## 1. Preliminaries


### 1.1 Varieties of Internalism




It is important to clarify that reasons internalism is a thesis
about *normative* (or *justifying*) reasons, not about
*motivating* (or *explanatory*) reasons. A normative
reason is a consideration that counts in favor of or against doing
something, whereas a motivating reason is an answer to the question,
'why did she do it?'. Clearly, motivating reasons are
connected to motivation; reasons internalism maintains the more
interesting claim that normative reasons are also closely connected to
motivation. For the remainder of this article, by 'reason'
we will always mean *normative reason*.




Reasons internalism as we've so far presented it is not yet a
thesis. To get a thesis from this vague idea we must fill in a
detailed answer to the question: *what* sort of relation
must reasons bear to motivation, and in what sense of
'motivation'? So the idea sketched thus far is really
a family of theses, each corresponding to a different way of filling in
the following schema:



**Schematic Internalism**:
Every reason for action must bear relation *R* to motivational fact
*M*.




Different ways of spelling out relation *R* and motivational
fact *M* correspond to different ways of trying to cash out the
intuitive thought about Max and Caroline's reasons. Each way of
filling in a candidate for *R* and a candidate for *M*
results in a different thesis--a *version* of reasons
internalism (henceforth for this article, a version of internalism).
Importantly, since not all versions of internalism say the same thing,
there is no single question about whether internalism is correct.
Rather, there is a family of questions which raise very similar
philosophical issues.




Unfortunately, the labels 'internalism' and even
'reasons internalism' are often used for different kinds of
views than the ones that are our topic here. For example,
'reasons internalism' is sometimes used as a name for the
view that if something is morally wrong then there must be a reason not
to do it. This view will be important to our discussion; to avoid
confusion we will follow the rival convention of calling it *Moral
Rationalism*.




In the terminology of Darwall (1983), reasons internalism is an
*existence* form of internalism, contrasting with
*judgment* forms of internalism. According to existence
internalism, a consideration is a reason for an agent only if some
motivational fact about that agent obtains. According to judgment
internalism, an agent genuinely judges that she has a reason only if
some motivational fact about that agent obtains; see the entry on
 moral motivation. 
 Judgment forms of internalism play an important role in traditional
arguments for noncognitivist metaethical theories (see the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. noncognitivism) 
 but are a quite different issue from that discussed here.




A 'reasons externalist' is someone who rejects reasons
internalism, maintaining that at least some reasons for action are not
connected to motivation in the way reasons internalism claims.
However, since there are many different internalist theses about
the way in which reasons and motivation are related, there is no clear
and unambiguous question of whether reasons externalism is correct.
Philosophers generally describe their views as
'externalist' if they reject any thesis they consider to
involve an *interesting and controversial* dependence of reasons
on facts about motivation; it is most likely not fruitful to try here
to adjudicate which theses these are. Externalists need not deny
that reasons are commonly connected to facts about motivation, but they
can attribute these connections to desires or dispositions that some
agents have while others lack.


#### 1.1.1 Varying *M*




An important division among versions of reasons internalism is
between what we will here call *Motivation* views and
*State* views. According to Motivation views, the kind of
motivational fact that reasons require is a fact about what the agent
is or can be motivated (i.e. moved through her own volition) to
do. According to State views, in contrast, the kind of
motivational fact that reasons require is not actually a fact about
motivation at all, but rather, that the agent has a certain kind of
*motivational attitude*--a certain kind of psychological
state which plays a role in motivation. These states are often
taken to be desires, but can include other attitudes such as emotions,
intentions, and aversions. Motivation and State views are often
run together, but we shall see that they have importantly different
implications. Motivation views do not, by themselves, require the
presence of any particular kind of psychological state which does the
motivating, and State views do not, by themselves, require that the
motivating state which is present actually does any motivating.


#### 1.1.2 Varying *R*




Another very important distinction among versions of Internalism is
between *Actual* and *Counterfactual* versions. The
former claim that if someone has a reason to do *A*, then it
follows by necessity that she *actually* is somewhat motivated
to do *A* (on the Motivation version), or *actually* has
a desire that would be served by doing *A* (on the State
version). Counterfactual versions make weaker claims: that if someone
has a reason to do *A*, then it follows by necessity that
she *would* be motivated to some degree, or *would*
desire to do *A*, in circumstances of a particular kind.




Different Counterfactual theories disagree over the nature of this
"particular kind" of circumstances: prominent
proposals include (i) that the agent be in possession of full
information, or at least not have any relevant false beliefs (Smith
1994; Joyce 2001); (ii) that she have completed "cognitive
psychotherapy" or that her attitudes have reached a state of
reflective equilibrium (Brandt 1979); (iii) that she have a vivid
awareness of all relevant contingencies (Darwall 1983); (iv) that she
deliberates faultlessly from her existing motivations (Williams 1979);
(v) that she be *practically rational* (Korsgaard 1986)--a
suggestion to which we shall return; and (vi) that she be ideally
virtuous--a 'phronimos' (McDowell 1995).




Some views which count by our classification as Counterfactual forms
of internalism are too weak to be interesting. For example, consider
the thesis that if someone has a reason to do *A*, then it
follows by necessity that were she to be motivated to do everything
that she actually has a reason to do, she would be motivated to do
*A*. This thesis is in some sense a variety of internalism--after
all, it posits a necessary connection between reasons and a certain
kind of counterfactual about motivation. But given the way that
the counterfactual is specified, it is trivially true. Similar
accusations can be and have been made about versions of this kind of
thesis which invoke virtue, and perhaps also about those invoking
rationality--depending on how rationality is to be understood.
It should be noted that some philosophers (e.g. McDowell) who
accept one or another of these weak theses are commonly considered to
be 'externalists' by themselves or others, because of their
rejection of any stronger, more interesting, internalist thesis.




Because it is uncontroversial that an agent can have reasons to do
things that she is not actually motivated to do (particularly if she is
unaware of those reasons), we will assume that interesting Motivation
versions of internalism take Counterfactual forms. State versions
of internalism, by contrast, can be interesting in both Counterfactual
and Actual forms.


### 1.2 The Philosophical Significance of Reasons Internalism




The different versions of reasons internalism are philosophically
interesting for a variety of reasons. But it is impossible
to understand why these different theses have received so much
attention as a group without appreciating one problem in particular
that is encountered by some kinds of reasons internalism. We call
this the *Central Problem*. We'll first introduce this
problem in its most familiar form for one famous version of reasons
internalism; we then generalize.


#### 1.2.1 The Humean Theory of Reasons




One of the historically most important versions of reasons
internalism is an Actual State view according to which the actual
states connected to reasons are *desires*. Due to its
rough affinity to David Hume's view of the dependence of morality on
the passions, this view is often called the 'Humean Theory of
Reasons', despite controversy over whether Hume himself held any
such view.



**The Humean Theory of Reasons (HTR)**: If there
is a reason for someone to do something, then she must have
some desire that would be served by her doing it.




