Matthew S. Bedke Writing Sample

Abstract

Moral Judgment Purposivism

Consider a traditional version of motivational judgment internalism: necessarily, A’s

sincere moral judgment that he or she ought to ϕ motivates A to ϕ (at least a little). Such

principles fail because they cannot accommodate the amoralist, or one who renders moral

judgments without any corresponding motivation. Based on the possibility of amoralists, the

received view is externalism – roughly, the view that the connection between moral judgments

and motivation is not conceptually grounded, but is instead discovered to be statistical or

nomological. I revive conceptual internalism by offering some modifications of the amoralist

case to show that certain motivational failures are not conceptually possible.

I also suggest that empirical investigation of moral judgments can reveal a motivational

link that is more robust that the statistical and nomological links allowed by externalists. I

introduce and defend moral judgment purposivism (MJP): the purpose of moral judgments is to

motivate prototypically moral behaviors. I argue that moral judgments evolved as a proximate

mechanism to elicit prototypically moral behaviors, which would be evolutionarily advantageous

under a variety of adaptationist models that incorporate assortive interactions. MJP is consistent

with conceptual desiderata and it offers a more illuminating analysis of amoralist cases.

1

Matthew S. Bedke Writing Sample

Moral Judgment Purposivism:

Saving Internalism from Amoralism∗

If John Doe sincerely judges that he ought to visit his grandmother in the hospital, we

expect him to be so motivated, at least a little bit. If Jane Doe sincerely judges that she ought to

help someone in dire need (at no inconvenience to herself), we expect her to be so motivated,

again, at least a little bit. And our expectations in these and similar cases are usually met, for

first-person moral judgments1 are usually motivationally efficacious, though the motivation can

be outweighed by other considerations.

That much seems uncontroversial, but there are different ways of clarifying and

articulating the connection between moral judgment and motivation. The orthodox2 internalist

position, motivational judgment internalism, is that there is an a priori conceptually necessity

between sincere moral judgments and motivation along the following lines:

MJI: necessarily, individual A’s sincere moral judgment that he or she ought to ϕ

provides A with at least some motivation to ϕ.

Given that A has a mental state M that bears all other markings of a moral judgment but lacks

motivational oomph, MJI holds that M cannot be a genuine moral judgment. This view strains

∗ Acknowledgments. 1 Throughout I will be concerned with first person moral ought judgments. The literature on this kind of internalism is large, but sadly lacking in recent advances. For excellent discussions see Darwall (1983); Schaffer-Landau (2003), chapter 6; Mele (2003). 2 Some with internalists leanings could retreat to weaker and less orthodox claims, like ‘Necessarily, the virtuous are motivated by their moral judgments’ or ‘Anyone who judges that he ought to X (morally or otherwise) is either motivated accordingly or practically irrational.’ But such theses are more about virtuous or rational people than they are about moral judgments. These theses require the motivational connection to be mediated by something external to the judgments themselves. I want to argue that there is a less mediated motivational role for moral judgments such that denies the robustly externalist view that moral judgments of themselves have no necessary connection to motivation.

2

the thought that amoralists—isolated individuals who acknowledge moral obligations but remain

unmoved by them—are at least conceptually possible.

The orthodox externalist alternative says there is no a priori conceptual connection

between moral judgments and motivation. Any observed regularities are merely contingent. It

follows that there are possible states of affairs where genuine moral judgments have no

motivational efficacy whatsoever.

In response to this debate I want to, first, open some middle ground between these

extremes by reflecting on different kinds of amoralist cases. I present a case of community-wide

amoralism that underwrites a conceptually grounded connection between moral judgments and

motivation while respecting the conceptual possibility of isolated amoralists. The case requires

us to consider more nuanced views of the connection between moral judgments and motivation

than those presented in orthodox internalism and externalism. This brings me to my second

project, where I argue that we can only appropriately understand the connection between moral

judgments and motivation by situating these psychological states in wider moral practices. I

introduce and defend moral judgment purposivism, which can be provisionally stated as follows:

MJP: the purpose of a moral judgment is to motivate individuals to act accordingly.

If this is right, there is a sense in which moral judgments are supposed to motivate, and so

judgments are otherwise similar but lack this purpose are not really genuine moral judgments.

MJP explains our reaction to community-wide amoralist cases, avoids the pitfalls of the orthodox

views, and articulates morality’s essential action-guiding role.

I. The Isolated Amoralist

An amoralist is one who makes sincere moral judgments about his or her moral

obligations, but utterly fails to be moved by them. Brink (1989, 45-50) forcefully argues for the

3

conceptual possibility of amoralists and it is perhaps the greatest flaw of MJI that it classifies the

amoralist as conceptually impossible. Not only does MJI rule out amoralists, but what is worse,

it rules out the possibility that a normally virtuous person on one occasion issues a moral

judgment that fails to motivate. Though MJI holds that the virtuous person does not issue a

moral judgment in such a case, it is clearly more natural to chalk up the deficiency to a one-time

glitch. Why not call this a motivationally defective moral judgment rather than deny it the status

of moral judgment altogether?3

Indeed, most individuals side with Brink on this issue. Shaun Nichols (2003) has

gathered evidence that the widely-held concept of a moral judgment does not require that it

motivate. He provided subjects with a description of a psychopath who acknowledges that

hurting others is morally wrong, but who claims not to care and who in fact hurts others. Nichols

discusses the results as follows:

Most subjects maintained that the psychopath did really understand that hurting

others is morally wrong, despite the absence of motivation . . .. Prima facie, this

counts as evidence against the conceptual rationalist’s inverted-commas gambit.

For it seems to be a platitude that psychopaths really make moral judgments. And

if it is a platitude that psychopaths really make moral judgments, it will be

difficult to prove that conceptual rationalism captures the folk platitudes

surrounding moral judgment. (74-5)4

3 Proponents of MJI try to avoid the natural thing to say. They might say that the amoralist only makes a moral judgment in the inverted commas sense; that the moral judgment is not sincere; or that the moral judgment does not concern a moral obligation. These moves might suffice for the amoralist, but they seem quite desperate explanations of the single-shot glitch in the otherwise virtuous person. 4 This study bears on the concept of moral judgment if one thinks that pre-theoretic (and particularly pre-philosophical) intuitions employ or otherwise allow access to the contents of our

4

Our verdicts in these cases shed light on the concept of a moral judgment. According to our

concept, it is possible to have an amoralist, or to have a normally virtuous person, issue a sincere

moral judgment despite any lack of motivational import.

