Between Internalism and Externalism in Ethics

Author(s): Evan Simpson

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Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 195 (Apr., 1999), pp. 201-214
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The PhilosophicalQuarterly,Vol.49, No. 195 April 1999
ISSN 00oo3-8094

BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM

IN ETHICS

BY EVANSIMPSON

Internalists in ethics hold that moral beliefs have practical implications: to

accept the authority of a moral claim is to be motivated to act accordingly.
Externalists reject this thesis: one can recognize that something has a
morally desirable or undesirable property (it would fulfil an obligation or do
harm, say) yet deny that this recognition alone provides a corresponding
motive for action. The thesis of this paper is that internalism and external-
ism do not exhaust the possibilities. They are contrary rather than contra-
dictory positions, and both of them are false. This suggestion has been
abstractlymade before, by Jonathan Dancy among others,' but it has lacked
any psychological interpretation going much beyond questioning the ob-
viousness of Hume's view that beliefs are motivationally inert. I shall
elaborate the suggestion concretely by developing a new proposal about the
contribution of moral beliefs to motivation. I shall also show how the basic
issue of 'motives internalism' impinges upon 'reasons internalism' and inter-
nalist theories of the good and the right.

I. THE LOGICAL ISSUE

The basic issue is easily formulated. According to David Brink, if internalism

is correct then 'moral considerations necessarilymotivate'.2 If externalism is
correct, the relationship between moral beliefs and motives for action is only
'See J. Dancy, Moral Reasons(Oxford: Blackwell, I993), p. 6; cf. J.D. Velleman, 'The
Possibility of Practical Reason', Ethics,io6 (I996), pp. 694-726, at p. 716.
2
D. Brink, MoralRealismand theFoundations of Ethics(Cambridge UP, 1989), p. 42; cf., e.g.,
T. Nagel, ThePossibilityofAltruism(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970),p. 7.

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202 EVAN SIMPSON

contingent. Believing one is under a moral obligation is connected with

desiring to fulfil it only if one also happens to feel sympathy towards those to
whom one has the obligation, or is concerned about the impact of law or
custom upon persons who neglect their obligations, or has a general desire
to fulfil whatever one believes one is obliged to do, or has some other motive
for compliance extrinsic to the belief in question.
Motives, on the externalist characterization, are desire-related states
without which, in the Aristotelian and Humean pictures, no action can
occur. In another sense of the word, motives can be distant from agency.
The police may assign a motive for murder to me and my siblings when
they discover that we stand to gain a handsome inheritance upon our
uncle's death. The ascription of such motives need not be a psychological
characterization, since we may lack any vestige of intention or inclination to
act, and might never have considered that we had a motive before being in-
formed that we were suspects. These 'motives' are not central to the debate,
since externalists can grant that beliefs entail them without conceding any-
thing to internalists about inclinations to act.
Externalists rightly seek a concession from internalists, who appear to
ignore instances of moral indifference and other kinds of failure to connect
beliefs with motives in the sense primary for the issue at hand. However, it is
possible to rescue conceptual connections between beliefs and motives by
specifying logical relations weaker than logical necessitation. We can say, for
example, that one kind of thing logicallydependsupon another if it is logically
impossible for things of the first kind always to occur in the absence of the
second, but logically possible that the first should sometimes occur alone.
This is a logical relationship, but unlike necessitation it does not make it
logically impossible for the first thing to occur without the second's also
occurring.
This sort of logical relationship is well recognized in other areas of
philosophy. One example can be found in Wittgenstein's notion of criteria,
on which mental states are in their nature expressible even if they are not
always expressed. For instance, pain is typically but not invariably associated
with pain behaviour. This is not a contingent relationship, because although
it is possible for pain to occur unaccompanied by pain behaviour, it is im-
possible for pain never to be manifested in behaviour. Another example is
clearly to be seen in Donald Davidson's view that 'most of a person's beliefs
must be true', although it is not necessarily the case that any one particular
belief is true. The impossibility (if such it is) of massive error enables
Davidson to say 'belief is in its nature veridical'.3
3
Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in E. LePore (ed.), Truthand
Interpretation: on thePhilosophy
Perspectives ofDonaldDavidson(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), at p. 314.

