Reasons for emotion and moral motivation

, Michael Smith not only analyses what he takes tobe the central problem of moral philosophy, he sketches a solution to thatproblem. The problem is, briefly, that of reconciling our belief in the objec-tivity of moral statements with our belief in the motivational force of suchstatements given the acceptance of a theory that grounds motivation in thesubjective conative states of agents. The sketch of a solution dependscrucially on the distinction between a motivating reason and a normativereason. While the former are based on the desires of the agent, the latterare determined by desires that a fully rational agent would have concerningthe behaviour of the actual agent. Smith seeks to show how reasons basedon such considerations can have just the sort of connection to actual moti-vation that normative reasons do and how such reasons can be seen asobjective, in an appropriate sense.In addition to being objective, Smith believes, normative reasons, if thereare any, must be non-relative. Thus, while accepting a Humean account ofmotivating reasons, Smith rejects a Humean account of normative reasons.To be more precise, Smith believes that, while an agent’s motivatingreasons are dependent on the agent’s desires or some other subjective,contingent, conative state of the agent, his normative reasons are not.Indeed, they are not relativized to the agent at all despite the fact that theirstatus as normative reasons for that agent depends on the fact that hisideally rational self would desire that he act on them. Relativity is avoided,Smith believes, because all rational agents would, through a process ofrational deliberation and correction of false beliefs, converge on at leastsome desires concerning how to act in a given set of circumstances. Callthis ‘the convergence hypothesis’. Not only does Smith believe that theconvergence hypothesis is true, he believes that were it not true, therewould be no normative reasons for action (1994: 173).The idea of non-relative normative reasons that have the proper rationalauthority over us has been an attractive one to philosophers. And manyhave sought to ground such reasons on the desires idealized agents wouldhave. I have elsewhere (1996) attacked the claim that reasons based onsuch desires have the proper normative authority. Here, I want to consideronly the claim of non-relativity. While Smith doesn’t claim to have shownthat there

In the Handbook of Moral Motivation, the editors have collected together an array of distinguished authors in the field of moral psychology and moral philosophy, all of whom have an interest, one way or another, in the question what forces us to act morally, how are we morally motivated?

Unfit for the Future packs a powerful punch for a short book. In this commentary I respond to the book's case for moral bioenhancement (MB). Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu...

This article responds to recent arguments that worshipping God cannot be obligatory. It shows how a respect-based account of worship is compatible with the claim that only God is worthy of worship, and compatible with the view that worship is very different from attitudes we owe to creatures. Then, it develops a respect-based account in enough detail to show how our moral motivations to respect creatures generate an obligation to worship God. The upshot is an analysis of worship which can weather recent arguments that worshipping God is not morally motivated.

Transcendental arguments against skepticism claim that the skeptical argument depends on the falsehood or the unbelievability of the skeptical hypothesis. This chapter argues that the skeptic needs to presuppose the moral or practical rationality of the subject, requiring the existence of an external world with certain features (strongest arguments), the falsehood of the skeptical hypothesis (strong arguments), or the subject’s belief in such a world (weak arguments). The argument starts with rational agency and investigates the sense of moral obligation, moral motives, and virtues that would exist in “vat morality,” arguing that although the skeptic needs to presuppose the rational and moral agency of the subject, the skeptical hypothesis denies or undermines the subject’s agency. The chapter ends by considering whether the skeptic can retreat to Pyrrhonian skepticism to save the skeptical project, concluding that he cannot.

Are reasons for action facts or psychological states? There are two answers in the literature on the ontology of reasons. According to the Standard Story, normative reasons are facts, while motivating reasons are psychological states. According to the factualist, both normative and motivating reasons are facts. In this paper I argue that neither of these views is satisfactory. The Standard Story errs in thinking that the two kinds of reasons are different ontological entities. The factualist gets this right, but incurs some distasteful ontological commitments by thinking of motivating reasons as facts. We should, thus, give a proper hearing to the only serious logically possible alternative to the two existing views: both motivating and normative reasons are psychological states.

