Card 3.1.4 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Moral Motivation
Can you know an act is wrong and be entirely unmoved?
This question asks why recognising that something is right should move anyone to do it.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 3.1 Meta-ethics. Borders 1.7 Free will, 3.4 Moral psychology, 6.24 Philosophy of action.
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The rival answers
| Position | Claim |
|---|---|
| Motivational internalism | Moral judgement necessarily carries some motivation |
| Motivational externalism | Judgement and motivation are separable; a desire is also needed |
| Humean theory of motivation | Belief alone never moves; only belief plus desire |
| Anti-Humean | Some beliefs are intrinsically motivating |
| Virtue accounts | Motivation comes from trained character, not from judgement alone |
Where do you stand?
Can you know an act is wrong and be entirely unmoved?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Socrates | c. 470–399 BCE | Greek | No one does wrong willingly |
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Akrasia: acting against one's better judgement |
| Wang Yangming | 1472–1529 | Chinese Neo-Confucian | Knowledge and action are one |
| David Hume | 1711–1776 | European modern | Reason alone cannot motivate |
| Michael Smith | b. 1954 | Analytic | The moral problem, stated as a trilemma |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Moral psychology:
- Knowing without doing is not knowing: Wang Yangming’s strong internalism is simply correct 6 replies
- Teaching ethics to fifteen-year-olds: do I water sprouts or straighten warped wood? 5 replies
- Murdoch’s mother-in-law: is moral change mostly a matter of learning to see someone differently? 5 replies
- Dai Zhen was right: moral principle used to crush desire is itself a cruelty 5 replies
- Reading group: Hume’s Treatise on reason, passion and the source of moral distinctions 5 replies
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Connections
→ 3.1 · ↔ 1.7, 3.4, 6.24, 3.2.3 · ◇ internalism, externalism, Humean theory of motivation · ○ Axial Age; Scholastic era; Modern; Table 5
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 137.