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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 203

It is not my intention to endorse the views of Wittgenstein or Davidson,

or any general account of necessary yet defeasible relationships. I aim only
to explicate one such relationship and defend it. If saying that it is possible
for a person's beliefs to occur 'sometimes' but 'not always' in the absence
of motives appears weak and uninformative, one can think instead of the
motives that 'normally' accompany certain of the agent's beliefs. Dancy does
this, and I shall use the same gloss myself, but the temporal concepts are in
one way preferable. Their truth-conditions are clear and precise, whereas
those of 'normally' are not. 'Normally' may also be too strong, suggesting
connections that usually or ordinarily obtain, whereas there are circum-
stances discussed below in which this is not the case.
In the absence of an accepted analysis of normality, further specification
of the dependency relationship can be provided, not by more logical ana-
lysis, but by a psychological interpretation of moral dispositions. This is
needed because nothing in logic alone makes sense of a modal connection
between beliefs and motives. The psychological character of the interpreta-
tion also clarifies an important point. Speaking only of a general conceptual
relationship between 'moral beliefs and motives' would not provide a con-
vincing formulation of logical dependency, which should characterize a
relationship between the beliefs and motives of particular agents. It is not
enough that motivation normally accompanies moral beliefs across a
community or the species. That would be a significant concession to exter-
nalism, since there could then be any number of people whose moral
beliefs never motivated them. I therefore claim that motivation is included
in the moral beliefs of individual people. It is part of making moral judge-
ments that one is sometimes moved in virtue of the content of those
judgements.
Suppose, then, that some beliefs and motives are related through logical
dependency in this way, so that these beliefs are in their nature practical.
Would internalism be vindicated? No, because on a given occasion one can
have a belief without having any motivation at all. However, externalism
would not be vindicated either, because the relationship between beliefs and
motivations is not contingent: it is necessarily the case that anyone who has
beliefs of this kind will sometimes be motivated to act.

II. A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

Are there any beliefs of this kind? Yes, and there are moral beliefs among
them. Both points are readily evident as long as affective states are not
assumed to be fundamentally non-cognitive. One of the most interesting
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204 EVAN SIMPSON

features of the beliefs typical of familiar emotions is that (speaking a little

loosely for the moment) they are not always motivationally inert, but possess
the disposition which I shall often summarize as 'concern'. At least some
moral beliefs belong to this larger family of emotional beliefs, and can be
expected to share their dispositional property. Taking first a simple non-
moral illustration, the belief in impending danger which is typical of fear: to
have beliefs about danger is normally to be concerned about the situation
to which they apply. Normally they motivate us, but it also sometimes
happens that we recognize something as dangerous without having any
concern at all. This may occur in cases of emotional exhaustion or when the
danger perceived lies so far in the future as to be beyond the normal scope
of prudence. There are also cases of foolish overconfidence.
Concern does not always result in action, since one may have a motive
without acting upon it. It is plausible only to say that where a motive is
present one is disposed to act unless certain conditions constrain one or
render concern inactive. On this point there is no inherent difference
between internalism and externalism, since the issue lies in the capacity of
beliefs to include or generate concern, where internalism is challenged by
the occasional impotence of emotional beliefs.
Internalism might nevertheless be saved through a further dispositional
account, according to which these beliefs motivate unless certain conditions
obtain. It seems sufficient to restrict the set of conditions relative to which
certain beliefs do necessitate relevant motives, in a way indicated by my
examples. The belief that one is threatened by harm necessitates motivating
concern, provided one is not exhausted or foolishly overconfident, the harm
does not lie too far in the future, etc. It may not be possible to give an
exhaustive enumeration of the additional conditions that must be satisfied in
order for belief to entail motivation, but it is possible to say at least that,
necessarily, where belief occurs and no defeating circumstances are present,
then motivation occurs as well. One might speak here of a presumption of
motive. Motivation is necessarily present unless a defeating condition
obtains, in which case the presumption is falsified in that instance but not
generally. Since this dispositional account retains necessitation as the rela-
tionship between beliefs and motives, it remains strictly internalist.
There is a problem with this view for internalists, however. A necessary
connection between beliefs and motives should be explicable, whereas the
proposal simply asserts the existence of a connection, without in any way
explaining it or justifying confidence that all potential defeaters of internal-
ism have something in common that makes it possible to identify the
unusual cases when they occur. James Dreier says that 'What the sceptic
really suspects is that the only way of capturing the commonality is: "case in
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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 205

