If acting for a reason only requires that the agent's own motivational set grounds the behavior, universalizability is a moral constraint on action, not a constitutive one (Williams, 'Internal and External Reasons').

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Williams's internalism correctly identifies that reasons for action must connect to an agent's actual motivational psychology to be genuinely action-guiding.
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2.Universalizability as a moral constraint allows agents with different motivational sets to act morally differently, preserving the role of individual psychology.
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3.If universalizability were constitutive of action itself, non-moral agents could not act; but clearly they do, suggesting morality adds constraints post-hoc.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Distinguishing constitutive from constraining universalizability becomes unstable: constraints that govern all rational action may functionally constitute rationality itself.
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2.If moral universalizability doesn't constrain what counts as acting for a reason, moral nihilists and amoralists would still act for reasons, undermining morality's normative force.
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3.Williams's internalism struggles to explain how we can discover moral obligations that challenge our existing motivations—suggesting universalizability may be constitutive after all.
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Key Terms

Bernard Williams(as a defender of Humean philosophy): A late 20th-century British philosopher who wrote influential works on ethics, questioning whether morality can be truly objective and exploring the role of personal projects and desires in a good life.
Internal and External Reasons(in ethics): Williams's influential distinction between reasons that come from your own desires (internal) and reasons that supposedly apply to you regardless of your desires (external).
Universalizability(One of Hare's two key formal features of moral language): The formal feature of moral judgments by which an 'ought' judgment commits the speaker to a general principle applicable to all relevantly similar cases, including hypothetical cases in which the speaker occupies a different role
acting for a reason(in ethics and action theory): Doing something because you have a purpose or motivation for it, rather than just acting randomly or by accident.
constitutive(an alternative type of relationship the grounding relation might be): Describes how something is made up of or formed from basic components that define its essential nature.
grounds(Used in the context of justifying beliefs about the future on the basis of past information): Information or evidence that confers rational entitlement to hold a belief or assumption
moral constraint(in ethics): A rule or limit that ethics places on what you should do, acting as a restriction on behavior.
motivational set(Used in the restrictive conception of public reason liberalism to determine whether a reason qualifies as public): The set of an individual's desires, dispositions of evaluation, and patterns of emotional reaction.

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Consequentialism1 linked Moral Responsibility1 linked

Distinguishing constitutive from constraining universalizability becomes unstabl...If moral universalizability doesn't constrain what counts as acting for a reason...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit