and non-cognitivists. One of the most important figures in this debate was Michael Smith, an Internalist who wrote "The Moral Problem". We will discuss several aspects of this debate in this document.

Extraits

[...] But they contradict the third one: when you buy something, you believe it is right to buy it, and you will be motivated to act. This shows that even in the absence of desire, you can be motivated. According to Smith, there are 3 ways to deal with this problem. Externalism gives up but keeps and Anti- humeanism only keeps And non-cognitivism keeps and by giving up Smith's idea is that an agent judges that it is right for her to G in circumstances than either she is motivated to G in C or she is practically irrational”. [...]

[...] As we will see later, externalists are their opponents on the ground or ethical motivation, and internalists use to restrict externalist's counter-examples to irrationality. We can distinguish two different types of internalists: the Humeans and the Kantians. Humeans are traditionally noncognitivist. Noncognitivists, who think that judgments express emotions or preferences rather than report genuine truths, often start out by affirming that moral judgment is directly motivating (the link is necessary). Underlying the position that only noncognitivism can explain this fact is the assumption that the cognitive states through which we grasp judgments capable of genuine truth are motivationally inert. [...]

[...] Self- interest is an undeniably widespread and powerful pattern of motivation, and this makes it an obvious candidate in terms of which to reconstruct moral concern. These phenomena would reflect the natural concern of humans for their own wellbeing, and the equally natural use of practical reason in the service of this concern. This explanation would in turn support rather than undermine the authority of morality. Then altruism and sympathy. A genuinely moral agent as opposed to an egoist is altruistic, in the sense of having some immediate concern for the interests of others. [...]

[...] We will first explain what internalism is, than oppose it to externalism, and finally see which reasons have been found to explain moral motivation. The question about the possibility and nature of moral motivation is one of the most important one in ethics. It reveals indeed much more than the question itself: many other subjects are linked to the answers philosophers found. They disagree about the role that motivational investigations should play within the larger subject of ethical theory. These disagreements oppose two ways of thinking, two approaches of mankind: is moral thought is necessarily motivating or not? [...]

[...] We can also say that whether a person being motivated to do something will do it or not does not influence his inner goodness: it should not imply that the person is not a good and strong will person or someone irrational, “what makes some people motivated in one way rather than another is a matter of their psychological make-up”. Finally, we can use what Miller says to criticise Smith's arguments. According to Smith, the distinction between internalism and externalism lies in a problem of derived and underived desire to do something. For externalists, judging honesty is good implies the existence of a desire to do what is good, and then the desire to be honest because it's good. It is a derivative desire. Smith on the contrary thinks that is should be a non-derivative desire. [...]