which A believes x is good and A is not motivated to promote x".... The

upshot of internalism would be to point to a common object of desire, note
that there are exceptions, and then dress this fact in a specious logical
thesis.'4 We are owed an account of why one must be motivated by im-
pending danger, other things being equal - but resorting to a technical
device to save internalism does not provide this. Dispositional internalism
does little to remedy the obscurity accepted by the early emotivists in
suggesting that moral claims convey a 'very subtle ... suggestion' through
'complicated instinctive reasons', influencing action 'through the contagion
of... feelings'.5 Moreover, because resorting to defeasibility conditions does
not explain what it is about beliefs that enables them to motivate, it leaves
externalists able to suppose that the connection is contingent after all,
needing to be completed by desire.
If externalists are mainly interested in defeating the internalist thesis that
beliefs necessarily motivate, then dispositional internalism is a good re-
sponse. If their challenge is that beliefs alone cannot possibly motivate or
even that the motivating capacity of beliefs is mysterious, then the response
is insufficient. What the argument needs is a fuller explication of the con-
nections between beliefs and motives, one that represents beliefs neither as
always linked to motives nor as obscure sources of motives. The psycho-
logical interpretation of the dependency account offers an explication when
augmented by a semantic characterization that shows how emotional beliefs
figure in motivation.
David Wiggins has suggested such a characterization for the efficacy of
certain beliefs, in proposing that 'a property and an attitude are made for
one another', so that 'it will be strange for someone to use the term for the
property if he is in no way party to the attitude in question'.6 My explana-
tion of this strangeness identifies an aspect of linguistic competence. In the
case of the property of dangerousness and the attitude of fear, the depend-
ency account ties the meaning of 'danger' to a motivating attitude. Nothing
would constitute a danger if nothing were ever feared. Given the connection
between fear and danger, though, the identification of something as
dangerous gives the belief an inherent link to action, even though this link is
not necessitation. Such a connection is equally clear in the case of moral
emotions, for example, pity, which leads me to want to remove your
suffering because I regard it as a bad thing. If I did not believe it to be bad,
my rationale for helping you might simply be to relieve myself of this

Dreier, 'Internalism and Speaker Relativism', Ethics,IOI(I990), pp. 6-26, at pp. I2-I3.
5'J.C.L.
Stevenson, Factsand Values:Studiesin EthicalAnalysis(Yale UP, I963), pp. 17, 23, 29.
6 D.
Wiggins, 'A Sensible Subjectivism?', in Needs, Values,Truth:Essays in the Philosophyof
Value(Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), p. I99.

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206 EVAN SIMPSON

distressing emotion rather than to cause your pain to stop. The evil of
suffering is tied to pity as danger is tied to fear, so that to identify suffering as
evil normally motivates, though sometimes one may harden one's heart
against it. This inherent tendency is not consistent with an externalist
account on which my moral belief that people ought not to suffer leads me
to act when conjoined with the contingent fact of sympathy. The problem is
that I would not have the moral belief at all if I did not sometimes feel the
pity that includes the perception that someone is suffering miserably. But it
is not consistent with an internalist account either, since I can have this be-
lief and not care to help. It is only that I cannot both have beliefs of this kind
and never care to help.

III. HOW BELIEFSMAY MOTIVATE

This view might be taken to share much the same error as the internalist
thesis that it is impossible to hold certain beliefs without being motivated to
act on them. Thus one instance of my view is that, necessarily, on occasions
of perceiving that something is threatening to me, I am sometimes
motivated to escape it: it cannot be that I believe myself endangered but am
never motivated. However, it seems easy to imagine Stoics who have trained
themselves to have no concern for the harms that come to them. They
would hardly agree with my claim that 'nothing would constitute a danger if
we were not sometimes concerned in this way', for the point of their
reflection is to escape the disturbing impulses previously caused by recog-
nizing harm. But this case presents no serious difficulty, for our Stoics are
people who were once motivated by fear of harm. Having now subdued
their emotions, they can still be said to understand the concept of danger,
and it remains true that to perceive that something is dangerous is, in the
standard logical sense, sometimes to be appropriately motivated. Some such
background is needed in order to understand someone who sincerely claims
to believe that something is dangerous but displays complete equanimity
when confronted by it.
This background has been described by psychologists who study the
effects of brain damage on emotion. Persons whose intelligence seems unim-
paired, who are not lacking in social knowledge and have a normal capacity
for attention and memory, may become dispassionate spectators insensitive
to displays of 'buildings collapsing in earthquakes, houses burning, people
injured in gory accidents or about to drown in floods'. One patient reported
'without equivocation that his own feelings had changed from before his
illness. He could sense how topics that once had evoked a strong emotion no
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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 207