Although both are often called 'reasons internalism',
there are significant differences between HTR and Counterfactual
Motivation versions of internalism. One can accept a
Counterfactual Motivation view without accepting HTR (e.g.
Korsgaard 1986), and one can accept HTR without accepting any
(nontrivial) Counterfactual Motivation view (e.g. Schroeder
2007b). However, these two internalist theses are often
linked. Consider the following popular view about motivation,
which, following Smith (1987), we call the *Humean Theory of
Motivation* (again despite controversy over whether Hume himself
held it):



**The Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM)**:
Desires are necessary and beliefs are not sufficient for
motivation.




If (as Counterfactual Motivation versions of internalism claim) an
agent has no reason to do *A* if there is no possibility of her being
motivated to do *A*, and if (as HTM claims) there is no possibility of an
agent's being motivated to do *A* if she has no desire that could
motivate her to do *A*, then it seems to follow that an agent has no
reason to do *A* if she has no desire that could motivate her to do
*A*. This is the classical argument for HTR, which we will evaluate
in section 2.1.1.


#### 1.2.2 The Central Problem




The Humean Theory of Reasons, along with other Actual State versions
of internalism, is philosophically important because of a Central
Problem motivating much ethical theorizing since the 1940s, which
derives from a tension between HTR, Moral Rationalism (see section
1.1), and Moral Absolutism:



**Moral Absolutism**: Some actions are morally
wrong for any agent no matter what motivations and desires they
have.




For example, presumably it was morally wrong for Hitler to order a
program of genocide, even if it served some of his desires and wasn't
detrimental to any of them. (The characteristic of morality that Moral
Absolutism expresses is sometimes described, following Immanuel Kant,
as its consisting of 'categorical' rather than
'hypothetical' imperatives; see the entry on
 Kant's moral philosophy.) 
 If (as Moral Rationalism claims) an action (like ordering genocide)
is morally wrong for an agent (like Hitler) only if there is a reason
for him not to do it, and if (as HTR claims) there is a reason for him
not to do it only if he has some desire that would be served by his
not doing it, then it follows that whether an action is morally wrong
for an agent depends upon what he or she desires. But that seems incompatible
with Moral Absolutism. So it seems we must reject at least one of HTR,
Moral Rationalism, and Moral Absolutism.




In response to this dilemma one could reject Moral
Absolutism--either by embracing a form of moral relativism,
according to which all moral duties vary according to agents'
contingent characteristics (e.g. Harman 1975), or by embracing a
moral *error theory*, accepting that moral claims are
systematically false because they presuppose the existence of external
reasons while in actuality there are none (e.g. Mackie 1977;
Joyce 2001). On this view, we might *think* that it was
morally wrong for Hitler to order genocide, and hence that he had
reasons not to do so, but we would be mistaken. Alternatively,
one could reject Moral Rationalism and deny that the moral wrongness of
an act entails that there is a reason not to do it (e.g. Foot
1972). On this view, it is possible that Hitler's deeds
were morally wrong yet he had no reason not to perform them. Many
philosophers, however, prefer to preserve these commonsense theses
about morality--and our ability to say that Hitler had reasons not
to act as he did--by rejecting HTR, along with other Actual State
versions of internalism. The tension among these views is a big
part of what motivates philosophical interest in whether all reasons
are related to motivation in the way that some internalist thesis
claims.


#### 1.2.3 Generalizing




Philosophers concerned with the Central Problem have mainly directed
their criticisms at the Humean Theory of Reasons, but in fact any
Actual State version of reasons internalism will lead to a structurally
similar problem. Any Actual State version of reasons internalism
says that to have a reason, an agent must have some corresponding
actual motivational state. But this is precisely what makes
reasons hostage to an agent's actual psychology, creating the
tension with Moral Rationalism and Moral Absolutism.




Does the Central Problem similarly arise for Counterfactual versions
of reason internalism? The answer is: it depends upon the nature
of the counterfactual condition a particular version of internalism
requires. There is no such tension if this is a condition under
which any agent would be motivated, no matter what motivations and
desires she actually has. For example, Christine Korsgaard (1986)
advocates a Counterfactual Motivation internalism, and Michael Smith
(1994) advocates a Counterfactual State internalism, on which it is
necessarily the case that any agent whatsoever would act in the same
way as every other, if they satisfied those counterfactual
conditions. Smith grounds his claim in optimism that no matter
what desires they started with, if every agent was to resolve conflicts
between their own desires under the condition of full information, they
would converge on the same set of desires. Consequently, what an
agent would desire under those conditions does not depend on what she is
actually like. So what is wrong for an agent can depend on what
she has a reason to do (as Moral Rationalism claims), without depending
on what she is like (which would put it in tension with what Moral
Absolutism claims). Smith calls his view an 'Anti-Humean
theory of reasons' in order to contrast it with Counterfactual State
theories which do give rise to the problem that confronts HTR.




On the other hand, many Counterfactual versions of reasons internalism
do hold that whether their counterfactuals are true of some agent must
be grounded in some actual feature of that agent. These views
encounter the Central Problem, because they hold that what an agent
has reason to do depends on whether some counterfactual is true of
her, and that whether that counterfactual is true of her depends on
what she is actually like. So, for example, Richard Joyce (2001)
accepts Smith's Anti-Humean theory of reasons, but rejects
Smith's claim that under conditions of full information and the
resolution of conflicting desires all agents would converge on the
same desires, on the grounds that the desires an agent would have at
the end of this process depend upon the desires he started
with. (Notice that all Counterfactual versions of internalism of this
kind can be re-formulated as Actual State versions of
internalism--where the actual state is *being such that
certain counterfactuals are true of you*.)


### 1.3 Explanatory Direction




A final preliminary distinction between internalist views concerns
their *direction of explanation*. As characterized thus
far, the various internalist theses merely posit a necessary connection
between the existence of reasons, on the one hand, and facts about
motivation or motivational states, on the other, and do not distinguish
between competing ways of explaining this necessary connection.
Do we have reasons *because* we have (counterfactual or actual)
motivation or desire, or do we have motivation or desire
*because* we have reasons? (Or is there some third possibility?)
The Humean Theory of Reasons is standardly understood to claim not only
that we have reasons *only if* we have certain desires, but
further that we have those reasons *because* we have those
desires. We interpret it accordingly in the rest of this
article.



**HTR (revised)**: If there is a reason for
someone to do something, then she must have some desire that would be
served by her doing it, which is the source of her reason.




It is natural to understand any Actual State internalist view as
claiming this direction of explanation. Since there surely can be
normative reasons for an agent to act of which she is unaware, it is
implausible that a consideration could be a reason for her to act only
if she has an actual motivating state because of it.




