Might there be external reasons?

Abstract

This chapter is directed to a question that has been posed by Bernard Williams, in his interesting and insufficiently discussed article ‘Internal and External Reasons’. Statements to the effect that someone has reason to act in a specified way (say to ϕ), or that there is reason for someone to ϕ, are apparently susceptible of two sorts of interpretation. The first is the internal interpretation, on which the statement is falsified by the agent's lack of any ‘motive which will be served or furthered by his ϕ-ing’ (p. 101). The second is the external interpretation, on which that is not so. This is how things seem at first blush, but Williams argues for a scepticism about whether reason statements are ever true on the external interpretation. That is the question I want to consider. The question is quite abstract and general, but it is obvious that it bears on a familiar problem that arises about ethical reasons in particular, in view of the evident possibility of being left cold by them. The implication of Williams' scepticism is that ethical reasons are reasons only for those for whom they are internal reasons: only for those who have motivations to which ethical considerations speak, or can be made to speak. It is a strength of Williams' argument that he bases it on a subtle and flexible conception of the materials available to the internal interpretation.