longer caused any reaction, positive or negative.'7 Although this inadvertent

Stoic may no longer be concerned to choose an advantageous course of
action, his ability to remember making appropriate practical decisions
reinforces the logical thesis that having emotional beliefs requires sometimes
having a characteristicmotive.
In order to see the peculiarity of this case in more useful detail, let us
consider an interesting variation in which normal people try to master the
concept of danger by learning about possible circumstances in which fear
would be appropriate without ever facing actual threats. Having learnt to
use the word 'dangerous' through such imaginative understanding, people
could steel their emotions before facing things they deem to be in fact
dangerous. They would then have beliefs about dangerous things without
having had to experience emotional concern about them. Of course this is a
fantastic scenario, whose implausibility may limit its relevance for ethical
theory. None the less the case is readily generalized to any other physically
normal but affectless agent whose unconcern about recognized danger
constitutes an apparent counter-example for the thesis that understanding
danger depends upon sometimes being motivated by fear.8 However, there
is actually a failure of understanding if in such cases we can take seriously
the proposition that the meaning of 'danger' ties it to action. It is then
possible to see that affectless agents can recognize that events may make
them worse off- they may do damage to their bodies by smoking, say - but
also that this recognition falls short of demonstrating mastery of the concept
of danger by these persons. This distinction needs further explanation, but
its basis is that an objective description differs from an emotional
characterization, only the latter being logically related to motivation. The
fearless agent does not understand why one should be concerned about
danger, just as a pitiless observer does not understand why a creature's
suffering can demand a response. In contrast with the Stoic, our affectless
learner has a truncated concept of danger and suffering.
The distinction between an objective description and an emotional
characterization leaves it open for a fearless agent to be averse to physical
injury. In this case the motive for action will be conjoined to the perception
of impending damage as an independent desire to avoid it. Here we have
the contingent connection identified by externalists. People who want to act
on stage normally do not want to break a leg, but the motive to step
cautiously derives from this independent desire (along with many others, no
7A.R. Damasio, Descartes'Error:Emotion,Reason,and the Human Brain (New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, I994), p. 45.
See A.R. Mele, 'Internalist Moral Cognitivism and Listlessness', Ethics, Io6 (1996),
PP. 727-53.

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208 EVAN SIMPSON

doubt). This is not the connection typical of the perception of danger.

Recognizing dangers includes a characterization of them as fearful, making
it unnecessary to look beyond these evils for an originating motive. Under-
standing what danger is should be distinguished in this way from
understanding such purely descriptive expressions as 'breaking a leg' or
'being physically injured', the grasp of which need exhibit no emotional
competences or motivational tendencies. Externalism correctly displays one
pattern of practical reasoning, but in neglecting the difference between
descriptive and emotional beliefs it fails to recognize how the latter can be
tied in a dependency relationship to motivation.
By placing a semantic question at the heart of the issue between inter-
nalism and externalism, I am obliged to explain why exactly there is a
failure of understanding when affectless agents ascribe danger to things. The
obvious manifestation of the problem is that such ascriptions do not
distinguish properly between the role of intrinsic and instrumental values in
assessing elements of practical reasoning. To be physically injured,
damaged, hurt or incapacitated is instrumentally undesirable for anyone
whose purposes depend upon a healthy body, but these descriptions do not
warrant the judgement that they are fear-worthy. People for whom the only
real dangers are spiritual would contest the judgement. Everyone can agree
that dangerous things are fear-worthy - danger is intrinsically undesirable -
but it is more difficult to agree about which things these are. Externalism
recognizes that no description of the objects of one's particular desires by
itself establishes that these objects are dangerous or fear-worthy. In order to
make this connection, fear must have a constitutive role in identifying
dangerous things. Although no instance of the emotion establishes the valid-
ity of the characterization on a particular occasion, familiarity with the
emotion is essential for posing the question. The emotion is thus a condition
of competent judgements of fear-worthiness, placing such judgements be-
yond the capacity of affectless agents. This distinctive property of emotional
judgement is especially clear in the case of pity for others. Recognizing
undue suffering stands to recognizing another's pain as recognizing danger
stands to anticipating physical injury. The perception of another's pain
alone does not warrant pity, since many pains must simply be borne. I
mention below just one example of persons whose various distresses make
no plausible claim for relief by others. Pitiful suffering is only recognized
emotionally, and only that recognition includes a motive to help.
The nature of this inclusion is now evident. Certain characterizations
depend (in the sense I have specified) upon emotional states that entail
purposes, so that the beliefs these characterizations express must sometimes
express concern as well. Pity entails the desire to help. The perception of
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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 209