Counterfactual Motivation views, however, can adopt either direction
of explanation, and a variety of philosophers insist that the existence
of reasons explains the relevant facts about motivation rather than
vice versa. Consider the popular thesis that if there is a reason
for someone to do something, then necessarily *if she is fully
rational* she will be motivated to do it. The most trivial
account of this kind suggests that 'fully rational' simply
means *motivated by all one's reasons*. If this is the
truth in internalism, however, it places no constraints whatsoever on
what can and cannot be an agent's practical reason; for this reason it
is often called an externalist thesis. But the explanatory
priority of reasons over motivation can also yield a nontrivial version
of internalism. Consider again the thesis appealing to a
condition of full rationality. If by 'rationality' we
mean a *substantive psychological capacity* involving
particular desires or dispositions that enable us to respond to
reasons, then we have a form of internalism that places substantive
constraints on what can and cannot be a reason. For example,
Christine Korsgaard (1986) advocates such a nontrivial version of
internalism, taking the counterfactual about motivation under the
condition of rationality to be explained by a substantive (non-trivial)
account of practical rationality. According to Korsgaard, an
agent is only rational if she is consistently motivated in accordance
with some general principles that provide her conception of her
practical identity. Given this account of rationality, the
internalist thesis above tells us that only those considerations that
would motivate such a principle-governed agent can be reasons for her
to act.


## 2. Indirect, Theoretical Arguments




In evaluating whether any particular variety of internalism about
reasons is true philosophers have brought many different kinds of
resources to bear. In sections 2.1-2.3 we look at indirect,
theoretical arguments which bear one way or another. Then in part
3 we consider more direct arguments, based on intuitive judgments about
what reasons there are.


### 2.1 Motivational Arguments




A central consideration adduced in support of internalist theses is
the conceptual link between reasons and *explanation*. In
an influential early discussion of reasons for action, Donald Davidson
(1963) observed that a common form of explanation of why an agent acted
as she did involves citing the *reasons* she had to act that
way. He argued that because actions are always to be explained in
terms of psychological states, we can identify reasons for actions with
the desire-belief pairs that cause them. Since Davidson's concern
was with what explains *actual* action, rather than with what
justifies *prospective* action, his discussion might seem to
concern motivating reasons rather than normative reasons. But
Davidson took his reasons to "rationalize" or justify as
well as to explain action, and many philosophers subsequently concluded
that the two kinds of reasons had to be closely, conceptually,
connected.




A common and plausible view is that to be an agent's motivating
reason for acting, a consideration has to be something which that agent
takes to be a normative reason for acting (Dancy 2000; see Setiya 2007
for objections). At the very least, it seems that it must be
possible for an agent to be motivated by her normative reasons (Nagel
1970). This possibility is in tension with the commonly drawn
distinction between motivating reasons as psychological states and
normative reasons as facts or propositions (Smith 1994), which places
these types of reasons in different ontological categories.




This view, which understands motivating or explanatory reasons in
terms of normative reasons, offers no obvious support to any version of
internalism. It holds that if an agent has a motivating reason
for acting, then she is motivated by something she *takes* to be
a normative reason. But it does not follow from this (and is
often denied by proponents of this view) that she has or thinks she has
a normative reason only if she is relevantly motivated, as internalism
requires. Views that rather understand normative reasons in terms
of explanatory reasons, however, yield a distinct kind of argument for
some form of internalism. Bernard Williams advances just this
kind of argument in his classic but commonly misunderstood article
'Internal and External Reasons'. We first (section 2.1.1)
sketch the Classical Argument, attributed to Williams on the standard
reading of his article, and then (section 2.1.2) sketch an alternative
argument that Williams may have intended instead.


#### 2.1.1 The Classical Argument




Williams claims that normative reasons have an 'explanatory
dimension'. On a standard reading what he means by this is
that a consideration can be a normative reason for some agent only if
it is possible (i.e. would under certain conditions be the case)
that the agent be motivated to act for that reason, and for it thereby
to be explanatory of his acting. This first premise of the
classical argument is, of course, just a statement of some version of
Counterfactual Motivation internalism. Here a Counterfactual
Motivation form of internalism is assumed as a conceptual truth in
order to argue for an Actual State internalism; any argument proceeding
from such a premise naturally has no force for those externalists who
deny even the Counterfactual Motivation internalist thesis. The
second premise of the argument is HTM, the Humean Theory of
Motivation. If the existence of reasons entails the possibility
of motivation, and the possibility of motivation entails the existence
of desire, then the existence of reasons entails the existence of
desire--as the Humean Theory of Reasons maintains.




This argument, however, has many widely observed weaknesses.
First, it depends on HTM, so it dismisses an idea that many
philosophers have accepted; namely, that beliefs (either in general or
of a specific kind, such as beliefs about reasons) can motivate action
by themselves and independently of desire (e.g. Nagel 1970;
Darwall 1983; Dancy 2000).




A second problem arises about how to understand the relevant sense
of 'possibility of motivation', which links the two
premises. To say that motivation is *possible* is
equivalent to saying that under certain conditions it would be actual.
To understand the relevant sense of possibility, we therefore
need to identify the relevant conditions under which, according to the
argument, there would be motivation. The problem is that the two
premises seem to require for their plausibility different conditions,
and therefore different senses of 'possibility'. In
the case of the first premise, connecting the existence of reasons with
the possibility of motivation, the existence of reasons plausibly
entails the 'possibility' of motivation in only a very weak
sense: perhaps nothing stronger than that the agent would be
motivated if he were rational, or perhaps virtuous. In the case
of the second premise, linking the possibility of motivation with the
existence of desire, a much stronger sense of 'possibility'
is arguably needed: something like there being some conditions
under which the agent with his actual psychological state would be
motivated.




If we were to read the former, weaker sense of the possibility of
motivation into this second premise, we get the claim that a rational,
or perhaps virtuous, version of the agent would only be motivated to
act in some way if the actual agent has some actual desire that could
produce that motivation. This premise would be false if agents
could be irrational or vicious precisely because they lack certain
desires, a common view we discussed in section 1.3. Suppose we
try instead to understand the first premise in terms of the stronger
sense of possibility suggested for the second premise. This
yields the claim that an agent can have a reason to act in some way
only if there are some possible conditions under which he would be
motivated to act in that way due to psychological attitudes that he
*actually* has. Interpreted in this way the first premise
begs the question against Williams' externalist opponent, because
it seems already to be a statement of an Actual State version of
internalism.




It seems that there is no interpretation of 'possibility of
motivation' for which it is plausible that both premises are true
and avoid begging the question against externalism. The Classical
Argument therefore seems to have either implausibly strong premises, a
problematic inference, or both.


#### 2.1.2 An Argument from Explanation




But Williams may not have intended to offer this argument. On
a rival and unorthodox interpretation (Finlay 2009), Williams' claim that
practical reasons have an "explanatory dimension" is
to be understood not simply as placing a constraint on what can be a
reason, but as providing the essential meaning of our thoughts and
claims about practical reasons. On this analysis the concept of a
'reason for action' just is the concept of an explanation
of action, following Davidson. To think that the fact that the
Alcove serves onion rings the size of doughnuts is a *reason*
for Caroline to go there, is to think that the fact that the Alcove
serves such onion rings is an *explanation* of Caroline's
going there.