From these isolated amoralist cases, it is too easy to conclude that externalism is right and

so motivation is no part of the concept of moral judgment.5 However, there are ways to press

back against orthodox externalism and establish a more robust connection between moral

judgment and motivation. One way to do so is to concentrate on particular amoral individuals

and ask whether the motivational failings of their putative moral judgments can be systematic, or

whether they must be understood against a background of motivational efficacy within that

particular agent. Consider the views of Mark Timmons and James Dreier that push us in this

direction. Timmons (1999), for instance, claims that “a moral judgment typically has certain

(defeasible) causal tendencies, including, especially, certain first-person choice guiding

tendencies . . . . Its typically having these tendencies is part of the very concept of moral

judgment.” (140, emphasis added). Similarly, James Drier (1990) says “let us call modest

internalism the principle that in normal contexts a person has some motivation to promote what

he believes to be good.” (14). On the most natural reading of these views, and the view I want to

consider, if we know that an agent, A’s, tokenings of mental state M do not typically (in the case

concepts. Though I am sympathetic to the view, those who have misgivings about this kind of conceptual analysis in this kind of case can rely on the more traditional arguments given by Brink and noted above. In any event, my purpose is not to argue for the conceptual possibility of amoralists, but to investigate whether any brand of internalism can accommodate them. 5 Nichols (2003) seems to embrace this kind of approach, or what he calls “empirical internalism about core moral judgment.” (111). In Nichols’s words, “core moral judgment is nomologically connected with motivation.” (Id.) Though he uses the label “internalism,” this appears to be the standard externalist view advocated by Brink, for any connection between moral judgment and motivation would be contingent.

5

of Timmons) or normally (in the case of Drier) have the tendency to motivate A, then we know

the tokens of M are not genuine moral judgments.

I see two worries about these positions as responses to orthodox externalism. First,

lifelong amoralists seem conceptually possible. That is, a particular agent A might render

genuine moral judgments that never have motivational force for A, so the typicality and

normalcy requirements, as restricted to the mental tokens of a particular agent, are simply not

required for A to render genuine moral judgments. Second, even if it were true that A’s putative

moral judgments must typically or normally motivate A to be genuine moral judgments, it is not

clear how much this view departs from externalism. Externalists can and often do acknowledge

statistical and nomological connections between moral judgments and motivational states, and

Timmons’ and Dreier’s references to typicality and normalcy are most straightforwardly read as

statistical claims. As Timmons’ view makes clear, he is claiming that typical motivational

purport is part of the concept of a moral judgment, and that might signal some departure from

orthodox externalism, but that bit of the view relies on the conceptual impossibility of died in the

wool amoralists. As I have indicated, that is the most vulnerable part of the claim.

In any event, there is a more effective way to push back against the externalist if we focus

on communities of agents instead of the mental tokenings of isolated amoralists. To that end, I

want to develop a line of thought introduced by Simon Blackburn (1998) that emphasizes the

intelligibility of amoralist cases only when they are isolated against a background of

motivational efficacy. He remarks:

My own judgment on this debate is that externalists can win individual battles.

They can certainly point to possible psychologies about which the right thing to

say is that the agent knows what it is good or right to do, and then deliberately and

6

knowingly does something else. And they can point to psychologies like that of

Satan, in which it can become a reason for doing something precisely that it is

known to be evil. But internalists win the war for all that, in the sense that these

cases are necessarily parasitic, and what they are parasitic upon is a background

connection between ethics and motivation. They are cases in which things are out

of joint, but the fact of a joint being out presupposes a normal or typical state in

which it is not out. (61).

Blackburn thinks that there is a “background connection between ethics and motivation,” without

which we would not understand the exceptional cases as instances of moral judgments. In what

follows I will try to substantiate and clarify Blackburn’s view by suggesting that the background

connection that is essential to moral judgments is community-wide motivational tendencies

(section II-A). I will then raise an objection to the view (section II-B), and develop my own

more detailed account of moral judgments that answers the objection while providing the best

overall theory of moral judgments qua motivational state (section III).

II. From Amorality to Amoralsville

What seems to animate internalists is a sense that moral judgments are essentially action-

guiding, or, as Hare put it, “Moral judgments, in their central use, have it as their function to

guide conduct.” (70). Given the possibility of various kinds of isolated amoralists, and

Blackburn’s helpful suggestion, I suggest that the best place to locate this essential action-

guiding character is in community-wide connections between moral judgment and motivation.

So let us now consider whether isolated amoralist should indeed be treated differently from

communities of amoralists, and whether we can thereby ground some kind of conceptual

connection between moral judgments and systematic motivational tendencies. Let me begin by

7

addressing the shortcomings of some other proposals before introducing my own view in the

following section.

James Lenman (1999) offers a starting point for thinking about wide-spread amoralism.

He asks us to consider an entire planet of amoralists, Amorality, where scientists ascertain and

record moral facts, but where no one is ever practically motivated by their moral judgments.

(445-46). According to Lenman, externalists must acknowledge Amorality as conceptually

possible, but because he finds this hypothetical “preposterous,” he concludes that externalism

quite generally cannot be true. Though he does not discuss the isolated amoralist in any detail,

he seems to think that if an entire planet of amoralists is not possible, then neither are isolated

amoralists, even against a background of motivational efficacy.

