Internalism and Externalism in Ethics
Among the various uses of the term internalism in ethics, there are two that are central and importantly different. In the following entry, these two uses will be distinguished as judgment internalism and reason internalism.
Judgment Internalism
Judgment internalism is the view that moral judgments can be sufficient to motivate actions. Motivation is internal to morality. Externalists, by contrast, hold that the motivation to act morally is supplied by motives that are only contingently related to moral judgments. Internalism is thus opposed to the view that we need to appeal to special motives in order to explain compliance with moral demands, such as sympathy, as well as to a Hobbesian outlook claiming that the motivation to act is always self-interested, and that the motivation to act morally must therefore be self-interested, too. Internalism in this sense has been defended by Thomas Nagel (1970), John McDowell (1978), Christine Korsgaard (1986), and possibly by Immanuel Kant (1785).
One of the first to introduce the term in this sense was William Frankena (1958) who is critical of internalism. Externalism—the view that moral judgments as such cannot motivate moral actions—has few explicit defenders. However, John Stuart Mill (1861) claimed that we should distinguish sharply between the 'proof' of the moral principle (the principle of utility, as he sees it) and its 'sanctions.' While it can be demonstrated to anyone that an action is morally wrong if it violates the principle of utility, the motivation to act in accordance with the principle will be present only in those who received an appropriate education.
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