Are Reasons for Moral Actions Contingent on Desires?

Slide I

Readings:
! Today: Tiberius 2015. “Desires and Reasons”. In Moral Psychology (Ch.4).
! Next time: Tiberius 2015. “Emotion and Moral Judgment”. In Moral
Psychology (Ch.5).
Slide II

What’s the chapter about?

! We have seen the following argument for psychological egoism (without
laying out the argument in these steps):
1 Every action is motivated by a desire.
2 Every desire is a desire to promote self-interest.
3 Therefore, psychological egoism is true: every action is motivated by a
desire to promote self-interest.
! We have seen reasons to be suspicious of premise 2.
Slide III

! What about premise 1?

When one reluctantly chooses to euthanize one’s beloved pet, how
should the reluctance be understood?
Can the person be taken to be thinking, “I didn’t want to put her to
sleep, but I had a stronger desire to end her suffering” (46)?
Or should we describe the person’s state of mind by saying that “her
desires and feelings lead her in one direction, but her Reason tells her
that she ought to end her dog’s suffering” (46)?
In short, can actions be motivated purely by reasoning or judgment,
independently of desires?
Slide IV

Whether premise 1 is true is an important issue because the premise leads to

quite general claim about morality.
! Consider the following argument:
Every action is motivated by a desire.
∀x (Ax → Dx )
Every moral action is an action.
∀x (Mx → Ax )
Therefore, every moral action is motivated by a desire.
∀x (Mx → Dx )
By contraposition, anything not motivated by a desire is not a moral
action.
∀x (¬Dx → ¬Mx )
In other words, we can never reluctantly do something moral – what
we do is not a moral action if we don’t want to do it!
Slide V

! What the argument highlights is a pivotal question: are reasons for moral
actions contingent on desires?
For example, is it true that one has reason to respect others’ right to
privacy only if one wants to do so?
Slide VI

In fact, the question bears upon an even broader issue

! A distinction
If a reason is contingent upon an individual’s accidental psychological
properties (which may or may not be desire-related properties), we
say that the reason is non-absolute (or simply contingent).
If a reason is not contingent upon an individual’s accidental
psychological properties, we say that the reason is absolute.
! Our question thus becomes: are there absolute reasons for moral actions?
A negative answer many find appealing: there are only desire-based
non-absolute reasons for moral actions.
Should we accept the answer?
The whole chapter can be interpreted as an attempt to evaluate the
answer.
Slide VII

An overarching argument for the claim that there are only desire-based
non-absolute reasons for moral actions
! “if all reasons are motivating (RI), and if motivation always requires a
desire (HTM), then any moral reason requires a desire” (51).
! What is a motivating reason?
A motivating reason is often contrasted with a normative reason.
Let’s take a look at the passage beginning with “Philosophers have
different views about the precise nature of this distinction...” (49).
Slide VIII

Reasons Internalism (RI)

! RI is a view about normative reasons (56 fn. 6).
! RI: “even normative reasons must be connected to motivating states such
as desires... you don’t have a (normative) reason to do something unless...
you would have a motive to act on it under the right circumstances” (50).
! RI is contrasted with Reasons Externalism (RE): “there is no necessary
relationship between normative reasons and motivation” (51).
! RI seems much more natural than RE – why would anyone prefer the
latter?
Arguably, RE better captures the nature of moral reasons.
Slide IX

The Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM)

! HTM is a view about motivating reasons (56 fn. 6).
! HTM: “desires are necessary for motivation” (49).
! Michael Smith’s Teleological Argument (Tiberius, 2015, p. 54)
Whoever has a motivating reason has a goal.
1
Whoever has a goal is in a state characterized by a world-to-mind
2
direction of fit.
3 Whoever is in a state characterized by a world-to-mind direction of
fit is in a state of desire.
4 Therefore, whoever has a motivating reason is in a state of desire.
! Directions of fit: mind-to-world and world-to-mind
Slide X

An objection to HTM: premise 1 of the teleological argument is false.

