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    Extensional counterexamples involving unusual desires (ea... — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Extensional counterexamples involving unusual desires (eating mud, counting grass, turning on radios) do not refute internalism about practical reasons

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.These counterexamples target views that postulate a sufficient condition for the existence of reasons
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    • 2.Internalism postulates only necessary conditions for the existence of reasons, not sufficient conditions
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    • 3.An objection to a sufficient condition claim does not apply to a necessary condition claim
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Internalism's necessary condition claim entails that agents with radically deviant desires (e.g., counting grass) can have reasons others lack, which is itself a counterintuitive result.
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    • 2.If internalism cannot explain why bizarre desires fail to generate genuine reasons, it loses explanatory priority over externalist accounts that simply deny such reasons exist.
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    • 3.Williams himself acknowledged that sound deliberative procedures should filter out certain desires, implying internalism requires normative constraints that undermine its purely motivational basis.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The necessary/sufficient condition distinction only defuses the counterexamples if internalism can specify which desires ground reasons without appealing to external normative facts.
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    • 2.Any principled restriction on desire-based reasons (e.g., requiring full information or rational reflection) smuggles in objective normative standards that externalists like Parfit and Scanlon explicitly endorse.
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    Related

    An objection to a sufficient condition claim does not apply to a necessary condi...Any principled restriction on desire-based reasons (e.g., requiring full informa...If internalism cannot explain why bizarre desires fail to generate genuine reaso...Internalism postulates only necessary conditions for the existence of reasons, n...
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    Internalism's necessary condition claim entails that agents with radically devia...The necessary/sufficient condition distinction only defuses the counterexamples ...These counterexamples target views that postulate a sufficient condition for the...Williams himself acknowledged that sound deliberative procedures should filter o...

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: reasons-internal-external
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    The literature is also full of extensional arguments against theories which resemble internalism, but on the grounds that they overgenerate, rather than undergenerate, reasons. Many famous and colorful examples—about people who want to eat saucers of mud, or count blades of grass, or who have a disposition to turn on radios—are offered to show that not every desire or motivation is of the right kind to generate practical reasons (Anscombe 1959, Quinn 1993). Strictly speaking, however, such cases
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit