Besires Theory is Fully Consistant with the Humean View Essay -- Ethic

Abstract One Humean view holds that motivation requires beliefs and desires, which are separate and distinct mental states. Beliefs are disposed to fit the world, and desires are disposed to make the world fit them. This view is thought to eliminate besire theory, according to which moral judgments have both a world-mind direction of fit by representing the ethical facts of the matter, and a mind-world direction of fit by motivating action accordingly. Here I argue that besires are fully consistent with the Humean view. The Humean view should be cast at the level of types, while besire theory is supported by introspection on psychological tokens. Existent Humean arguments against besires do not go through, and besire theory remains a viable option—indeed, the option best supported by the evidence—without rejecting the Humean view. 1 A Case for Besires According to the Humean view of motivation, beliefs alone cannot motivate. According besire theory,1 some first person moral judgments (judgments of the form ‘I morally ought to ÃŽ ¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢) are both belief-like and desire-like in that they represent things as they morally are, and motivate appropriate actions. For example, on besire theory my judgment ‘I ought to visit my grandmother in the hospital’ can both represent a factual moral obligation and motivate me to visit my grandmother without the help of some separate desire-type psychological state. Can besire theory be right? Not under the Humean view, for on that view besire theory mistakenly attributes motivationally hot, desire-like properties to a certain class of beliefs. It would seem that our options are highly constrained: either we embrace the Humean view, and characterize first person moral judgments as belie... ...o necessary connections between distinct mental state tokens, simpliciter internalism entails besire theory. 12 Shafer-Landau argues for a similar position, though he calls some beliefs â€Å"intrinsically† motivating. Shafer-Landau 2004, 147-48. 13 Only when we combine besire theory with an essentialist claim, for example, that no state counts as a besire unless it actually motivates, do we get the result that moral judgments necessarily motivate. This essentialist claim is too strong for any desire-type state, for even occurent, normal desires combined with relevant means-related beliefs can fail to realize their functional role. 14 One might think that the standard cognitive view of moral judgments evades the burden of showing how moral motivation fails, but thereby gains the burden of explaining the reliable connection between moral judgments and motivation.