Externalism/Internalism

... Under development ...

Some found the idea that of 'Internalism' about moral facts or moral opinions strange, and some suggested that this strange feature about moral epistemology justified doubts about our having any access worth calling 'evidential' to moral issues, and even doubts about there being any fact of the matter.  Moral 'Internalism' may concern either moral facts or moral judgements, and involve either (moral) motivation or (moral) "reason".

There are good reasons to believe that moral opinions do not necessarily motivate in the sense in which they were originally supposed to do, of an analytic entailment between 'x judges that (s)he should do y', and 'x is motivated to do y'. Of course there is no analytic entailment--otherwise the notion of an 'amoralist' would seem to be just inconsistent, which it is not, as Brink (1989) rightly emphasises. Moral judgements do 'reliably' motivate those who are no 'amoralists', yet not because of any mysterious backstage artists, but simply because people who have no such tendencies are called 'amoralist'.

Yet would moral opinions not at least necessarily 'give a reason' to act accordingly?--This question is crucially ambiguous. There is (among others) an important distinction concerning 'p is a reason for x to do a': 

(a) That 'p is a reason for x to do a' means that x's assuming that p (patially) motivates him to do a.

(b) That 'p is a reason for x to do a' means that, because p is the case, it would be 'clever' for x to to a.

Would internalism about 'reason' be a mysterious thing, triggering doubts about moral epistemology or even Moral Realism in either case? It seems that the answer is no.

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