As Williams observes, any view of this Davidsonian kind has to
overcome an obvious problem. We can have reasons which do not
motivate us to act (e.g. if we are unaware of them), and we can
act in ways for which we lack any actual practical reasons (e.g.
if we are mistaken about what our reasons are). Identifying an
agent's practical reasons, it seems, neither entails nor is
entailed by giving an explanation of her actions. On this
reading, Williams suggests that this problem arises simply due to
agents' error and ignorance, and he offers a way to fix the
Davidsonian approach. To think that a fact is a reason for an
agent to act is not to think it is an explanation of an action that she
*actually* performs, but rather it is to think it an explanation
of an action that she *would* have performed (or would have been
somewhat motivated towards performing) if not for her error or
ignorance. The concept of a practical reason must be the concept
of an explanation of counterfactual (motivation towards) action:
action under the condition of full and valid reasoning and exercise of
imagination from a belief-set purged of error and ignorance
('sound deliberation'). He claims that the
idealization contained in this counterfactual condition is enough to
make these reasons normative and not merely explanatory.




From this understanding of the concept of a practical reason, Williams
(on this interpretation) believes he can prove that all
'external reasons statements' are false by considering the
special case of *first personal* reasons beliefs: an agent's
beliefs about what considerations are reasons for himself. This
argument requires a further assumption: that *R* is a reason
for an agent to do *A* only if he could, through sound
deliberation, come to recognize it as a reason for his
doing *A*. This assumption seems reasonable given the
conceptual premise, that the notion of a 'reason for
action' is just some notion of an explanation of action. A
'reason for an agent' would then plausibly be an
explanation *for that agent*, and it is plausible that what can
be an explanation for an agent is restricted to what the agent is able
to come to recognize as an explanation.




Williams is concerned with what the agent comes to believe when he
comes to believe that some consideration *R* is a reason for
him to do *A*. Granted the conceptual premise, an
'internal reasons statement' is a claim that some
consideration is an explanation of why *by virtue of the contents
of the agent's actual 'motivational set'* he would be
motivated to do *A* under the conditions of sound deliberation,
while an 'external reasons statement' is a claim that some
consideration is an explanation of why *independently of the
contents of the agent's actual motivational set* he would be
motivated to do *A* under those conditions.




While Williams is commonly interpreted as challenging the possibility
of an agent being motivated to do *A* by the belief that he has
an external reason *R* to do *A*, on this reading he
explicitly *accepts* that such motivation is possible; a
disposition to be motivated by the belief that you have an external
reason could be an element of your motivational set, making the fact
that you have an external reason itself an *internal* reason
for you to act. (It is an advantage of this interpretation that this
is what Williams actually says.)




Unfortunately, the fact that an agent's belief that *R* is an
external reason to do *A* can motivate her to do *A*
does not suffice to show that *R* is a reason to
do *A*. It only shows that *the fact that R is a reason to
do A* is a reason to do *A*. That is because it does not
show that *R* can explain the agent's motivation to herself; it
only shows that *the fact that R is a reason for her to do A*
can explain her motivation to herself. So what Williams wants to know
is, how could it be
*true* that *R* is a reason to do *A*? If it were true,
realizing that it was could motivate--but what could make it
true?




According to this reading, the problem Williams sees for external
reasons is the following. For there genuinely to be external reasons,
he observes, it must be possible that some such external reasons
beliefs are *true*. This requires that the
consideration *R* which an agent accepts as his reason must
actually be a genuine explanation of his acting under the condition of
sound deliberation, independently of any facts about his motivational
set. But this condition cannot be met, because nothing could be
explanatory of an agent's action independently of the contents of his
motivational set: his desires and dispositions. From this it follows
(given the conceptual premise) that no motivationally
'external' considerations could genuinely be practical
reasons for an agent.




Hence, while many writers have come to the defense of external reasons
by appealing to a disposition to be motivated by beliefs about
reasons, if this interpretation is correct then Williams' argument is
directly aimed against this kind of solution. A disposition of this
kind could explain why a consideration *R* could motivate an
agent once he believed that it was a reason to act, but it could not
make it the case that *R* itself was a genuine explanation of
his acting, and therefore a reason for him to act. To use Williams'
own example, if Owen Wingrave comes to believe that
*the fact that military service is a family tradition is a reason
for him to enlist*, that belief may indeed motivate him to enlist,
and explain his doing so. But if he has no desires or
dispositions that would cause the belief that *military service is a
family tradition* itself to motivate him to enlist, then the fact
that military service is a family tradition cannot itself be a genuine
explanation of his enlisting, and therefore his belief that it is a
reason for him to enlist is false.




Although Williams' article is commonly seen as the classic defense of
HTR, on this reading it only restricts agents' reasons to their
dispositions to be motivated, and not more narrowly to their actual
desires. This is because dispositions are sufficient, and actual
desires not necessary, in order to explain why somebody would be
motivated under counterfactual conditions. This argument is therefore
stronger than the Classical Argument because of its independence from
HTM, which controversially claims that motivation requires desire. But
the view supported by this argument is not a weak, Counterfactual
Motivation version of internalism; rather it is a more general kind of
Actual State view, claiming a connection between reasons and all
psychological states relevant to the explanation of action. Indeed,
Williams' skepticism about 'external reasons' would then
be directed not against those who reject Counterfactual Motivation
accounts--he just assumes that his opponent agrees with him that
reasons must be able to motivate--but against many philosophers
who have championed some Counterfactual Motivation version of
internalism, like Nagel (1970) and Darwall (1983). These philosophers
argue that the order of explanation runs in the other direction: that
the possibility of being motivated to do *A* can be explained
by the existence of a reason to do *A*, while Williams' view is
that the existence of a reason to do *A* must be explained by
the possibility of being motivated to do *A*.




The weakest point in this version of Williams' argument is probably
its fundamental, conceptual premise: that the concept of a practical
reason is the concept of an explanation of action under certain
conditions. Even if we grant the controversial claim that the concept
of a practical reason is the concept of an *explanation* we can
still resist this analysis. Suppose, for example, that the concept of
a reason to do *A* is the concept of an explanation of *why
to do A*, or of *why doing A is a good thing to do*. To say
that *R* was the reason for which the agent did *A*
would then be to say that *R* was the explanation of why to
do *A* which motivated the agent to do *A*. This rival
account respects the conceptual relation between 'reason'
and 'explanation' on which Williams and Davidson insist,
but doesn't analyze practical reasons as any kind of explanation of
*action*. If this is what our concept of practical reasons
is, then a different argument will be needed if we are to rule out the
possibility of external reasons.


#### 2.1.3 Other Motivational Arguments




A different kind of argument specifically for the Humean Theory of
Reasons tries to reason from some kind of Counterfactual Motivation
internalism by raising questions about the concepts of action and
motivation in play (Finlay 2007). Necessarily, a rational agent
is motivated by recognition of her reasons. But this motivated
behavior is not merely caused by her reasons; it is a *voluntary
response* *to them*. A rational agent responds
*voluntarily* to her reasons.




