Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1990 Ethical Internalism and Externalism Sharon E. Sytsma Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Sytsma, Sharon E., "Ethical Internalism and Externalism" (1990). Dissertations. 2901. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2901 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1990 Sharon E. Sytsma ETHICAL INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM by Sharon E. Sytsma A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 1990 c. 1990, Sharon E. Sytsma ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my director, David Ozar, for his careful reading of my dissertation, and for his helpful suggestions and encouragement. I would also like to thank Mark Waymack for his many constructive comments, and Thomas Wren for his willingness to serve on my dissertation committee. I am very grateful to Loyola University for the Crown Humanities Fellowship, without which the completion of the doctoral degree would have been so much more difficult. ii VITA The author, Sharon Elizabeth Sytsma, is a full-time instructor at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, and a crown Humanities Fellow at Loyola University in Chicago. she was awarded the Crown Humanities Fellowship in 1986 upon admission to the Graduate Program in Philosophy. Mrs. Sytsma received her B.A. from Northern Illinois university in January, 1973, majoring in Philosophy. She received 12 hours of graduate credit in Philosophy from Tulane University in New Orleans in the Spring Semester of 1974, and completed her Master's Degree in Philosophy at Northern in January, 1979. She was a Graduate Assistant at Northern between 1978 and 1979, and a Faculty Assistant there in the Fall Semesters of 1981 and 1982. She has been teaching philosophy at various institutions since 1981. These include: Elgin Community College (1981), Kishwaukee Community College (1982), w. R. Harper College (1982-1983), St. Francis College (1984), and Rockford College (part-time between Fall of 1982 and Fall of 1985, and full-time in the Spring of 1986). She has been an instructor at Northern Illinois University since 1983, and has been teaching there full-time since 1988. iii other professional experience includes initiating a Philosophy program at Kishwaukee College (1982); coordinating a panel discussion on moral issues relating to Nuclear War at Rockford College (1986); being a panel member discussing the problem of abortion at the Newman center in DeKalb (1981, 1989); and presenting a paper at a conference on Health Care in an Aging Society, in Little Rock, Arkansas (1989). Her article, "Age-Rationing of Medical Resources" appeared in the June, 1990 issue of The World and I. Mrs. Sytsma is a member of the American Philosophical Association and of the Society for Health and Human Values. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page· ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ii VITA. • • • • • . iii INTRODUCTION. • . • . • • . • • . • • • • • • • 1 Chapter I. THE ORIGINS OF THE CONTEMPORARY INTERNALIST/ EXTERNALIST DISTINCTION IN ETHICS • • • • • • • • • 11 II. ETHICAL INTERNALISM AND EXTERNALISM IN RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE. • 49 III. EVALUATION OF THE VARIOUS DISTINCTIONS. • 80 IV. RATIONAL INTERNALISM AND COMMON REFUTATIONS OF INTERNALISM. • • . • • • • . • .111 v. HUME'S CHALLENGE. • • . • • • • • . .154 Is Hume and Internalist or an Externalist? ••• 157 Hume and the Role of Reason in Morality ••••. 172 Kant's Moral Rationalism • • • . .••••. 189 Evaluation of Hume's Challenge •.••.•.•• 209 VI. NAGEL'S RATIONAL INTERNALISM •• • • 231 VII. CONCLUSION •. • . • • 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY • . • . • . • 291 INTRODUCTION It is common, or even fashionable, in contemporary discussions of ethics, to refer to ethical theories as being examples of "internalism" or of "externalism." · Internalism and externalism refer to differing theories of moral motivation. The issue represents the struggle to clarify the relationship between judgments about moral obligation and moral motivation. Attempts are made to defend one theory of moral motivation over another, or to correctly label traditional major ethical theories as internalist or externalist. The distinction is supposed to provide a template by wpich ethical theories can be classified. And each side of the distinction purports to reflect the truth concerning the relation between moral obligation and moral motivation. An oddity becomes apparent, however, even on the most cursory reading of the literature relating to the issue. There seems to be little agreement when it comes to the classification of theories as examples of internalism or externalism. To cite a few glaring illustrations: .William 2 Frankena labels Kant as an externalist, while Thomas Nagel and Christine Korsgaard consider Kant to be a "paradigmatic. " in. t erna l'is t • 1 Nagel labels Hume an internalist, though of an anti-rationalist sort, while Korsgaard's argument seems to imply that Hume is an externalist. 2 Charlotte Brown suggests that Hume's moral epistemology commits him to internalism, but when Hume turns to the problem of moral motivation he gives an externalist account, so that it is problematic to classify him as one or the other. 3 Frankena suggests that at least one aspect of the debate between Plato and Aristotle is that Plato is an internalist and Aristotle is an externalist, while Korsgaard and Nagel align Aristotle with Kant on the side of internalism. 4 Frankena claims that intuitionism is a "striking example" of externalism, while Korsgaard describes intuitionists as "minimal" 1william Frankena, "Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral Philosophy," in A. I Meldon's Essays in Moral Philosophy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), 44; Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), 11-12; and Christine Korsgaard, "Skepticism about Practical Reason," The Journal of Philosophy 83 No. 1, (January 1986): 10. 2see Nagel, 10. Korsgaard's interpretation of Hume as an externalist will be explained in Chapter Three. 3charlotte Brown, "Is Hume an Internalist?" Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (January 1988): 69-87. 4see Frankena, 41; Korsgaard, 18; Nagel, 11. 3 externalists, "just falling short" of being internalists. 5 Nagel and Korsgaard refer to Mill's ethical philosophy as a prime example of externalism, and John Robertson classifies him as an internalist. 6 These examples of disagreement are astonishing. surely the disagreement is significant. It could indicate either a lack of consensus concerning the nature or criterion of internalism and the nature or criterion of externalism. Or it could indicate a fundamental ambiguity or fuzziness about all these notions which makes them subject to such a variety of interpretations and applications. One could obviously conclude that the distinction between internalism and externalism is simply unhelpful as a way of understanding the differences between moral theories in regard to the problem of moral motivation or anything else. On this response, the distinction ought to be· simply disregarded. But there is another response which proposes that the various ways in which the distinction has been drawn need to be formulated with greater precision. The goal, obviously, will be to make the distinction in a way which avoids ambiguity. When the categories are clearly distinguished, consensus of 5Frankena, 43; Korsgaard, 10. 6Nagel, 8 - 9; Korsgaard, 9; John Robertson, "Internalism about Moral Reason" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1986): 124. 4 'fication should be facilitated and the real claSS 1 usefulness of the internalist/externalist distinction can be tested. 1 will argue that most of the dispute about these categories is a result of the lack of conceptual clarity in the characterization of internalism and externalism. I will also show that a careful review of the various authors' formulations of the distinction will reveal that terms have been shared by individuals, but with each using them in slightly, or perhaps even significantly, different ways from the others. Further, I will argue that one way of formulating of the internalist/externalist distinction will prove more helpful or of greater philosophical interest than others. In this version of the distinction, internalism refers to the view that reason has a motivational influence in morality. I will refer to this version of internalism as Rational Internalism, following a lead by Nagel. Thus, the contemporary philosophical distinction between internalism and externalism reawakens one of the central, and most exciting debates in the history of ethical philosophy. These suspicions yield a program for this dissertation. The first part of the dissertation will focus on a critical examination of the distinction between internalism and externalism in contemporary moral Philosophy. I will begin by showing that the distinction 5 between internalism and externalism has not been adequately and consistently drawn. In fact, I will identify four different ways