Morality, Reason, and Motivation

Abstract

This thesis concerns debates in philosophy that centre on the relations between vertices of a conceptual triangle. These vertices, to simplify, are (A) morality, (B) reason, and (C) motivation. There are many philosophical debates that concern a relationship between a concept taken from one vertex of the triangle and a concept taken from another, that is, debates about the relationship between (A) and (C), (B) and (C), and (A) and (B). For instance: Can someone believe that some action is morally required without being motivated to do it? Philosophers have generally failed to reach any kind of consensus on questions like these. This thesis begins by explaining why this is, and then explains and demonstrates my preferred, Wittgensteinian approach to such questions. This approach involves two guiding thoughts. First, we must be careful to distinguish between radically different types of claim: grammatical, substantive, and empirical. Second, we must be careful to recognize that the meaning of a piece of discourse can be affected by the whole in which it sits, so that it may be impossible to say whether a statement is true or false when it has been taken out of any real context and examined as an abstract philosophical thesis. As a result, in this thesis I do not on the whole straightforwardly agree or disagree with those who take up a philosophical position on the relations between morality, reason, and motivation. Instead, I show how their philosophical positions are true in a sense, but false in a sense. This is what I say, for example, about motivational internalism. Still, some philosophical claims are misleading or straightforwardly false, because they get the grammar of our language wrong, or true (and generally quite trivial and unobjectionable), because they get the grammar right. Finally, some are substantive. By showing which claims are true only in a sense, which are misleading, which are straightforwardly true or false, and which are substantive, I hope to lead philosophers involved in unfruitful disputes towards a more nuanced understanding of what can meaningfully be said about the relations between morality, reason, and motivation.