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The role of identification for the motivational force of moral judgments

What is the relationship between judging something as good and being motivated to acton this judgment? Motivational internalism is the thesis that there is a necessaryconnection between moral judgments and motivation. Externalists typically believe that ajudgment-independent desire is needed for the moral judgment to be motivating. Tobridge the gap between internalism and externalism, a few philosophers have appealed totheories of identification-based moral judgments. This implies that although moraljudgments may not be necessarily motivating in general, it could be possible to define acertain kind of identification-based moral judgment that is necessarily motivating. HereinI will examine the role identification plays for moral motivation. I will first analyse anargument that uses an identification-incompatible moral judgment to show thatinternalism is false. I will argue that this argument is unconvincing and that identificationdoes not preclude identification-incompatible moral judgments from being motivating.The identification-based argument hence does not support that internalism is false.Second, I will argue that identification can provide the motivational force needed to makecertain identity-based moral judgments necessarily motivating. This identification-basedaccount does however, I will argue, not support internalism. Despite presenting a kind ofmoral judgment that is necessarily motivating, it is an externalist account of theconnection between moral judgments and motivation since a judgment-independentdesire is a necessary source of its motivational force.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-162365
Date January 2019
CreatorsHenningsson, Susanne
PublisherUmeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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