Hume and the Debate on ‘Motivating Reasons’

Abstract

This essay offers a new interpretation of Hume’s account of motivation before relating it to certain disputes in modern moral psychology. The essay is divided into three parts. First, I lay down some general distinctions in the so-called theory of motivation (TOM), introducing two related but distinct ongoing debates. Next, in the middle and largest parts of the essay, I focus on what Hume has to say on these matters, concluding that the standard map of available positions leaves no space for his view, as it rejects an assumption shared by all concerned. Finally, I demonstrate how the disputes most central to the debates we began with evaporate once we follow Hume in rejecting this shared assumption, taking this to count in his favour.

It is a heuristic maxim that the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both disputants.

(Ramsey, 1931, pp. 115–6)

This essay was finished with help from the project ‘Aspectos Modales del Realismo Materialista’, HUM2007-61108, MCYT-Spanish Government. I would like to thank Jonathan Dancy, Jeppe H0j, Tom Joyce, Michael Smith and Galen Strawson for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Various versions of it were trialled at the University of Reading (November 2001), SPPA — 5th Mark Powell Conference, University of Stirling (26 January 2002), Hume Studies in Britain II, University of Edinburgh (18-19 September 2002), Hume: Motivation, ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’, University of Otago, New Zealand (19-24 January 2003) and the British Society for Ethical Theory conference, Queens University, Belfast (21-23 July 2003). Many thanks to all those who commented and/or asked questions, particularly Annette Baier, Simon Blackburn, Stephen Finlay, Rosalind Hursthouse, Richard Joyce, Peter Kail, Charles Pigden, Sabine Roeser and Michael Smith (again).