While I find Lenman’s case to be a nice starting point, there are problems with his

conclusion that planets of amoralists are not possible, and the broader implication of his view

that externalism is false. Oddly enough, what seems to bother Lenman about the putative moral

judgments on planet Amorality is their lack of any propositional content. Indeed, given the bare

assertion that the amoralists on Amorality study the “moral facts,” one can wonder exactly what

it is that is under study, particularly when there would appear to be little by way of moral

behavior on Amorality. But more importantly, the point of disagreement between internalists

and externalists is not supposed to be about content and whether amoralist moral judgments are

meaningless, but rather whether moral judgments with agreed upon contents must have

motivational import.6 To really test externalism as applied at the level of global motivational

failure, we would do better to think of a case where the semantic content of the amoralists is not

at issue.

6 Gert and Mele (2005) press a similar objection against Lenman.

8

In addition, even if Lenman’s scenario is impossible, the move from the impossibility of

global amoralism to the impossibility of isolated amoralism is an unwarranted leap, as others

have pointed out (see Gert and Mele 2005 for a nice discussion). Perhaps some background

motivation is necessary to either breath semantic content into the judgments of amoralists, or to

simply understand the judgments they make as moral judgments at all, but it would not follow

that isolated amoralists in our society render judgments with no semantic content, or judgments

which cannot be understood as moral judgments at all.

To see whether community-wide amoralism really is conceptually impossible on

motivational grounds we should construct a case that is as similar to our moral situation, save

some community-wide lack of motivation. We should do our best to table issues of semantic

content. Gert and Mele (2005) have offered a case to further guide the way. They ask us to

consider planet Alpha, where beings “emerge with a strong genetic predisposition to acquire

generic desires to do whatever they morally ought.” (278). They imagine that one day a world-

wide catastrophe strikes that sinks all residents into a deep listlessness. Though the residents of

Alpha continue to make genuine first-person moral ought judgments, these judgments no longer

carry motivational oomph, for everyone is caught in the grip of a depressive funk. After

reflection, Gert and Mele suggest that this kind of scenario is possible. If so, perhaps we are

wrong to think that there must be some kind of community-wide background connection

between moral judgment and motivation.

Still, in the Gert and Mele scenario there is a sense in which the moral judgment affected

by global listlessness is understood against a background of efficacious moral motivation. As

the evolutionary tale emphasizes, the moral judgments on Alpha still have conduct guidance as

part of their function, and we can understand the listlessness as widespread malfunctions of

9

genuinely moral judgments. That is, it is not clear that the “background connection” of normal

motivational efficacy that Blackburn wants is missing in the case of Alpha. And if the

listlessness persists, one wonders whether we would be less and less inclined to consider those

judgments genuinely moral as the background motivational purpose fades from view.

A. The Amoralsville Case

I think we can generate another case to show that some community-wide purpose or

function is indeed necessary to understand certain judgments as genuinely moral. Consider a

distant community very much like our own, but unrelated to our own (perhaps they are on

another planet) that developed a very stringent, heavy-handed system of punishment and

coercion to keep its citizens in line. The residents of this community are ruled by single dictator

that metes out sever punishments, but only for moral violations. As a result, individuals in this

community generally keep their contracts, respect each others property, and even help those in

need simply because they fear punishment and coercion should they fail to do so. As external

observers we would say that their behaviors by and large conform to our ethical norms, though

we realize that they are never motivated by anything other than their own interests and fear of

harm to their interests.

Let us call this place “Amoralsville.” So far, there are not even putative moral judgments

in Amoralsville. But imagine that the residents receive radio frequencies from our society and

thereby observe our use of moral language and discourse. With the introduced moral

vocabulary, the residents of Amoralsville learn to apply moral concepts correctly. As a result,

Amoralsville residents correctly pick out what is right and wrong, acknowledge obligations, and

can correctly categorize that which they (morally) ought to do. In fact, forming first personal

“moral judgments” and speaking in ethical terms becomes kind of a fad in Amoralsville, though

10

importantly the judgments never garner any motivational force, and moral demands simply do

not weigh with them. Residents of Amoralsville are at all times solely motivated by their own

interests.

Because this community learns at least the descriptive meaning of our moral language,

and uses it correctly, there is no objection that their judgments lack content. The society is in

most respects relevantly like our own, including the kinds of behaviors they typically engage in,

except moral judgments do not now, nor did they ever, perform any kind of social function. The

question is: Do Amoralsville residents render genuine moral judgments? This is quite a different

case than those involving isolated amoralists. It looks like the citizens of Amoralsville do not

really engage in genuine ethical discourse, for an essential ingredient of ethical discourse has

gone missing, viz., its action-guiding character. Amoralsville is also quite different from the

Alphas case raised by Gert and Mele, for in our case first person moral judgments perform no

social function and historically never did. This suggests that the best way to understand

Blackburn’s requisit “background connection” in the following terms: isolated amorlalists only

make sense against a background of moral judgments that are supposed to perform some kind of

social function. That purpose is present in the case of Alpha—evolution programmed it in—but

it is missing in the Amoralsville case and it seems to account for our divergent intuitions in these

cases. Because the Amoralsville case strikes us as missing fundamental moral ingredients in

virtue of a kind of community-wide motivational failing, it looks like orthodox externalist line is

mistaken.

B. A Concern

Is the above conclusion a significant insight into the nature of moral judgments, or is it an

odd result that should make us mistrust our intuitions? Here is one reason for suspicion. It is

11

prima facie plausible that an agent’s mental states are determined by that agent’s internal

psychological makeup. But on the above view, it looks like two agents, A and B, that are

identical with respect to their internal psychology can differ as to whether they token genuine

moral judgments. Imagine that A is an amoralist member of our community who tokens a moral

judgment that has no motivational force. Because A is understood against a certain background

of compliance he nonetheless tokens a genuine moral judgment that is defective. B, by contrast,

is a member of Amoralsville, and though he is a neurological duplicate of A he does not render a

genuine moral judgment because of his external environment and its lack of a certain background

connection between moral judgment and motivation. It seems strange that background societal

conditions can determine whether or not an individual has a particular kind of mental state, and

this oddity might move us to doubt the intuitive differences.

I want to see if we can make better sense of the seeming importance of certain kinds of

background connections by moving beyond conceptual analysis. As we shall see, the key is to

introduce and articulate a historical dimension to moral judgments and their social functions.

Only then can we fully appreciate the essential action-guiding character of moral judgments.