A connection is then forged between voluntary behavior and
desire. Arguably, a behavior is only voluntary if it is caused by
being *aimed at*. On one theory of desire, aiming at
*p* entails desiring something (either *p* itself, or
something to which *p* is taken to be a means). It follows
that a rational agent's recognition of a reason entails the
presence of a relevant desire. This does not yet rule out
externalism, which is compatible with this result if any of a number of
different claims are true. The internalist can try to close off
these escapes, however. (i) One possible externalist solution is
that being rational involves having certain desires; the internalist
can argue in response that rationality is rather a procedural virtue
which doesn't necessarily involve having any particular desires.
(ii) Another solution is to suggest that a rational agent's
ability to recognize reasons is limited by her desires; the internalist
can plausibly respond that being (ideally) rational is, by definition,
to be able to recognize all one's reasons. (iii) Perhaps
most promisingly, an externalist can suggest that a rational agent can
respond voluntarily to her reasons by virtue of their causing her to
have a new desire (Darwall 1983). The internalist may counter by
arguing that because we cannot desire at will, the causation of such a
desire would be a nonvoluntary response to the recognition of a reason,
and therefore any behavior motivated by that desire--even if
voluntary--would not qualify as a voluntary *response to the
reason*.




This line of argument has not yet received much attention; opponents
may reasonably question whether motivation by reasons must always be
voluntary (this seems implausible in the case of *theoretical*
reasons, or reasons for belief, for example--see section 2.2
below for this analogy), and also whether voluntary behavior must be
caused by desire. For yet a different promising argument for
internalism on the basis of the connection between reasons and
motivational capacities, see section 4 of (Markovits 2011).


### 2.2 The Analogy to Theoretical Reason




Externalists often appeal to the parallels between practical reasons
(reasons for action) and *epistemic* or *theoretical*
reasons (or reasons for belief) to make their case *against*
certain forms of internalism, particularly the Humean Theory of Reasons
(Millgram 1996). They seem to be different species of the same
genus: while practical reasons are facts that support or justify
certain actions, theoretical reasons are facts that support or justify
certain beliefs. Both sorts of reasons are subsumable under the
class of normative reasons, or *facts that support certain
behaviors*.




But externalists object that it is implausible that reasons for
belief entail or depend upon facts about desire or motivation.
Rational belief is responsive only to *evidence*, and
beliefs formed on the basis of desires (like a husband's wishful
belief--in the face of all the evidence--that his wife is not
cheating on him) are irrational. So not *all*
normative reasons are internal reasons. Internalism about
*practical* reasons might therefore seem arbitrary and
unmotivated. Once we've allowed external reasons that count in
favor of believing certain things, why not allow external reasons that
count in favor of doing certain things? Elijah Millgram (1996) suggests that
just as new experiences can reveal to us hitherto unknown reasons for
belief, so too new experiences (involving unexpected pleasures) can
reveal to us reasons for action independent of our antecedent desires
and dispositions.




Internalists have two options here. They can deny that genuine
reasons for belief can be external, extending their internalism to
theoretical reasons, or they can seek to motivate differential
treatment of the practical and the theoretical cases. To pursue
the former course, internalists might argue that we ascribe reasons for
belief on the assumption of a desire for knowledge or truth (see Kelly
2003 for discussion). They can further argue that a person is
simply not in the business of forming *beliefs* if he does not
have something resembling a desire for truth (Velleman 2000).
Alternatively, internalists might argue that we ascribe reasons for
belief on the assumption that whatever the contents of a person's
desire-set, it will include some item that would be served by believing
that for which there is evidence.




The second strategy would involve identifying a relevant difference
between practical and theoretical reasons to explain why internalism
is true of reasons for action, but not of reasons for belief. For
example, Markovits (2011) argues that the practical case is different
because there is no analogue to the plausible case
of *foundational* beliefs in the epistemic case. A different
strategy might focus on differences in the nature or aims of
*action* and *belief*. Suppose for example that
while believing by its nature aims at tracking the truth, acting by its
nature aims at satisfying some desire of the agent. We could then
reasonably maintain that practical but not theoretical reasons can only
be internal.


### 2.3 Arguments from Reactive Attitudes




An important part of the debate about internal and external reasons
has centered on 'reactive attitudes', or attitudes that we
have towards agents in response to their behavior, of which blame is
the paradigm. Some have observed in defense of Moral Rationalism,
for example, that if an agent does something we consider morally wrong,
then we blame (or resent) her. But blame, these philosophers
claim, involves the judgment that the agent had reasons not to do what
he did. Consequently blame is unwarranted when such judgments are
unwarranted (Nagel 1970, Smith 1994). Therefore, since moral
wrongdoing is sufficient to warrant blame, moral obligations must
entail reasons. Furthermore, Moral Absolutism tells us that the
moral wrongness of certain actions is independent of agents' desires
and dispositions. Since wrongness entails the appropriateness of
blame, which in turn entails existence of reasons, we can conclude that
there must be reasons that are independent of agents' desires and
dispositions: i.e. external reasons.




A difficulty for this argument comes from the fact that outside of
morality we do not, in general, blame or resent people for failing to
comply with their practical reasons. If an agent does something
foolish or imprudent, for example, we might react with pity or scorn,
but not with anything as strong as blame. It seems that the
appropriateness of blame requires some condition other than
noncompliance with reasons. This does not show that noncompliance
with reasons is not one of the necessary conditions for blame, of
course, but it opens the possibility that once we identify the further
necessary conditions we might find that they are also, by themselves,
sufficient conditions for appropriate blame. The internalist
might suggest, for example, that the missing condition is partly that
the *judge* have desires or concerns that are harmed by the
resented behavior. Proponents of the argument from blame may
respond that it is inappropriate to blame harmful non-agents (like
trees and tigers) and agents whose harms are unintentional.
However it may be possible to excuse these from blame without accepting
that noncompliance with reasons is a necessary condition for
blameworthiness; for example, with the weaker condition that a
blameworthy act stems from having a character from which certain
concerns or motivations are absent (Arpaly 2003). Trees and
tigers don't have a 'character' in the relevant
sense, and harms that an agent causes unintentionally do not stem from
her character. If something like this is a sufficient condition
for blameworthiness, then this argument from reactive attitudes
fails.




Bernard Williams does not resist the claim that the appropriateness
of blame entails reasons, however, and offers a way of explaining the
appropriateness of blame when an agent appears to have no relevant
internal reasons to act otherwise than she did. Blaming in these
cases functions as a 'proleptic mechanism': it itself
changes the situation for the agent so that she now has an internal
reason that she otherwise would have lacked (1989). This is a
reason she has in virtue of something like 'a disposition to have
the respect of other people'. By blaming or being disposed
to blame an agent for unethical behavior, we give her a reason to act
ethically. Note that this account understands the appropriateness
of blame as at least partly instrumental. Blaming is appropriate
if it has some motivational grip on the agent. This view is
resisted by many who see the question of the appropriateness of a
reactive attitude as primarily an issue of desert. Arguably,
blame is appropriate only if it is deserved, and not if it is merely
effective in influencing people's behavior.




It is also possible to appeal to reactive attitudes in arguing
*against* external reasons. Williams argues that
externalism cannot accommodate the obscurity and indeterminacy in the
practice of blame: that is, the pattern predicted by his
internalist account that blame sometimes responds to reasons and at
other times tries to create them, and that its appropriateness turns on
whether the agent can be influenced psychologically in either of these
ways.




