Motivating Emotions: Emotionism and the Internalist Connection

Abstract

I outline a theory of moral motivation which is compatible with the metaphysical claims of strong emotionism—a sentimentalist account of morality first outlined by Jesse Prinz (The emotional construction of morals, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) and supported by myself (Bartlett in Axiomathes, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09524-5) which construes moral concepts and properties as a subset of emotion-dispositional properties. Given these claims, it follows that sincere moral judgements are necessarily motivating in virtue of their emotional constitution. I defend an indefeasible version of judgement motivational internalism which takes into consideration both positively and negatively valenced affective states and how they promote both approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. On this view, in making sincere moral judgements agents are antecedently motivated by standing Desires to avoid or approach the stimuli picked out by their judgements. I also defend internalism against the objections from defeating circumstances and amoralists. As regards the former, I claim that the tendency of philosophers to frame the motivation debate in terms of positive moral judgements makes the argument from defeating circumstances appear more plausible than it is; as regards the latter, I claim the amoralist argument only has force if it is empirically well supported and that psychological data has hitherto been unconvincing. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.