III. A Purpose of Moral Judgments

I argue that moral judgments are best understood as part of larger moral practices within

communities of moral agents, and that situating moral judgments in these larger practices best

illuminates their motivational character. The view I defend I call “moral judgment

purposivism,” which can be roughly stated as follows: moral judgments are mental states whose

purpose is to motivate individuals to engaged in characteristically moral behaviors (or refrain

from characteristically immoral behaviors). What follows will be somewhat exploratory and

suggestive. I rely on some recent thoughts in evolutionary theory, and I grant that my

12

suggestions will be subject to further study, which I take to be a virtue. But my main aim is to

open up new possibilities to advance the traditional internalist-externalist debate and to show that

there are interesting connections between morality and motivation that are not contingent (at

least as traditionally understood by the externalist).

To develop the view I will first articulate a biological theory of purposes, or proper

functions. According to the view, natural objects can acquire purposes by virtue of the selection

processes that occur during evolution. I will then apply this view about biological purposes to

moral practices to show that moral judgments also have evolved purposes, one of which is to

motivate prototypically moral behaviors. After laying down the principles of moral judgment

purposivism I will show that the view respects our considered judgments about isolated

amoralists and the residents of Amoralsville, conflicted as they might be. The real payoff is that

purposivism offers us a way of looking at these cases that clarifies the differences between

distinct cases, and further informs our concept of a moral judgment.

A. Evolved Purposes

The purpose of our moral judgments is just one instance of a general theory of the

purposes of evolved functionings. Consider the familiar case of genetic replication. Various

genes express themselves as phenotypes, and the phenotypic expression of a given kind of gene

can make that gene a more or less successful replicator depending on how the phenotype

functions within an environment. Given an environment where various genes express various

phenotypes, those phenotypes that increase a gene’s relative rate of replication will count as

adaptive and so increase the proportion of the gene generation after generation.

From this basic story Ruth Millikan (1984) has developed a theory of proper functions

that applies to biological entities and languages, and her story will closely parallel our account of

13

the purposes of moral practices. She considers things like the human heart and asks, What

makes a heart the kind of thing that it is? Millikan gives the following partial reply: hearts are

things that have pumping blood as a proper function. Very roughly we can say that a function F

is a proper function of an entity if F made that entity’s ancestors selectively fit, and so caused the

entity’s ancestors to proliferate relative to its competitors. We can explain why some entities

exist today by appealing to the way in which those kinds of things functioned historically, and

the functions we appeal to in these explanations are proper functions. It turns out the pumping

blood was and still is a useful function for biological organisms to have, and so hearts were

selected for, and the genes that expressed them were more likely to replicate, precisely because

they performed that function.

One interesting thing about this account is that we can come to see the proper functions

that explain an entity’s existence as partially definitive of the kind of thing that it is. For

example, the proper function of pumping blood is a definitive characteristic of hearts, and so

things that do not have pumping blood as a proper function are not hearts. This is not to say that

things that do not actually pump blood are not hearts. Surgically removed hearts, defective

hearts, and other things that do not pump blood might still count as hearts depending on their

proper functionings, which, in turn, depend on the histories of these things’ ancestors.7 But

water pumps do not count as hearts even if they can pump blood precisely because water pumps

do not have pumping blood as a proper function, and having such a proper function is partly

definite of hearts.

7 Artificial hearts might also count as a kind of heart, for pumping blood is a purpose of theirs. However, they do not belong to the same natural kind as naturally occurring hearts because they do not enjoy the right history.

14

It is natural to use ‘purpose’ to capture what we mean by a selected proper function, as

we might say that the purpose of a heart is to pump blood, and so we can shorthand this

complicated story of selection and propagation through time by referring to an entity’s purposes.

B. Moral Evolution

While the adaptationist story is familiar in biology, it has a very general form. We can

model change through time with evolutionary dynamics if: 1) there is a population with varied

phenotypes, where 2) the phenotypes are copiable, and 3) different phenotypes result in

differential relative copying success. More importantly, if these three conditions obtain for any

phenotype we expect some evolutionary model to explain why the phenotype was selected for.

And if some phenotype was selected for, then it has a corresponding proper function or purpose.

I want to suggest that moral judgments inherit a purpose by playing a role in certain

wider moral practices, so let me begin by considering whether prototypical cases of moral

behaviors fit these three conditions for adaptationist modeling. It does seem as though different

behaviors have functional differences that can be copied by others or copied on other occasions

and that the behaviors can impact one’s relative fitness. Consider a classic case—the prisoner’s

dilemma—and suppose the prisoners are trying to determine whether to keep or break their prior

promise to cooperate. In this case, defectors can take advantage of those who keep their

promise, and dominance reasoning actually recommends that each party defect no matter what

the other party does. This case presents an adaptationist puzzle that is reiterated for many moral

behaviors, viz., why would a habit of keeping one’s promises evolve, given its continual

vulnerability to the defection strategy? Can we explain why behaviors such as refraining from

theft, lying, and intentionally harming others would evolve given the seemingly obvious fitness

15

payoffs for contrary behaviors? Can we explain why honesty and helping behaviors would

evolve?

The answer to these questions is ‘yes.’ Let me canvass some recent literature to support

my point. Hamilton (1963) introduced the idea of inclusive fitness, or kin selection, which can

explain why genetically related individuals might help each other out. Trivers (1971) expanded

the idea by discussing reciprocal altruism, where individuals who help only those others who

reciprocate can gain a fitness advantaged over non-reciprocators, who are left to fend for

themselves. In both cases, genetically altruistic behavior given to a non-kin non-reciprocator

puts one at a fitness disadvantage, but so long as the altruistic behavior is correlated with other

altruistic behavior to a sufficient degree, genetic altruists are expected to proliferate.8 Sober and

Wilson (1998) categorize these kinds of theories as models of group selection and they survey

other scenarios wherein altruistic behavior can evolve. More recently, Brian Skyrms (1996) and

(2004) has produced models showing the evolutionary stability of mutual aid, respecting

property, some forms of punishing behavior, and other cooperative behaviors. As with the

foundational work of Hamilton and Trivers, in all of these models the crucial factor that permits

prototypically moral behaviors to evolve is assortive interactions, or the ability of moral actors

to interact with one another (rather than non-moral actors) a sufficiently high proportion of the

time. Moral actors as a class can become fitter than non-moral actors so long as the stick to their

own kind and avoid too much free riding and predation.