Russ Shafer-Landau finds in Williams' article the suggestion of a
further argument, turning on the fairness constraint on appropriate
blame (2003: 181-2). Blame is only appropriate if it is fair, and
it is only fair to blame someone for their behavior if they had the
capacity to act otherwise than they did. But an agent's capacity
to act is limited by her desires and dispositions, and therefore blame
is only appropriate if an agent's desires and dispositions gave her the
capacity to act otherwise. This is a challenge for externalism
because of the suggested connection between blame and reasons we
discussed above: an agent is blameworthy for her action only if
in so acting she failed to obey her
 reasons.[1]
It follows that an agent's
reasons must be limited by her desires and dispositions; some form of
internalism is true.




This argument can succeed only if supported by a plausible version
of the 'ought implies can' principle. But in basing
an agent's capacity to act on her desires and dispositions, the
version of the principle that the argument seems to presuppose treats
'ought', or the fairness of blame, as depending on the
*psychological* capacity to act rather than on the mere
*physical* capacity to act. Externalists would reject as
implausible the psychological version of the principle, and therefore
to assume it for purposes of an internalist argument would be
question-begging against the externalist.


### 2.4 The Conditional Fallacy




(Nontrivial) Counterfactual Motivation versions of internalism are
sometimes accused of committing a 'conditional
fallacy' (named by Shope (1978)). To commit this 'fallacy' is to claim that
it is necessary for an agent's having a reason to do *A* that
he would be motivated under certain conditions to do *A*, when
there are some reasons that the agent can have only if precisely those
conditions do not obtain. For example, some versions of internalism
appeal to counterfactuals involving full rationality, but sometimes
agents have certain reasons precisely because they are not fully
rational. Smith (1994) offers the case, due to Gary Watson, of a
defeated squash player who, because he is prone to irrational anger
that could cause him to smash his opponent's face with his racquet,
has a reason not to cross the court to shake the winner's hand. When
the conditions specified by the relevant internalist thesis do obtain,
the reason is then not present to motivate the agent, falsifying the
counterfactual. For example, were Watson's squash player to be fully
rational, then it would no longer be true that if he crossed the court
he might hit his opponent, and therefore he wouldn't be motivated
accordingly not to cross the court. The relevant internalist thesis
then yields the false result that the irrational squash player has no
reason not to cross the court.




In defense of his own internalist thesis, involving counterfactual
motivation under the condition of sound deliberation from full
information, Williams (1995) raises an objection of this kind against
McDowell's rival claim involving the condition of *full
virtue*. He observes that being less than fully virtuous
*gives* agents reasons to act that they otherwise wouldn't have
had and that therefore would not motivate a fully virtuous agent.
Others object to Williams' own counterfactuals involving sound
deliberation that there are reasons that agents have precisely because
they are not capable of deliberating soundly, which his version of
internalism therefore fails to accommodate.




It is plausible that objections of this kind will be effective against
any nontrivial Counterfactual Motivation version of internalism. This
problem has prompted some to switch from a Counterfactual Motivation
model to a Counterfactual *State* model, and others to be more
careful about specifying just what state they have in mind. The idea
is that an agent *S* has a reason to do
*A* only if, were she in certain counterfactual circumstances,
she would desire *S* *in her actual circumstances* to
do *A* (Smith 1994). Michael Smith calls this
the *advice* model (in contrast to the *example* model),
and it plausibly avoids the problems connected with the
'conditional fallacy' because it builds in sensitivity to
the relevant conditions in the actual cases that generate the
reasons. For example, if a fully rational version of Watson's squash
player were to contemplate the situation of his actual, less than
fully-rational self, he would be aware of his actual self's
disposition to irrational anger, and would therefore want his actual
self not to cross the court to shake the winner's hand. The advice
model may therefore yield the correct result that the actual player
has a reason not cross the court. However, as Bedke (2010) emphasizes,
this leaves an important puzzle about why each agent's counterfactual,
more fully rational self, would have desires about what her actual
self does.


## 3. Direct, Extensional Arguments




Fortunately we do not ordinarily need to turn to a metaethical theory
to tell us what reasons we have. People have a robust set of
intuitions about what is and what is not a reason for a given agent to
perform a given action. All nontrivial versions of reasons internalism
and externalism have substantive implications concerning the extension
of agents' reasons, and for the most part theory here is answerable to
common sense and aims at accommodating it. Some of the most
significant and compelling arguments for and against versions of
internalism are therefore extensional, that is to say, based on what
reasons agents actually have. An internalist account's predictions
about what is and what is not a reason for a particular agent can be
tested against our prior judgments about what reasons there are.


### 3.1 For Externalism


#### 3.1.1 Undergeneration Arguments




We have already encountered one of the most powerful sources of
extensional opposition to nontrivial versions of reasons internalism
in the form of the Central Problem. The Central Problem is that it
seems that some actions are wrong for everyone no matter what they are
like, and that their wrongness for someone requires that that person
have a reason not to do them. But many kinds of internalism--in
particular Actual State views--say that an agent has a reason
only if she satisfies a certain condition, and hence that her reason
depends on what she is like. We can even frame the Central Problem by
divorcing it from Moral Rationalism and Moral Absolutism, and simply
insisting that for at least some actions (perhaps paradigmatic wrong
actions among them), there is a reason for anyone not to do those
actions, no matter what she is like. This leads to a direct argument
against many forms of internalism: that they
*undergenerate* reasons, by providing negative verdicts in cases
in which intuitively there really are reasons.




Because this sort of argument has not always gotten a grip on those
skeptical about the objective authority of morality, one important
development since the 1970s is the observation that a similar sort of
problem arises for *prudential* reasons (e.g. Nagel
1970). If I am going to travel to Israel in six months' time and
will regret not knowing any Hebrew once I get there, then I have a
reason to study Hebrew *now*, even if I don't now care about my
future regrets or about whether I will know Hebrew while I am in
Israel. Yet internalist theses place constraints on what I
*now* have a reason to do, on the basis of what my actual
psychology is like *now*, or on the basis of what
counterfactuals are true of me *now*. So they appear to
have a problem in getting these intuitive judgments about reasons
right. This argument is thought to produce extra dialectical
leverage, because these intuitions about prudential reasons are thought
to be harder to give up than corresponding intuitions about moral
reasons.


#### 3.1.2 Defenses Against Undergeneration Arguments




Two lines of response are open to the internalist here. One, proposed
by Mark Schroeder (2007b) in defense of the Humean Theory of Reasons,
denies that internalism is genuinely incompatible with the
inescapability of some moral or prudential reasons. If there are some
actions that would serve any possible desire (or, on an alternative
internalist account, that any agent would be motivated towards under
the relevant counterfactual conditions), then the internalist can
accommodate reasons that any agent has no matter what they are like:
such reasons are *massively overdetermined*. In this way the
internalist can seek to reconcile Moral Rationalism with Moral
Absolutism (see section 1.2). The idea is that even if internalism is
true, it might still be the case that we all have reasons to avoid
moral wrongdoing, no matter what we are like--because reasons to
avoid moral wrongdoing are generated from any set of desires or
dispositions. While this solution is formally available, it remains
to be seen whether it can plausibly generate the robust set of moral
and prudential reasons posited by ordinary intuitions, and it appears
reasonable to be pessimistic on this count; plausibly there are actual
or possible sets of desires and dispositions that would not support
any reasons to avoid breaking promises made to those powerless to
retaliate, or to confess to one's crime for which somebody else has
already been convicted, for example.