! Let’s take a look at the passage beginning with “Some people reject the
first premise...” (55).
! Response: consider again the example of Ann, for whom it is valuable to
count blades of grass. Suppose Ann just bought a calculator.
When asked “why did Ann buy a calculator?”, one might say, “that’s
because a calculator helps her keep track of how many blades of grass
she has counted”.
Those hearing this answer might be baffled and ask: “why is that a
reason?” Here the answer might be: “That’s because Ann really wants
to know how many blades of grass there are.”
Desires are invoked to answer the second question, not the first.
Slide XI

Another objection to HTM:

HTM is often presented as as a theory showing that actions cannot be
motivated purely by reasoning or judgment, but HTM doesn’t really show that.
! What might show that is a view about reasoning and judgment that goes
hand-in-hand with HTM: desires are responsible for what we do, while
reasoning and judgment are only responsible for how we do it.
! The above view has been disputed – even if all our actions are determined
by desires, it might be that certain desires result from reasoning and
judgment.
Slide XII

! Scanlon: “‘Desire’ is sometimes used in a broad sense in which the class of

desires is taken to include any ‘pro-attitude’... Desires in this sense include
such things as a sense of duty, loyalty, or pride, as well as an interest in
pleasure or enjoyment... But many elements of this class are what Nagel
calls ‘motivated desires’; that is to say, they do not seem to be sources of
motivation but rather the motivational consequences of something else,
such as the agent’s recognition of something as a duty...” (1998, p. 37,
note omitted).
Slide XIII

Schroeder’s theory of desires as “mental states that drive reward-based

learning” (58)
! A desire is a mental state whose object appears capable of bringing about
pleasure.
! If the desired object does bring about pleasure when one acquires it,
learning occurs, which raises the chances for having the same kind of
desire in the future.
! The satisfaction of ultimate desires regularly brings about pleasure, so the
reward-based learning helps to make one’s desires consistent with one’s
ultimate desires.
! Such reward-based learning is supposed to be regulated by a brain
mechanism whose existence is an empirically supported hypothesis.
Slide XIV

! Predictions:
New instrumental desires are acquired when one finds out that
something tends to bring about a kind of pleasure consistent with
one’s ultimate desires.
New ultimate desires are acquired only by being associated with old
ultimate desires, so they cannot be acquired by means of reasoning or
judgment.
! It follows that reasoning about moral matters provides motivating reasons
only by altering instrumental desires.
Unless the fulfillment of moral requirements is congenial to satisfying
some of one’s ultimate desires, one won’t be motivated by reasoning
to fulfill moral requirements.
! The theory is very friendly to HTM.
Slide XV

Back to the overarching argument

! The argument
1 For any x , if x is a normative reason, then x is also a motivating
reason (at least in the relevant contexts). (RI)
2 For any x , if x is a motivating reason, then the person to which x
applies is in a state of desire. (HTM)
3 Therefore, for any x , x is a normative reason only if the person to
which x applies is in a state of desire. (Conditional syllogism)
4 Being in a state of desire is an accidental psychological property.
(Claim)
5 Therefore, for any x , x is a normative reason only if the person to
which x applies has a certain accidental psychological property.
(Conditional syllogism)
6 Therefore, x is non-absolute. (Definition of “non-absolute”)
7 Implication: since moral reasons are normative reasons, they are
non-absolute.
Slide XVI

! If reasoning can independently lead to desires, then anti-Humeans might

be able to dispute premise 4.
Maybe there are desires that aren’t accidental, because all rational
beings would have those desires when they reason about moral
matters.
But Schroeder’s theory of desires makes this look like a remote
possibility.
! There might not be any absolute moral reasons.
Slide XVII

Responses?
! Defending RE?
! Perhaps moral reasons can still be nearly universal even if they aren’t
absolute.
Perhaps ultimate desires for such things as “love, comfort and
security” are sufficient for generating instrumental desires that
motivate one to act in accordance with moral requirements (62).
References I

Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.
Tiberius, Valerie (2015). Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction. New
York: Routledge.