Though I have indicated that prototypically moral behavior can be copied from one

individual to the next, there are various ways for the copying to proceed. The most familiar kind

of copying proceeds through genetically expressed functional units, and most models assume

8 For a review of game theory models of social behaviors see Maynard Smith (1982) and Axelrod and Hamilton (1981).

16

some kind of genetic determinism where phenotypes are directly produced by genotypes. This is

almost certainly wrong for all phenotypes, for even if genes encode for all the details of

phenotypic expression the processes of expression rely heavily on environment. For example, a

heart will not be expressed properly if it lacks nutrients during crucial stages of development.

Nonetheless, the genetic determinacy simplification is just that: it makes our explanatory task

more tractable and it does not seem to significantly alter the predictive power of evolutionary

models. Alternatively, some functional units might be primarily determined by culture instead of

genetics.9 Genetics might supply the basic substrates for organisms to adopt functional

behaviors (e.g., the ability to adopt a language, or phobic responses to local environmental cues)

without coding directly for those behaviors.

In any search for the proper functions of our moral behaviors we should be sensitive to

the similarities and differences between genetic and cultural versions of evolution. Both can be

modeled with the same mathematical structures.10 The crucial difference concerns the modes of

copying. When functional units are primarily genetically determined, copying proceeds through

the reproduction of the genes, which are passed on through progeny of the genetic host. When

functional units are primarily culturally determined, copying can proceed through a number of

mechanisms, including sophisticated cultural transmissions (e.g., education) and more simple

mimicking mechanisms. Two points are crucial. First, biological fitness and cultural fitness can

pull in opposite directions because the copying mechanisms differ. And second, different moral

behaviors might have different mixtures of genetic and cultural copying. Psychologists Haidt

9 I intend culture to be understood very broadly here, where behaviors can be copied through mimicking behavior, a more sophisticated process of social education, etc. For an overview of approaches to cultural evolution see Sober and Wilson (1998), chapters 4 and 5. 10 The rate of mutation and the modes of copying might make cultural adaptations very difficult to model. See, e.g., Dennett (1995), ch. 12.

17

and Joseph (2004), for example, suggest that our moral sense is produced by a combination of

genetic and cultural processes. They argue that relevant studies on human and primate moral

behavior evidence four innate moral modules concerning suffering/compassion,

reciprocity/fairness, hierarchy/respect, and purity/disgust. Different cultures can then emphasize

different aspects of these moral sentiments, but the innate mechanisms will limit the kinds of

moral practices people can adopt. This hypothesis has the virtue that it can explain the common

structure and some of the common intuitions shared by moral practices and at the same time

explain the variations we actually find across cultures.11

It is not my aim to defend any particular account of the evolution of prototypical moral

behaviors save this: that some such evolutionary story will provide the best explanation of (at

least prototypical instances of) our moral behaviors precisely because moral behaviors fit the

three conditions for applying evolutionary dynamics.12 If I am right about this, then the historical

ancestors of some of our current moral practices would have performed some function, and they

were selected for, copied, and propagated precisely because they performed that function.

Applying Millikan’s proper functionalism, our moral behaviors have a proper function, or

a purpose, that corresponds to the functions for which they were selected, and these purposes

would be partially definitive of our various moral practices. The prevailing evidence from

biology and psychology indicates that (at least prototypical) moral behaviors evolved through a

process of assortive interactions, which we might call social interactions because they enable

11 See Haidt (2001) for more detail on his social intuitionist model. 12 I should hasten to mark the difference between proximate and distal explanations. Evolutionary dynamics seeks to explain the distal causes of things that copy over generations. Other approaches might provide workable proximate explanations of our moral behaviors so we can understand why individuals engaged in them from, say a psychological or sociological perspective. But we need something like evolutionary dynamics to explain the persistence or proliferation of moral behaviors over generations.

18

cooperative, mutually advantageous outcomes amongst moral actors. Given the evidence we can

preliminarily claim that a purpose (or proper function) of moral behaviors is to enable and

further cooperative, mutually beneficial outcomes for moral individuals.13

C. Moral Judgment Purposivism

So far I have talked about the evolution of moral behavior, though it would be more

appropriate to talk about the evolution of moral practices, which includes behaviors,

psychologies, and language. For it is this complex of things that helps individuals obtain

mutually beneficial outcomes. In particular, to elicit certain moral behaviors we would have to

evolve a mental state responsible for motivating the desired behaviors. Here it is helpful to think

in terms of nested proper functions. Consider again the biological domain. One of a left

ventricle’s proper functions is to squeeze blood out of the heart and that is its contribution to the

heart’s overall function of pumping blood throughout the body. Similarly, moral judgments will

be those mental states that not only recognize when moral behaviors are called for, but also

translate those recognitions into behavior, thereby contributing their part to the moral practices

that enable social cooperation. Moral judgments with some connection to motivational states

will be selected for over moral judgments that merely recognize moral situations and obligations

without translating those into appropriate motivational states. Consequently, they have a

corresponding nested proper function: a purpose (or proper function) of moral judgments is to

motivate individuals to act in accordance with the judgment. This is not to deny the importance

of other moral practices, but merely to point out the role of first person moral judgments.

We are now in position to set forth moral judgment purposivism.14

13 Our moral behaviors might fail to have these effects currently, but it is sufficient that their history bestows them with the purpose of eliciting those effects. More importantly, the mechanisms that enable our moral behaviors might have been co-opted to produce other kinds of behavior that fail to generate cooperative outcomes. I discuss this more below.