Generally, however, internalists bite the bullet and reject the data
of these 'intuitions'. They might simply challenge whether
those intuitions really exist or, more audaciously, maintain that they
are all false. It is not denied that speakers *ascribe*
external reasons to agents, and so internalists are compelled to offer
diagnoses of this practice. The bluntest is to adopt an error
theory, and suggest that these practices manifest a mistaken
understanding of the kinds of reasons that there are. This forces
a confrontation between internalism and ordinary practice; most
internalists dislike the odds in this matchup and seek to explain away
the evidence.




A provocative diagnosis of external reasons claims is as a
*bluff* or a rhetorical device designed to influence the
behavior and attitudes of others (Williams 1979). On this view
external reasons claims are all false but stem from an attempt to apply
nonrational persuasion on others rather than from error; recently some
philosophers have argued that we either do (Kalderon 2005) or should
(Joyce 2001) use moral claims as convenient fictions for this
purpose. In later work (1989), Williams proposes, more
temperately, that they may be 'optimistic internal reasons
claims': likely false statements made in the hope that they
may become true through the intended audience's contemplation of
them.




A more conciliatory strategy is to claim ambiguity in the notion of
a 'reason'. In one sense there are external reasons;
we might call them 'institutional' or
'pseudo'-reasons (Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001). But the
spirit of internalism is preserved in the claim that these are not
genuine practical reasons, about which an internalist thesis is
correct. Recognizing the legitimacy of ascribing these other
kinds of reasons may suggest softening the distinction between internal
and external reasons even further; it has been proposed that what
counts as a 'genuine reason' is determined by the concerns
characterizing the context of discourse (Finlay 2006). So, for
example, we may appropriately judge that the pain a certain action
would cause is a *reason* for a sadist not to perform the
action, because the salient concern in the context is *our*
compassion for others. This view would prompt us to abandon
existence internalism about practical 'reasons' (reasons claims
are made relative to the concerns salient in the conversation, and not
necessarily to the motivations of the agent). On this view of
reasons, however, an agent can have reasons that count as genuine in a
given context, but that he can ignore without irrationality. Such
a view can preserve the spirit of internalism by claiming that the
rational force of these reasons for any agent depends upon his desires
or motivations.




These strategies aim to reconcile internalism, as much as possible,
with the apparently externalist tendencies in ordinary practices of
ascribing reasons. Externalists claim they are unsuccessful;
ordinary practice is committed to genuine (and genuinely authoritative)
external reasons, and rightly so. But internalists remain
optimistic. The issue is very much unresolved.


#### 3.1.3 Overgeneration Arguments




The literature is also full of extensional arguments against
theories which resemble internalism, but on the grounds that they
*overgenerate*, rather than undergenerate, reasons. Many famous
and colorful examples--about people who want to eat saucers of
mud, or count blades of grass, or who have a disposition to turn on
radios--are offered to show that not every desire or motivation
is of the right kind to generate practical reasons (Anscombe 1959,
Quinn 1993). Strictly speaking, however, such cases only create
objections to views which postulate a
*sufficient* condition for the existence of reasons, and
internalism itself postulates only *necessary* conditions, and
no such sufficient condition, as Bernard Williams makes clear (1989),
for example.




There may, of course, be philosophical reasons why many theorists
who accept some version of internalism as a necessary condition on
reasons are also inclined to accept a sufficient condition of this
kind, and we will consider one such philosophical reason in the next
section. So these may end up being good *indirect*
arguments against internalism. But no sufficient condition is
part of internalism by itself, so there are no direct overgeneration
arguments against internalism.


### 3.2 For Internalism


#### 3.2.1 The Significance of Apparent Internal Reasons




So far we have considered extensional arguments against
internalism. But there are also extensional arguments in
*favor* of internalist theses. Setting aside peculiarly
moral reasons, common sense suggests that *ordinary* practical
reasons exhibit a high degree of agent-relativity. It is also
natural to think that in at least many cases, different agents have
different reasons because they *want* different things. If
*A* desires chocolate ice cream, and *B* desires
strawberry ice cream, then intuitively *A* has a reason to
purchase the chocolate, and *B* has a reason to purchase the
strawberry. Many have thought that the Humean Theory of Reasons is
more than suggested by this sort of extensional data.




The idea behind this reasoning is that if we have to agree that
*some* reasons depend on desires, then we should give serious
consideration to the theory according to which *all* reasons do,
as being simpler and more explanatory than the theory according to
which some reasons derive from our desires but others do not.
This may even provide a promising analytical hypothesis about what
claims about reasons mean, or reductive hypothesis about what reasons
are. This kind of argument is anticipated by Williams' claim that
the issue is whether there are both internal and external reasons, or
internal reasons only (1979; see also Schroeder 2007b). We now
discuss three kinds of externalist objection to this argument.


#### 3.2.2 Three Objections




One line of objection holds that *no* reasons derive from our
desires. It seems plausible that they do only because desire is
closely connected to something else, which often *is* a source
of reasons: something like *pleasure* or
*enjoyment* (Bond 1983, Millgram 1997, Scanlon 1998).
Reasons that seem to derive from desires can arguably be more plausibly
explained by pleasure, which can also serve to explain reasons that
desire cannot explain: reasons deriving from pleasures that the
agent does not actually desire. It may therefore be a better and
more explanatory hypothesis that something like *pleasure*
grounds our agent-relative reasons. However proponents of this
kind of objection often take hedonic states like pleasure to be merely
one instance of something *possessing intrinsic value*, and
offer as rivals to HTR theories of reasons as based on intrinsic value
(see the entry on 
 intrinsic vs. extrinsic value).





In response, Humeans can observe that in ordinary cases agents
*want* pleasure, and that thereby HTR can accommodate such
reasons. This line of objection needs a case in which an agent
has a reason to do not just something that she does not already desire
to do, but something that would not serve any desire whatsoever that
she already has. Since any given action may serve many different
possible desires, and agents who do not desire (e.g.) pleasure are rare
and peculiar, it is difficult to control for these kinds of
factors. Externalists can claim that an agent would have a reason
to do what is pleasurable even in the absence of any such general
desire, but this is something that an internalist may be able to deny
without absurdity--although here intuitions seem to differ
radically.




A related objection consists in the complaint that agents can have
desires that clearly do not generate any practical reasons because they
are for worthless objects. Prominent examples in the literature
include a desire to drink a saucer of mud or a can of paint, and a
disposition to turn on radios whenever they are off. As noted in
section 3.1.3, these examples can't provide direct counterexamples to
any sort of reasons internalism, because reasons internalism itself
places only a necessary condition on reasons and not a sufficient
condition, and these examples are proposed counterexamples to a
sufficient condition. But they are highly relevant to the
theoretical argument for internalism that is our concern in this
section. If we advance as our case for internalism the
explanatory power of the thesis that reasons depend on desire or
motivation, then it is a significant problem if this relation isn't
consistent and desire or motivation don't always generate
reasons. Some explanation of this inconsistency is needed, and
when we find it we may find that it reveals that something other than
desire or motivation is the genuine source of our reasons.