In a recent paper, Gregory defends the claim that a normative reason is a good basis for Φ-ing. He claims that a “basis” is what is commonly known as a motivating reason. By “good” Gregory means good in its attributive sense, as something which is good as a kind. In this paper I argue that it is not plausible that normative reasons are motivating reasons that are good as an instance of their kind. I argue that in order to assess this claim, pace Gregory, we need to know what it is for a motivating reason to be good as a kind. I canvas some potential answers to this question provided by Gregory, first that motivating reasons are things that play a role in a causal structure, and second that motivating reasons are what is believed to be a normative reason. I argue that since neither of these is plausibly good as a kind, we should reject RGB.

Both motivational internalism and externalism need to explain why sometimes moral judgments tend to motivate us. In this paper, I argue that Dreier’ second-order desire model cannot be a plausible externalist alternative to explain the connection between moral judgments and motivation. I explain that the relevant second-order desire is merely a constitutive requirement of rationality because that desire makes a set of desires more unified and coherent. As a rational agent with the relevant second-order desire is disposed towards coherence, she will have some motivation to act in accordance with her moral judgments. Dreier’s second-order desire model thus collapses into a form of internalism and cannot be a plausible externalist option to explain the connection between moral judgments and motivation.

In this essay, I will attempt to sketch out some of the consequences for the study of political institutions that follow from taking both rationality and morality as constitutive features of individual agents. This represents a departure from more standard lines of economic analysis which typically focus on rationality as the central characteristic of individual agency, and then address questions concerning morality either in terms of the aggregation of individual utilities (in the generally utilitarian tradition), or in terms of principles that might be agreed by rational agents (in the generally contractarian tradition). These standard economic approaches draw a stark divide between motivation and justification. Policies, or institutions, may be justified by their moral properties, but these moral properties can play no direct role in motivating the individuals concerned either with choosing the policies/institutions or with living under them. This aspect of economic analysis is both a strength and a weakness. A strength because it focuses attention on what might generally be called the compliance problem; that is, the issue of structuring the environment so as to ensure that agents will comply with justified institutions and rules, without simply assuming com pliant motivation. This strength is shown most clearly in the various appli cations of ‘invisible hand’ theorems which serve to show that even self-interested individuals can be led to produce socially efficient outcomes.KeywordsPublic ChoiceMoral BeliefMoral BehaviourMoral MotiveDirect DemocracyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

E-commerce online live shopping has become intricately woven into the fabric of people's daily lives. This study adopts empirical statistical research methods to identify factors influencing consumers' purchase intentions within the realm of e-commerce live broadcasting. Drawing upon the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model and motivational psychological theory, a comprehensive model for consumer purchase intentions in the context of e-commerce live streaming is formulated. Users' perceived interactivity, perceived content quality, and perceived trust in live streamers are taken as antecedent variables, and users' emotional motivation and cognitive motivation are taken as intermediate variables. Use the user's purchase intention as the result variable. Assume that the three anthems positively affect the two intermediate variables, and the two intermediate variables positively affect the outcome variables. After a series of data analyses, all the proposed hypothesis studies are valid. In other words, the interaction of users' perception of live broadcasts when watching e-commerce, the quality of content, and their trust in live streamers will positively affect users' emotional motivation and cognitive motivation, and the emotional motivation and cognitive motivation generated by users will also positively affect users' purchase intention. There are mediating effects between affective motivation and cognitive motivation in the hypothesis model.