19

MJP: a purpose of an individual A’s sincere moral judgment that he or she ought

to ϕ is to motivate A to ϕ (at least a little bit), where

a. A’s sincere moral judgment is part of a social (assortive) practice whose

purpose is, in part, to influence individuals to ϕ, and

b. ϕing is a (prototypically) moral behavior

We can think of MJP as a synthetic necessity claim, though we should take pains to avoid

tempting misunderstandings. Evolutionary explanations do not claim that moral judgments of

the sort we have are necessary to perform the social function they in fact perform. Indeed, that

function could be served in other ways. To take an analogous case, evolutionary explanations

would not claim that no other phenotypes could serve the function that our hands actually serve.

That is obviously false. In both cases, evolution purports to explain why our moral judgments or

hands did in fact evolve given contingent facts about available phenotypes in our evolutionary

environment and the functions performed by those phenotypes. Understood as a synthetic

necessity claim, then, MJP is not the view that moral judgments are necessary to perform their

social function, but rather that an essential purpose of moral judgments is that they perform a

particular social function. In other words, the claim is not that if a mental state M serves this

14 I have tried to show that naturally occurring moral judgments of the kind we are familiar have a purpose (via evolutionary theory). What about the possibility of swamp men who are internally identical to us, and who form societies similar to ours? What of their putative moral judgments? They do not have the right history, so they do not satisfy the synthetic necessity claim that partially defines our own moral judgments. Nonetheless, I leave open the possibility that swamp moral judgments could have a (non-evolutionary) purpose, and if such mental states otherwise meet the conceptual desiderata they, too, might count as moral judgments, just not human moral judgments. So if swamp men formed to have moral lives much like our own, swamp-moral-judgments and human-moral-judgments might be different species of moral judgment. One way to put this is to say that moral judgments can be realized by different states, and investigation of one of the realizations reveals a synthetic necessity that does not hold of the other realizations. For a more detailed defense of historical, biological kinds as natural kinds, or what Millikan calls real kinds, see Millikan’s “On Swampkinds” (forthcoming).

20

function, then M is a moral judgment, but rather, if some mental state M does not have a certain

social function as a purpose, then M is not a moral judgment.

Although I have thus far identified moral judgments, as opposed to other kinds of

motivating judgments, by referring to their contents (e.g., keeping promises, not thieving, not

harming others, helping others), it seems that evolution would also select for some of the formal

characteristics of moral judgments. For example, these judgments would have to be especially

weighty to override any tendencies for self-regarding behaviors, at least in some cases.

Otherwise the benefits of mutual cooperation would rest on shaky, less reliable, foundations.

Moreover, we might expect moral judgments to be universal, or near universal—moral actors

would judge the obligations to apply to anyone in the same circumstances—because the

recognition of near universal obligations helps to maintain the high proportion of compliance in a

social group. As we have seen, some such assortive interactions are needed to make moral actors

more fit than their non-moral counterparts.

One thing we need from a theory of moral motivation is to preserve the fact that different

people come to very different moral convictions, and each differing moral judgment tends to

carry with it some motivational import. Yet from the above it might sound like we can only

explain the motivational force of moral judgments that correspond to prototypical moral

behaviors, like altruistic actions. It is important to note, however, that the above comments try to

explain the existence of a motivational mechanism by appealing to the kinds of behaviors it

historically helped generate, and once we discover that the purpose of moral judgments is to

motivate prototypical cases of moral behavior, the machinery that evolved to do this can be co-

21

opted by other practices that differ significantly from their proper function.15 When this happens

we should expect the co-opting normative judgments to motivate corresponding behaviors even

if, historically, these behaviors were not the socially adaptive ones. That is, judgments that make

use of the evolved machinery for making moral judgments will typically have corresponding

motivations because the evolved machinery doesn’t know any better, and it will still be the

purpose of the machinery to motivate the corresponding behavior.

IV. Back to the Amoralist

MJP follows up on the conceptual difference between isolated and community-wide

amoralist cases to offer a more illuminating analysis, so it is fair to say that MJP offers a theory

of moral judgment inspired by some conceptual benchmarks. Let me now comment on how the

MJP theory illuminates the amoralist cases and grounds the action-guiding character of moral

judgments.

First, MJP permits the existence of some isolated amoralists, which nonetheless render

genuine moral judgments. The purposive perspective can explain how some moral judgments

with the right history—and so the right proper function—could be nonetheless be defective and

fail to perform their proper function. Individuals who make sincere moral judgments about what

they ought to do, but fail to be motivated by them, issue defective moral judgments (but moral

judgments nonetheless). Though they issue moral judgments, those judgments are not doing

15 I thank _________________________ for reminding me of this point. Haidt and Craig (2004) say something similar.

Of course, it is possible to teach children to be cruel to certain classes of people, but how would adults accomplish such training? Most likely by exploiting other moral modules. Racism, for example, can be taught by invoking the purity module and triggering flashes of disgust at the ‘dirtiness’ of certain groups, or by invoking the reciprocity module and triggering flashes of anger at the cheating ways of a particular group (Hitler used both strategies against the Jews). In this way, cultures can create variable actual domains that are much broader than the universal proper domains for each module. (63).

22

what they are supposed to be doing. This is no different than the discovery of defective left

ventricles that are supposed to perform a certain function but fail to do so.

Externalism can also accommodate amoralists, but MJP does a better job at identifying

and explaining the thought that the moral judgments of isolated amoralists are defective. It is not

just that amoralists fail to follow an observed regularity; there also seems to be something wrong

with their moral sensibilities. Just as the spark plug that fails to fire is defective insofar as it fails

to do what it is supposed to do, moral judgments that fail to translate into appropriate

motivational states are defective insofar as they fail to do what they are supposed to do.

Second, MJP has a rather refined view of the Amoralsville case and how it differs from

isolated amoralists in our own society. Under MJP, whether or not a particular social group has

moral practices depends on whether or not bits of thought, language and behavior were selected

and propagated in the past because those practices elicited moral behavior. And moral

judgments play a part in that vast system of moral practices. A society like ours, with only a

few, isolated amoralists, would evidence society-wide moral practices and moral judgments.

Isolated amoralists render moral judgments that do not fulfill their purpose, just as we find a few

individuals with left ventricles that do not fulfill their purpose.