pain and suffering does not; but judgements about suffering possess the
features necessary for ensuring that motivation sometimes occurs. This is
not quite to insist that beliefs sometimes motivate. To say that beliefs
motivate or include motives is acceptable shorthand for the more complex
idea that being able to formulate an emotional belief entails sometimes
being motivated to achieve the purpose characteristic of the emotion in
question. It is not to say, with internalists, that the belief may motivate in the
absence of the emotion, nor is it to say, with externalists, that the belief
motivates only when conjoined with factors logically independent of it.
Externalism thrives in discussions limited to 'thin' moral considerations
such as goodness and obligation, but the subtler vocabulary of emotional
belief permits ambiguities between pain and suffering, injury and danger, to
be displayed, and the active role of emotional belief to be identified. As I
have suggested, externalism is also analytically adequate when action is
motivated by sympathetic feelings that attach contingently to the moral
belief that pain should be alleviated; but this sympathy is to be distinguished
from the pity that has a belief about suffering as an integral part. External-
ism is again plausible in accounts of conventional moral practices: having
made a promise, one is under an obligation, but may have no desire to keep
it. However, such special obligations are generally recognized as being
amenable to prudential analysis: promising, as Hume said, is part of the
'interested commerce of mankind'. Whoever makes a promise 'is immedi-
ately bound by his interest to execute his engagements, and must never
expect to be trusted any more, if he refuse to perform what he promis'd'
(TreatiseiI ii 5). It is notable that trust is here conflated with reliance, which
can be warranted by knowledge of a person's dependable habits or
prudential motives that are compatible with ill will.9 The desire to be relied
upon can thus be satisfied by a calculating person. By contrast, the desire to
be trusted is characteristic of conscientious persons who are motivated
to keep their promises even if it goes against their interest to do so. Being
trustworthyrather than merely reliable, they lack ulterior motives. They are
also capable of recognizing that others may be similarly motivated, and thus
have the capacity to trust others whom they believe to be of good character,
in a way merely reliable persons do not. It is unclear how an externalist ac-
count could accommodate trust of this kind, whereas on the dependency
account it is an affective-cognitive state which explains how the acceptance
of an obligation can motivate morally rather than prudentially.
This concludes my defence of a dependency thesis which identifies a
middle ground between internalism and externalism; but I should add that
9 Cf. A. Baier, 'Trust and Antitrust', Ethics,96 (1986), pp. 23I-60, at p. 234.

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210 EVAN SIMPSON

this middle ground is wider than a single theory. I can offer any who yet
remain unconvinced a weaker thesis which still occupies an intermediate
position. In contrast with my view that merely understanding the concept of
danger entails sometimes being concerned for security, there is another
possible view, that having first-person beliefs about danger, believing that
one is personally threatened, entails that one must sometimes be concerned.
Some of the affectless agents who loomed as counter-examples for my
stronger thesis do not threaten this view: even if they have never felt
endangered, they may understand that, necessarily, agents who believe
themselves to be in a dangerous situation are sometimes motivated to escape
it. Since almost everyone has first-person beliefs about danger, this weaker
dependency thesis applies to almost everyone; but, for the reasons already
given, it does not represent either of the standard views. The weaker thesis
also mitigates the problem of conceding to externalism the possibility that
some people might never be motivated by certain moral beliefs. Rare indi-
viduals may understand the concept of suffering, for example, without ever
being motivated to help relieve it. They may believe that no such duty
ever applies to them, as those who merely rely upon others feel bound only
by requirements of prudence. It will require more subtle enquiry to de-
termine whether they have none the less mastered the concept of suffering,
so that the contest between weak and strong dependency has still to be
decided. But it does not have to be decided in order to reject both internal-
ism and externalism.