These cases are taken to show that desires are only connected with
reasons if they are also connected with something else, for example
intrinsic value, and they do not yield reasons otherwise. Against
this the internalist can again challenge intuitions and defend the
consistency of the connection, by insisting (e.g.) that a desire to
drink a saucer of mud is sufficient for having a reason to do so.
Such a reason need not be a good or strong one, after all, and the
peculiarity of claiming that there is such a reason may be explained
away as being merely pragmatic. In cases in which the reasons for
an action are dwarfed by the considerations against it, it is usual to
report that there is no reason for the action at all; 'there is a
reason to do *A*' typically communicates that there is a
*relatively weighty* reason to do *A*. Whether or not agents
have desire-based reasons in these circumstances remains a contested
issue.




A different version of this same sort of objection works by granting
a special connection between reasons and desire but suggesting that
this exists because desires involve judgments or perceptions that
something is a reason (e.g. Anscombe 1963, Stampe 1987, Quinn
1993, Millgram 1997, Scanlon 1998). Scanlon labels these
'desires in the directed-attention sense'; on this view,
(apparent) reasons are explanatory of desires, and not the
reverse. This hypothesis would explain why agents tend to have
relevant desires whenever they *believe themselves* to have
reasons, but it does not seem well-placed to explain why agents would
have these desires whenever they *actually* have reasons.
If we are disposed to ascribe reasons to *others* in
correspondence with their desires, the Humean hypothesis is better.




A third kind of objection (Hampton 1998) insists that though it is
true that some reasons derive from our desires, this is only because of
more fundamental reasons which themselves do not derive from our
desires. Proponents of this view hold that there is a fundamental
reason to do what you desire and that changes in what you desire simply
affect what you need to do in order to go about doing so. This
view admits that our desires can sometimes affect our reasons but
insists that they only do so because there is a further reason, which
does not depend on any desire. Philosophers who accept this view
are unmoved by the argument that Actual State forms of reason
internalism can provide a more unified explanation of reasons.
They don't deny the existence of 'internal' reasons (which
do derive from desires), but do hold that internal reasons are simply
derivative from and hence are explained by a special case of external
reasons (which do not derive from or depend on desires at all). A
similar dialectic goes for Actual State views which appeal to a more
general kind of state than 'desire'.


### 3.3 Relative Explanatory Power




Any evaluation of whether Actual State reasons internalism is
simpler, more elegant, or explanatorily more powerful than any possible
externalist view will have to turn on an evaluation of this kind of
externalist explanatory strategy. If internal reasons could be
simply derivative from external reasons, and external reasons could be
independently explained, then Actual State reasons internalism will
have very little traction on these grounds. If the derivation of
internal reasons from external reasons turns out to be unsuccessful,
however, or external reasons themselves are difficult to explain, then
Actual State reasons internalism will gain traction as an explanatory
hypothesis. Schroeder (2007b) attacks the derivation of internal
reasons from external reasons; here we can go on to consider whether
external reasons are themselves harder to explain than internal
ones.




Many philosophers have held that external reasons are, in fact,
harder to explain than internal ones; even some who were no skeptics
about external reasons, like Immanuel Kant (see the entry on
 Kant's moral philosophy.) 
 So what makes external reasons so puzzling? One
idea is that they are puzzling because they leave so little on the
basis of which to explain why they are reasons for the people for whom
they are reasons. Internal reasons are shared only by certain
people--people with the requisite desires. So Max's desires
can be used to explain why he has the internal reasons that he
has. But categorical external reasons like those Kant was
concerned about (and which are required in order to reconcile Moral
Rationalism with Moral Absolutism) are supposed to be reasons for any
agent, no matter what she is like. So the only thing to which we
can appeal in order to explain why Max has these reasons is the fact
that Max is an *agent*. Some philosophers have accordingly
invested great energy in developing robust enough accounts of agency to
be able to explain moral reasons. For example, Christine
Korsgaard (1996) maintains that reasons derive from the demands of
autonomy, or being regulated by stable principles that define
ones' self, which she identifies as a necessary condition for
acting at all.




However, even accounts that derive reasons from the nature of agency
may ultimately vindicate some form of internalism. David Velleman
(1996), for example, argues that agency is characterized by a
particular higher-order inclination--to 'behave in, and out
of, a knowledge of what you're doing.' Although this is a
kind of desire, it is distinct from the contingent desires that might
be satisfied by particular actions and which internalists usually
identify as the source of our reasons. Velleman accordingly
describes his view as a 'fainthearted externalism', but it
remains a form of internalism according to the scheme presented
here.




Some advocates of various forms of internalism have complained that
advocacy of external reasons amounts to nothing more than
'bluff' (Williams 1979). A natural way to understand
this idea is as the complaint that external reasons theorists leave us
with too few constraints on what reasons could be, and hence are able
to make whatever claims about reasons they want (so long as they
endorse them in a serious enough tone of voice, perhaps), with no
independent way of checking their plausibility. This complaint
could be a fair one against externalists who are willing to offer no
general theory about or constraints on reasons, but it is unfair in
general. Externalists may simply look for discipline and unity in
their views about reasons from a source distinct from facts about
motivation or motivational psychology. Value-based theorists, for
example, tie their claims about reasons to commitments about what is
valuable. So their claims about what we have reasons to do are
checked by the plausibility of the corresponding theses about what is
valuable.


## 4. The Debate Today




The debate over internal and external reasons is very much alive
today, open on nearly all of the fronts that we have considered in this
article. Or more accurately, we should say that the
*debates* over internal and external reasons are very much alive
today. As we saw, there are important differences between State
and Motivation forms of internalism, between Counterfactual and Actual
forms of internalism, and between versions that give rise to the
Central Problem and those that do not. There are also important
further differences in precisely how to formulate any given version of
reasons internalism, and we have not precisely formulated any single
version in this article.




What is clear is that there are two main varieties of internalist
view, each of which faces its own class of problems. Most
internalist views encounter the Central Problem, and hence have
difficulty in allowing for some of the important reasons that we
pre-theoretically are inclined to think that there are. Though
other arguments have been offered against them, this challenge is at
the heart of their difficulties. We saw that some Counterfactual
versions of internalism avoid the Central Problem, by claiming that the
relevant counterfactuals are not grounded in any features of agents'
actual psychologies, but rather are explained in some other way.
The challenge facing these views is to provide such an explanation
without collapsing into triviality, as with the view that the relevant
counterfactual condition is 'that the agent is motivated by all
of her reasons'.




Externalist views, on the other hand, avoid the Central Problem and
hence do well with moral reasons, but critics worry that external
reasons are more mysterious, and that such theories cannot provide as
attractive an explanation of why *some* reasons *do*
appear to be internal. An attractive way forward may have to show
entrenched parties how to achieve some of the important advantages of
each side of the debate.