Recall that Amoralsville residents generally behave in ways that respect moral norms, but

they are never motivated by putative moral judgments. In fact, they learned about moral

language from our society, and in Amoralsville moral categories are merely classificatory.

Though most citizens purport to make judgments about their moral obligations, no citizen is

thereby motivated. What gets them going is the fear of punishment and their own self-interest.

Here it looks like Amoralsville did not develop a system of thought, language and behavior that

facilitated mutually beneficial social interactions. As a result, they did not inherit moral

23

judgments as part of those practices. Unlike the isolated amoralist, who has a mental state that

counts as a broken moral judgment, Amoralsville residents do not even have broken moral

judgments. Though the resident can descriptively pick out occasions of moral obligation, there is

an essential motivational aspect of moral judgments that goes missing. In short, these mental

states are not supposed to motivate in the requisite way, and so they do not count as genuine

moral judgments.

The purposive perspective offers an interpretation of the claim that moral judgments are a

type of state that typically motivates in normal conditions. Societies will not have moral

practices unless they have a mental state that typically motivates most people to behave morally.

There is some threshold below which non-compliance with moral norms would lead to the

dissolution of society. And the conditions of normalcy are the conditions under which the moral

practices developed. If conditions change radically—perhaps Hobbesian scarcity comes to pass

and death hangs in the balance—then moral judgments might fail to motivate, but for a time at

least they might still count as moral judgments because they would motivate in the normal

conditions of non-scarcity and the absence of constant threat to life and limb.

And now we can see how background, external conditions might play some role in

determining whether an individual has a particular mental state. If the mental state type M is

essentially part of a developed social practice—as I have argued is the case with moral

judgments—then we have to look to the history of one’s internal psychology and how it relates

to social practices to determine whether a particular token state m is of the type M. There

probably is no bright-line level of motivation that determines whether a society is more like our

own, where amoralists render moral judgments, or more like Amoralsville, where they do not.

24

What is important is the history of interaction and the development of attitudes and other

practices that enable cooperative social behaviors, which can occur in stages and degrees.

Third, MJP offers a theory of how moral judgments are essentially action guiding. The

connection between moral judgments and motivation extends beyond contingent relationships.

To be sure, there is a sense in which it was entirely contingent whether moral practices and so

moral judgments evolved to do the work that they in fact do. But the claim here is that, given the

way the world is, and so, if I am right, given that moral judgment did evolve to do this work, the

connection between moral judgment and motivation is not entirely contingent. Given the way

the world is, it is not possible to have certain community-wide failures moral motivation. In the

actual world moral judgments motivate most of the time, but more than this we can say that they

are supposed to motivate, or have motivation as a purpose. Mental states without this purpose

are not genuine moral judgments.

Now I turn to address some potential criticisms of the view.

V. Objections and Clarifications to the Purposive Perspective

Perhaps most concerns about the view will focus on its adaptationist underpinnings. The

evidence suggests that some moral behaviors—including those that biologists call altruistic or

cooperative—were selected because they made moral actors more fit than their competitors, and

this increased fitness depended on assortive interactions. Though different social groups could

have developed slightly different ways of achieving these mutually beneficial outcomes, one

might wonder whether this perspective makes moral behaviors look too monolithic. If moral

behavior is merely fit behavior, then how do we distinguish moral from other kinds of behaviors

that also contribute to fitness? In reality, our moral lives are very complex and one might

wonder whether evolutionary modeling does justice to the complexity.

25

The view I propose does not attempt to boil down all of morality to a single function that

it is meant to serve, though some philosophers appear to do just that. Arguably, Hobbes thought

that moral practices are just those things that we need to solve the problems we face in the state

of nature, where the problems can be modeled by a prisoner’s dilemma. Similarly, Gauthier has

argued that moral norms are rationally pursued and adopted when self-interested individuals are

faced with certain game-theoretic problems. By contrast, the perspective I offer is sympathetic

to a plurality of moral practices that could each have a different purpose or purposes as complex

responses to local environments, and influenced by a mixture of genetic and cultural selection.16

I do not have a monolithic account of our complex social practices. If the analogy with the

evolution of biological entities is any indication, the variety of purposes served by our moral

practices could be as rich as the variety of functions served by our bodily organs.17

16 Compare those norms and attitudes that are appropriate within the realm of family and friends with the norms and attitudes that are appropriate within the realm of politics. In politics we do not believe it is appropriate to favor ourselves and those close to us, but in our private lives we do believe it is not only permissible, but imperative to concern ourselves primarily with the well-being of those close to us. The purposive perspective I offer can explain the variation by appealing to the different purposes that moral practices evolved in these two domains. 17 Hayek (1960) indicates that liberal political practices developed over time because they were “evolutionarily” advantageous in the sense that they allowed individuals to experiment with different forms of life. The plurality of forms of life provided by liberal society ensures a competitive environment where more successful forms of life win out and proliferate. For Hayek, it appears that liberal institutions provide the conditions for selective pressures to weed out worse ways of life, and allow better ways of life to flourish. Unfortunately, it is unclear what Hayek had in mind when he claimed that some ways of life are better than others. He might have meant that some ways of life are better at accomplishing the ends that individuals have (perhaps specialization is better in this sense because it tends to be more efficient at converting resources into products). He might have meant that individuals find some ways of life more satisfying. To stay true to the evolutionary model we should read “good ways of life” as just those ways of life that win out in the competitive liberal environment. It is an extremely interesting question what factors would make a life more likely to propagate in a society governed by liberal institutions. At an even deeper level we can ask what why liberal political institutions might have been selected for and propagated, and I suspect that the answer will involve some social problem that liberal institutions solved.

26

Given that I have talked about the purposes of moral practices one might also worry that I

have made some kind of genetic fallacy or naturalistic fallacy, moving from claims about

evolutionary selection to claims about what behaviors we should perform. On the contrary, I try

to avoid any such normatively loaded conclusion. That certain behaviors were selected for

shows us that they have a biological purpose, but that kind of purpose does not translate into a

reason for action. When I say that moral judgments are supposed to motivate, that does not give

us a reason to act on the motivation any more than the fact that a car’s ignition is supposed to

start the engine gives us a reason to start the engine.18 This point is often overlooked because

‘should do’ can mean what we have most reason to do, or it can mean what we expect something

to do, or it can mean what something would do if it functioned properly. MJP only engages this

third sense of ‘should’ and it is an independent question what we have most reason to do.

