Motivational Internalism: Making Moral Rationalizations Appear Legitimate

Yesterday I provided objections to the thesis of motivational internalism - the notion that to know the good is to do the good. A person can be totally convinced that something is morally obligatory and still care nothing about it.

It should be noted that, in this sense, for something to be good means that people generally have many and strong reasons to use rewards such as praise and punishments such as condemnation to promote a desire for that thing (or an aversion to that which is bad). By definition, a reward is something that agents have a motivating reason to realize and people have a motivating reason to prevent the realization of punishments.

In a sense, then, a person has a motivating reason to do good and avoid evil.

However, it would be more accurate to say that people have a motivating reason to do what people generally take to be good and avoid what people generally take to be evil. Individuals - even whole cultures - can be mistaken; praising what they have reason to condemn and condemning what they have reason to praise. The motivating reason to realize rewards and avoid punishments is tied to what people think is good or bad, not what is good or bad in fact. It is not a case that "to know the good is to the good", but "to know what people generally take to be good is to do what people generally take to be good" - to obtain the rewards or to avoid the punishments.

Convincing a person that she has a motivating reason in this sense is merely describing the sociological fact about what people generally will reward or punish.

The motivational internalist would hardly find this satisfying.

It is also probably quite rare that a person can avoid the social conditioning where they learn to desire to be a good person or an aversion to being a bad person.

Anybody with a desire to be a good person will perceive a motivating reason to do X upon being convinced that a good person would do X. This works a lot like the way that the motivational internalist says that morality works - convincing a person that something is good will see that person motivated to realize what was said to be good. This motivation, in this case, is not the motivation of seeking a reward (such as praise) or to avoid punishment (such as condemnation). The motivation, in this case, comes from a desire to do what a good person would do, and to avoid doing what a good person would not do as an end in itself.

However, this consequence is contingent on having the desire to do what a good person would do and avoid doing what a good person would not do. It does mot support the thesis that to know the good is to do the good. It takes more than knowing the good to motivate an agent to do the good.

Because of these facts, people seldom have a reason to admit - at least to others - that what they do is evil or they refrain from doing good. To say, "Yes, I know it is wrong" is to say, "Yes, I know that people generally have reason to condemn or even punish people like me." This is a difficult fact to admit - so people seldom (if ever) do so. Instead, they protest and fight and argue and assert, "You have no reason to harm people like me. You may think you do, but you do not."

This supports the observation that motivational internalists use to defend their thesis. They note that very few people do what they assert to be wrong, or admit to an obligation they do mot perform. They make up excuses. "He doesn't deserve to be repaid the money he let me borrow because he did not give me a far rate," or "A woman who dresses like that is a tease who deserves to be raped - let this be a lesson to her." They rationalize their actions to make it appear to be the case that the person who would do such a thing does not deserve to be harmed.

Motivational internalism is not, in fact, an interesting thesis about the nature of morality. It is the practice of rationalization run amuk. It wraps this rationalization in an illusion of legitimacy and, in doing so, provides aid and comfort to evil people trying to convince themselves and others that they are good.

It is also responsible for misdirecting a lot of effort and interfering with our ability to make a morally better culture. We are lead to believe that all we need to do is to present a person with the moral facts and they will do the good. Yet, this is like presenting a flat tire, jack, and crowbar with the moral facts and getting a flat tire changed. It causes us to neglect the real work that needs to be done in actually using social tools to promote desires people generally have many and strong reasons to promote and inhibiting desires people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit.

Through these effects, the doctrine makes the world a worse place than it would otherwise have been.