”Meaningful human control” is a term invented in the political and legal debate on autonomous weapons system, but it is nowadays also used in many other contexts. It is supposed to specify conditions under which an artificial system is under the right kind of control to avoid responsibility gaps: that is, situations in which no moral agent is responsible. Santoni de Sio and Van den Hoven have recently suggested a framework that can be used by system designers to operationalize this kind of control. It is the purpose of this paper to facilitate further operationalization of ”meaningful human control”.This paper consists of two parts. In the first part I resolve an ambiguity that plagues current operationalizations of MHC. One of the design conditions says that the system should track the reasons of the relevant agents. This condition is ambiguous between the kind of reasons involved. On one interpretation it says that a system should track motivating reasons, while it is concerned with normative reasons on the other. Current participants in the debate interpret the framework as being concerned with (something in the vicinity of) motivating reasons. I argue against this interpretation by showing that meaningful human control requires that a system tracks normative reasons. Moreover, I maintain that an operationalization of meaningful human control that fails to track the right kind of reasons is morally problematic.When this is properly understood, it can be shown that the framework of MHC is committed to the agent-relativity of reasons. More precisely, I argue in the second part of this paper that if the tracking condition of MHC plays an important role in responsibility attribution (as the proponents of the view maintain), then the framework is incompatible with first-order normative theories that hold that normative reasons are agent-neutral (such as many versions of consequentialism). In the final section I present three ways forward for the proponent of MHC as reason-responsiveness.

Gender Perception as a Habit of Moral Perception: Implications for Philosophical Methodology and Introductory Curriculum

In this paper, I give an explanation and defense of Kant’s claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I argue that this is a significant point that has been underappreciated in the secondary literature. My conclusion has a variety of implications both for Kant scholars and for those interested in Kantian ideas more generally. Most notably, if Kant is right that there are principled reasons why freedom is beyond our comprehension, then this would release his ethical views from an undesirable explanatory burden. It would be a boon for Kantians if they could ground their lofty claims about the unique, elevated status of rational agency without committing to an implausible view of libertarian freedom. I also suggest that there are certain debates concerning moral motivation and transcendental idealism that might have to change in response to Kant’s claims about the incomprehensibility of freedom.

In a column revisiting 1975 premiere of One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975), film critic Roger Ebert asks whether it is a great film because it is manipulative, or is it great because it is so superbly manipulative? 1 This is not a philosophical question, but it points to a knotty cluster of questions about epistemology of aesthetic verdicts, or judgments about aesthetic value of artworks. For example, we commonly express what I shall call motivating reasons, or factors which we understand to explain or justify our verdicts. We think and say things like, Saturn is a great painting because it is so viscerally or The quiet tranquility and deep soulfulness of second movement of Williams's London Symphony make it a great piece of music. 2 Still, it remains to be seen whether such verdicts admit of normative reasons, or relevant factors that lend some rational support, independently of their motivating reasons. If Saturn is viscerally horrifying, does this make it a great painting? Is this a good reason for anyone to affirm that Saturn is great, such that they ought to do so, whether they actually do or not? If so, then what sort of reason is this, how does it underwrite verdict, and how does it fit into broader epistemological picture of reasons per se? Philosophical analyses of these issues tend to focus on what Arnold Isenberg called the question of validity, or whether there is any valid argument from descriptions of artworks to verdicts about those works. 3 Nearly sixty years after appearance of Isenberg's landmark essay Critical Communication, a survey of current literature reveals same tendency, as several recent papers argue that positive verdicts follow deductively via inference from certain descriptions, such that if, for example, Goya's Saturn is viscerally horrifying, and any such artwork is good, then so is Saturn. 4 This affirmative answer to question of validity is characteristic of aesthetic generalism, thesis that normative reasons must be general reasons, or reasons that admit of generalization into principles.

We consider three new directions of research into police–citizen authority relations: (a) the subjectivity of fairness perception, (b) the mechanisms linking procedural justice to legitimacy, and (c) statistical methods to estimate causal mechanisms. First, police fairness may be a subjective experience and perception motivated by a range of individual and environmental factors: we outline a motivation cognition framework of fairness perception (Barclay et al., 2017) that revolves around people “reading” the dynamics of an encounter with the police in a way that is shaped by instrumental, relational and moral motives, with directional and non-directional goals. Second, the causal effect of procedural justice on legitimacy may partly be transmitted by social identity and personal sense of power and autonomy. Third, causal mediation analysis is complex and we show how to decompose the average treatment effect in a way that allows for the estimation of causally mediating and moderating effects, provided that certain causal identifying assumptions are satisfied (VanderWeele, 2014).