Psychology

Nonetheless, realists and anti-realists alike are usually inclined to hold that Moore’s Open Question Argument is getting at something important— some feature of moral claims that makes them not well captured by nonmoral claims.

According to some, that ‘something important’ is that moral claims are essentially bound up with motivation in a way that nonmoral claims are not (Ayer 1936, Stevenson 1937, Gibbard 1990, Blackburn 1993). Exactly what the connection to motivation is supposed to be is itself controversial, but one common proposal (motivation internalism) is that a person counts as sincerely making a moral claim only if she is motivated appropriately.

To think of something that it is good, for instance, goes with being, other things equal, in favor of it in ways that would provide some motivation (not necessarily decisive) to promote, produce, preserve or in other ways support it.

If someone utterly lacks such motivations and yet claims nonetheless that she thinks the thing in question is good, there is reason, people note, to suspect either that she is being disingenuous or that she does not understand what she is saying. This marks a real contrast with nonmoral claims since the fact that a person makes some such claim sincerely seems never to entail anything in particular about her motivations. Whether she is attracted by, repelled by, or simply indifferent to some color is irrelevant to whether her claim that things have that color are sincere and well understood by her.

Noncognitivists often appeal to this apparent contrast to argue that moral claims have this necessary connection to motivation precisely because they do not express beliefs (that might be true or false) but instead express motivational states of desire, approval, or commitment (that might be satisfied or frustrated but are neither true nor false).

Nonmoral claims, they maintain, commonly express beliefs and for that reason are rightly seen as purporting to report facts and as being evaluable as true or false. Yet, because beliefs alone are motivationally inert, the fact that someone is sincerely making such a claim (that is, is expressing something she actually believes) is compatible with her having any sort of motivation, or none at all. In contrast, claims that commonly express desires, preferences, and commitments do not purport to report facts and are not evaluable as true or false. Yet, because these are all motivationally loaded, the fact that someone sincerely makes such a claim (that is, is expressing something she actually feels) is incompatible with her failing to have the corresponding motivations. As soon as the contrast is in place, noncognitivists argue, we can well explain the motivational force of sincere moral claims and explain too the insight behind Moore’s Open Question Argument, by seeing moral claims as not beliefs but (perhaps a distinctive kind of) desire, preference, or commitment.

Some moral realists respond to this line of argument by rejecting the idea that beliefs are all motivationally inert (Platts 1979). According to them moral beliefs stand as a counter example. But it is not the only apparent counter example. Consider, for instance, first person claims concerning the prospect of pain. If a person claimed that an experience would be painful and yet had no motivation whatsoever, other things equal, to resist, oppose, or in some way avoid that experience, there would be reason to suspect either that she is being disingenuous or that she does not understand what she is saying. That, though, is no reason to think a sincere claim that some experience would be painful does not express a belief, purport to report a fact, and open itself to evaluation as true or false. This all suggests, these realists argue, that moral claims might well carry motivational implications, and that might be the insight behind Moore’s Open Question Argument, even though those claims express beliefs and, as a result, purport to report facts and can be evaluated as true or false.

Other moral realists reject the idea that moral claims are as tightly bound up with motivation as the noncognitivist argument supposes. They point out that, while an absence of appropriate motivation would raise questions, there might be answers. The person making the claims might be so depressed or so weak-willed or so evil, that she remains utterly unmoved even when she sincerely thinks action would secure something valuable. To suppose this is not possible is to beg the question against those who would grant that beliefs are motivationally inert while holding that moral claims express beliefs.

Those that take this line can, and often do, go on to argue nonetheless both (i) that there is a distinctive connection between moral claims and action and (ii) that the connection helps to explain the insight behind Moore’s Open Question Argument. However, they maintain, the distinctive connection is either itself a normative connection between the claims and motivation or else it is a conceptual connection between the claims (or their truth) and which actions a person has reason to perform (Smith 1994). On the first suggestion, a person might well fail to be motivated appropriately by the moral claims she sincerely embraces, but in failing to be appropriately motivated she would thereby count as irrational. On the second suggestion, again a person might well fail to be motivated appropriately by the moral claims she sincerely embraces, but either the fact that she sincerely embraces the claims or the truth of the claims she embraces (if they are true) provide reasons for her to act in certain ways. All of these views involves rejecting motivational internalism even as they each maintain that there is a conceptual connection of some sort between moral claims (or their truth) and action (or the motivation to act). (The resulting views are often characterized as versions of reason internalism.) Nonmoral claims alone never imply anything in particular about what people have reason to do or refrain from doing, but moral claims, in contrast, do have such implications, they argue. On this view, there is a necessary connection between moral claims and action, but it is between these claims (or their truth) and reason (or rationality), and is not such that sincerely embracing a moral claim guarantees appropriate motivation.

None of this is to defend, as realists must, the idea that some of the claims are actually true. But it does suggest that moral realists can acknowledge a necessary connection between moral claims and action without abandoning the cognitivism that is central to their position.

Some error theorists do argue that combining cognitivism with motivational internalism results in an untenable position (Mackie 1977). According to them, the moral facts that would make motivating beliefs true would themselves have to be, in some way, intrinsically motivating states of the world. And, they add, there is no reason to think there are such states. Yet if the motivational internalism one embraces for moral claims has a parallel for pain claims, then this argument must be wrong (assuming it is true of some experiences that they are painful). Either motivational internalism does not require intrinsically motivating states of the world in order for the relevant claims to be true or else we have independent reason (provided by our awareness of pain) to think there are such states. While there may well be reason to think there are no moral facts, this argument does not provide it.