On a related point, MJP and its appeal to purpose talk does not commit one to non-natural

facts. The way I use it, purpose talk is one way to describe things that arise in a dynamic process

of selection, and all of this is as consistent with naturalism as is evolutionary biology. Having

said that, nothing here precludes realist or non-naturalist metaethics. I have argued that moral

judgments have a purpose by appealing to natural facts, but I have not argued that that is all there

is. In sum, moral judgment purposivism appears to be consistent with a variety of metaethical

views.

MJP is congenial to empirical studies in two respects. The theory itself requires some of

the details to be filled in through a posteriori discovery. Research regarding the origins and

historical functionings of moral practices can expand our understanding, just as research into the

18 A related point: the theory of purposes does not justify our moral practices, not even those within the scope of morality’s proper function. Consider the possibility that racist attitudes are within the proper functions of our cognitive makeup. Clearly, this would not justify racism. More generally, there might be evolved functions that we would rather abandon.

27

material constitution of watery stuff expands our understanding of water. Moreover, with a

better theory of moral judgments in hand empirical studies can also explore observed statistical

and causal connections between moral judgments and motivation. Far from engaging a turf war

with empirical studies, moral judgment purposivism is a view that invites cooperative ventures

between philosophical analysis and empirical research.

And, lastly, I should remark on how MJP bears on some of the traditional debates in

metaethics. Motivationally internalist theses are usually thought to favor some brand of non-

cognitivism about moral judgments. The thought is that cognitive judgments are akin to belief

states, and so are not the right kind of state to issue any motivational oomph. If moral judgments

are necessarily motivating, then they must be a kind of non-cognitive state, more akin to desires

than beliefs.

Under MJP, moral judgments do not necessarily motivate, but it is their purpose to

motivate, which means that in favorable circumstances they do have some motivational force.

One might be tempted to look at those cases where moral judgments do perform their purpose

and motivate, and conclude that moral judgments are non-cognitive even on the purposive view.

The basic inference is this: if motivational force, then non-cognitive state. To my mind, this is a

mistake. MJP is neutral as to whether the moral judgment itself motivates—whether motivation

is built in—or whether moral judgments are cognitive states, which, in combination with other

desire-type states, have motivational purpose featured in MJP. In either case it is the purpose of

moral judgments to play some role in motivational structures to produce characteristically moral

behaviors. Indeed, there is a third option whereby moral judgments play double duty as desire-

28

type states and belief-type states, what has been called “besire” states,19 according to which the

traditional cognitive, non-cognitive options are not exhaustive.

As a result, internalist theses cannot do the work non-cognitivists hoped for. Internalism

of the kind I have proposed can help us further understand our moral psychology and nature of

morality’s action-guiding function, but it is ultimately neutral on the cognitive/non-cognitive

divide. This, I take it, is a virtue of the view, for the structure of the motivational features is an

issue best left to empirical psychology.20

VI. Conclusion

Reflection on various amoralist cases suggested that certain community-wide amoralist

cases should be treated very differently than isolated amoralist cases. There seems to be a

conceptually grounded action-guiding character to moral judgments that is best captured in the

systematic motivational failures featured in Amoralsville. Thus, orthodox externalism cannot be

right. And given the possibility of isolated amoralists, orthodox internalism cannot be right

either. We need some middle ground. Guided by this reflection on cases, I have constructed a

detailed and informative theory of moral judgments that illuminates their motivational features

by embedding them in wider, social moral practices. That theory, motivational judgment

purposivism, articulates a purpose of moral judgments that serves to distinguish intuitively

different cases. It is the best theory on the table that offers a step forward in the perennially

gripping internalist-externalist debate.

19 See Altham (1986). 20 Many thanks to ________________________ for pressing me on this point.

29

WORKS CITED

Altham, J. E. J. 1986. “The Legacy of Emotivism.” in G. Macdonald and C. Wright (eds.), Fact

Science and Morality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 275-88.

Axelrod, R., and Hamilton, W. D. 1981. “The Evolution of Cooperation.” Science 211: 1390-

1396.

Brink, David. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Darwall, Stephen. 1983. Impartial Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Dennett, Daniel C. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New

York: Simon & Schuster.

Gert, J., Mele, A. 2005. “Lenman on Externalism and Amoralism: An Interplanetary

Exploration.” Philosophia, 32, pp. 275-83.

Haidt, Jonathan, and Joseph, Craig. 2004. “Intuitive Ethics.” Daedalus, Fall 2004: 55-66.

Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach

to Moral Judgment.” Psychological Review 108: 814-834.

Hamilton, W. D. 1963. “The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior.” American Naturalist 97: 354-

356.

Hare, R. M. 1963. Freedom From Reason. Oxford: Oxford university Press.

Hayek, Friederich. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. The University of Chicago Press.

Kripke, S. 1972. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lenman, J. 1999. “The Externalist and the Amoralist.” Philosophia 27: 441-57.

Mele, A. 2003. Motivation and Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.

_______ 1996. “Moral Cognitivism and Listlessness.” Ethics, 104: 727-753.

30

Millikan, Ruth. 1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. MIT Press.

Nichols, Shaun. 2004. Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment. New

York: Oxford University Press.

Putnam, H. 1975. “The meaning of 'meaning'.” In Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2: Mind,

Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press.

Schafer-Landau, Russ. Moral Realism: A Defense. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Skyrms, Brian. 2004. Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure. Cambridge University

Press.

------ 1996. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Maynard. 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games. New York: Cambridge University

Press.

Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Sober, Elliott, and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of

Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Timmons, Mark. 1999. Morality Without Foundations: a Defense of Ethical Contextualism.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Trivers, R. L. 1971. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” Quarterly Review of Biology 46:

35-57.