IV. DEPENDENCY AND THE GOOD

Brink (pp. 45, 49) complains that internalism may make moral theories
hostage to agents' desires: if, thinking as internalists, we believe that people
are morally obliged to do something but find that some people have no
desire to do it, then our beliefs about their obligations need revision. A
dependency view lacks this implication, because its less stringent logical
requirement makes emotional beliefs subject to refinement, correction and
occasional rejection on grounds other than agents' desires. Good judgement
is demonstrated when emotions survive examination, just as an empirical
claim is demonstrated when observation adequately confirms it. To be
capable of fear is to have a place for danger in one's conception of the world
and to be in a position to assert that there are dangerous things; but which
things are really dangerous can be reflectively considered. A child who fears
going to the doctor may later see that nothing fearful happens there, so that
the emotional belief was misplaced. The child's parent, who at first finds the
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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 211

child's mental pain an object of pity, may lose patience if the child does not
learn this lesson soon enough but rather, in the parent's judgement, suffers
without good reason. In these simple cases, we have obvious examples of
acceptable tests of appropriatenessthat are readily available.
Accepting such tests again displays an important but incomplete agree-
ment between the internalist and dependency accounts of belief and
motivation. In both cases it is reasonable to insist that in matters of moral
judgement there is nothing more fundamental than genuinely possible
human sentiments (cf. Wiggins p. I88). Nevertheless emotional beliefs re-
main free from subjection to agents' desires, in virtue of their capacity to
shape the second-order desires that have desires as their objects, including
desires not to have certain desires. My belief that routine pain does not
justify pity may lead me to want to be free of the desires typical of senti-
mental people. Caution should be observed here, however. To specify some
desires as undesirable is to offer beliefs which belong to one's conception of
the good, but I hesitate to elaborate these formal points into a strictly
internalist theory of the good. It is a plausible thesis that something can be
good for a person only if that person cares about it or would care about it in
appropriate circumstances,'?but if the tendency to this motivational engage-
ment is construed along the lines of the dispositional internalism I criticized
earlier, it is subject to a similar failure of explanation. Why may one not fail
to care about one's good, just as one may be unmoved by evil? The
possibility can be acknowledged without accepting that one can be radically
mistaken about one's good, by recognizing that the logical connection with
motivation falls short of necessitation. Because beliefs about one's good
share the emotional conditions of understanding evils, one cannot always be
unconcerned about it. This thesis displays the pattern of logical dependency,
suggesting that an acceptable theory of the good must include its own
compromise between internalism and externalism.

V. REASONS INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM

Assuming that there is a dependency relation between certain beliefs and

motives, it is interesting to ask whether this relation also holds between
beliefs and reasons. Then, necessarily, when I perceive that something is
dangerous to me, sometimes I have a reason to be concerned about it. It
follows that externalism as a thesis about reasons is as mistaken as when it is
a thesis about motives. However, it is arguable that reasons are entailed by
0 See C.S.
Rosati, 'Internalism and the Good for a Person', Ethics, 106 (I996),
pp. 297-326, at pp. 307-8.

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212 EVAN SIMPSON

emotional beliefs, so that, necessarily, whenever I perceive that something is

to
dangerous me, I have a reason to be concerned. This internalism about
reasons is plausible, although the thesis needs to be qualified to the extent
that recognition of the reason is tied to prior experience of the emotion.
The pattern is similar in the moral case. Whenever I pity others, I believe
that something is hurtful to them, giving me a reason to offer relief even if I
am not always motivated to provide it. Of course, I might note that al-
though concern would be appropriate, it is not rationally incumbent upon
me, and wonder whether there can be reason to help even where no dis-
position to help occurs. The parochialness of pity may seem to justify saying
that there is not. One cannot help all of those one knows to suffer, so that
care should be observed in saying that one ought to. Similar care should be
taken in saying that one is obliged to help all those whom one can, since the
circumstances of friends and neighbours make claims upon compassion
which distant strangers do not.11 However, these reflections are without
force if the obligations that should be considered are primafacie obligations.
The oughtimpliescan principle does not apply to the primafacie obligation to
help all who suffer, and the primafacieobligation to help strangers in distress
may be defeated by a more urgent obligation to help close friends. Inter-
nalism about moral reasons is preserved, although again only against the
background of the dependency relationship that ties the capacity for reasons
to sometimes experiencing fear, pity and the like.
My identification of a position between internalism and externalism in
ethics may not be fully general in another respect. Nothing said here
definitively rules out the occurrence of moral beliefs that are not emotional
beliefs. The principles of right central to a line of thinking from Kant to
Rawls represent a notion of purely rational agents for whom, as Dancy
describes them, 'emotions ... are not necessary ... for the discovery of moral
truth'.'2 The truth might include the need to view strangers as objects of
justice if not compassion. Should there be a class of emotion-independent
moral beliefs, the internalism/externalism debate remains alive for them,
although perhaps only barely alive. Kant develops a form of internalism in
which reason governs desire only by postulating an empirically uncondi-
tioned motivational basis for heeding moral demands. Externalists might
reasonably regard this as a disguised concession to their position, for in its
own way it renders the force of moral beliefs as mysterious as in Stevenson's
account. In any event, my account of moral motivation is potentially
general. In contrast with Dancy's, its psychological interpretation of the
1 Cf. A. Gibbard, Wise Choices,Apt Feelings:a Theoryof Normative
Judgement(Harvard UP,
I990), pp. I26-7, on anger.
12
67 (I992), pp. 447-66, at p. 448.
Dancy, 'Caring aboutJustice', Philosophy,

