Michael Smith

Michael Smith is an Australian moral philosopher who has taught at the Australian National University and at Princeton University. In The Moral Problem he set out a trilemma at the heart of meta-ethics: moral judgements seem to be beliefs, seem necessarily connected to motivation, and yet on the Humean view beliefs alone cannot motivate. He defends a rationalist form of moral realism to resolve it.

Key ideas

• The moral problem: cognitivism, internalism about motivation, and the Humean theory of motivation each seem true but cannot all be.
• Motivation requires both a desire and a means-end belief, but normative reasons are distinct from motivating reasons.
• What we have reason to do is what our fully rational selves would want us to do in our circumstances.
• The 'fetishism' objection: a good person cares about honesty and others' welfare directly, not merely about doing 'whatever is right'.

Major works

• The Moral Problem (1994)
• Ethics and the A Priori (2004)

In the conversation

• Reading group Reading group: Hume’s Treatise on reason, passion and the source of moral distinctions Alistair Gow · 5 replies
• Question Could a psychopath genuinely know that cruelty is wrong? The amoralist and the clinical literature Martín Iriarte · 5 replies