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 BETWEEN INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN ETHICS 213

dependency relationship suggests a scarcity of reasons for thinking that

moral truth can be identified independently of moral emotions. Beliefs
about right and justice can themselves be identified in the passions of recti-
tude, that is, emotions of anger and indignation, resentment and respect.
The meanings of these concepts, too, are tied to motivating attitudes.

VI. FURTHER VIRTUES OF THE ACCOUNT

I have not claimed that my account of logical dependency provides the only
intermediate position available between internalism and externalism. It is
part of Dancy's view, for example, that there are 'intrinsically motivating'
beliefs with the properties needed for defining an alternative position and
making the standard dichotomy questionable. Unlike 'essentially motivating'
states, intrinsicallymotivating beliefs 'can be present without motivating, but
... when they do motivate [they] do so in their own right' (MoralReasons
p. 24). These beliefs may on occasion be deprived of their normal motiva-
tional force, but when they possess that force, it is built into them. However,
as formulated by Dancy, this position is difficult to distinguish from
dispositional internalism, which leaves open the possibility that one could
have personal moral beliefs that never motivate because defeating condi-
tions are always present. Dreier's objection then applies. A particular virtue
of a dependency account is that it blocks this, and thereby preserves the
essential point that a satisfactory intermediate position can be defined.
There is reason to worry that any weaker account of relationships between
beliefs and motives leads down the slippery slope towards externalism, as a
stronger modal connection slides into internalism. The primary alternative
to a logical or semantic relationship between moral beliefs and motives is a
strong and deep, but contingent, connection between judgement and
concern. No such connection satisfies the internalists' view of practical
reasoning.
Dancy's view might alternatively be compared with the weaker depend-
ency view outlined above. It accepts that one may retaina moral belief
without retaining the original motivation, making it only a small further step
to acknowledging that one may acquiresuch a belief without having any mot-
ivation to act (cf. Mele p. 749). In this case the belief might never become
motivating, but the weaker view allows this for all except first-personbeliefs.
However, two problems remain. Dancy's view is not precisely enough
articulated to determine where to place it among possible accounts.
Moreover, while a full examination of contenders for the middle ground
constitutes a further task, the weaker view leaves it unexplained how, in any
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1999

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214 EVAN SIMPSON

normal case, one might understand emotional concepts without ever having
the associated concern.
The more comprehensive virtues of the present suggestion are provided
by the details of the plausible philosophical psychology with which it
naturally connects and by the absence of any need to refer to moral facts in
articulating this psychology. The authority of moral belief depends rather
upon a capacity to interpret the world emotionally, which is to say meaning-
fully, consistently, richly and collaboratively. There is therefore no evident
need to be diverted into the epistemological competition between cogni-
tivism and non-cognitivism or the metaphysical competition between
realism and anti-realism which forestall any resolution of the central logical
question of defining the space between internalism and externalism in
ethics.13

MemorialUniversity
ofNewfoundland

13
My thanks are due to Graham Nerlich of the University of Adelaide for discussions of
these issues and very helpful reflections on the views expressed. Thanks as well to Mark
Vorobej of McMaster University, who has given much useful advice, such as including the
distinction between strong and weak dependency. I am also grateful for the institutional
support of McMaster University, where most of the work reported in this paper was done.

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1999

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