Notes

[1] This response is often combined with an explanation of why amoralists might seem conceivable. For two different suggestions, see Hare (1952 Hare, RM. 1952. The language of morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press.  [Google Scholar], pp. 124–126 & 163–165) and Smith (1994 Smith, M. 1994. The moral problem, Oxford: Blackwell.  [Google Scholar], pp. 68–71).

[2] Some authors, however, have proposed arguments that are not based on intuitions; see, e.g., Smith (1994 Smith, M. 1994. The moral problem, Oxford: Blackwell.  [Google Scholar], pp. 71–77), Svavarsdóttir (1999 Svavarsdóttir, S. 1999. Moral cognitivism and motivation. The Philosophical Review, 108: 161–219. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and Zangwill (2008 Zangwill, N. 2008. The indifference argument. Philosophical Studies, 138: 91–124. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).

[3] In a pioneering study, Nichols (2004 Nichols, S. 2004. Sentimental rules: On the natural foundations of moral judgment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], chapter 4) discusses people's intuitions of the connection between moral judgments and motivation in psychopaths. We discuss these results in section 3.3.2 (for a related study, see Prinz, 2007 Prinz, J. 2007. The emotional construction of morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 99.) Moreover, there are studies of the connection between moral judgments and motivation that draw on empirical research concerning psychopaths and patients with brain damages; see Nichols (2004 Nichols, S. 2004. Sentimental rules: On the natural foundations of moral judgment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], chapter 1), Cholbi (2006 Cholbi, M. 2006. Belief attribution and the falsification of motive internalism. Philosophical Psychology, 19: 607–616. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Kennett and Fine (2008a Kennett, J and Fine, C. 2008a. “Internalism and the evidence from psychopaths and “acquired sociopaths.”. In Moral psychology: Vol. 3, Edited by: Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 173–190. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]), and Roskies (2003 Roskies, A. 2003. Are ethical judgments intrinsically motivational? Lessons from “acquired sociopathy.”. Philosophical Psychology, 16: 51–66. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006, 2008). For discussions about the possibility of testing internalism empirically, see Kauppinen (2008 Kauppinen, A. 2008. Moral internalism and the brain. Social Theory and Practice, 34: 1–24. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Kennett and Fine (2008b Kennett, J and Fine, C. 2008b. “Could there be an empirical test for internalism?”. In Moral psychology: Vol. 3, Edited by: Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 217–226. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]), and Smith (2008 Smith, M. 2008. “The truth about internalism”. In Moral psychology: Vol. 3, Edited by: Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 207–216. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]).

[4] For an overview of different forms of internalism, see Strandberg (2011 Strandberg, C. 2011. The pragmatics of moral motivation. Journal of Ethics, 15: 341–369. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 342–347), and Björklund, Björnsson, Eriksson, Francén Olinder, and Strandberg (2012). Non-conceptual versions of internalism are considered by Bedke (2009 Bedke, MS. 2009. Moral judgment purposivism: Saving internalism from amoralism. Philosophical Studies, 144: 189–209. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Björnsson (2002 Björnsson, G. 2002. How emotivism survives immoralists, irrationality, and depression. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40: 327–344. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Mele (1996 Mele, A. 1996. Internalist moral cognitivism and listlessness. Ethics, 106: 727–753. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and Nichols (2004 Nichols, S. 2004. Sentimental rules: On the natural foundations of moral judgment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], chapter 5).

[5] The conceptual claim that a moral sentence expresses a certain moral judgment, in the form of a mental state, can in turn be interpreted in various ways (for one understanding of this conception, see Ridge, 2003 Ridge, M. 2003. Non-Cognitivist pragmatics and Stevenson's “Do so as well!”. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 4: 563–574. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). Moreover, the main point below can be translated into a vocabulary according to which the meaning of sentences is understood in some other way than in terms of what mental states they express. Thus, the exact understanding of this issue is presumably not crucial to our arguments. We take “moral judgment” to be neutral as regards cognitivism and non-cognitivism. We occasionally use the phrase “hold a moral judgment” (in analogy with “hold a moral belief”) to refer to a person being in the aforementioned mental state. We prefer this phrase to “make a moral judgment,” since the latter might be thought to refer to a speech act rather than a mental state.

[6] It is a matter of controversy to what extent it is possible to study linguistic intuitions empirically; see, e.g., Kauppinen (2007 Kauppinen, A. 2007. The rise and fall of experimental philosophy. Philosophical Explorations, 10: 95–118. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007 Nadelhoffer, T and Nahmias, E. 2007. The past and future of experimental philosophy. Philosophical Explorations, 10: 123–149. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), and Rey (1983 Rey, G. 1983. Concepts and stereotypes. Cognition, 15: 237–262. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).

[7] As already noted, some internalists respond to this kind of objection by denying that amoralists are conceivable. In what follows, we will consider attempts to avoid amoralist objections by defending weaker versions of internalism.

[8] Unfortunately, our study does not do justice to all the ingenious thought experiments presented by advocates of this view.

[9] We found the same pattern of results in a supplementary study where participants (N = 79) rated the same scenarios on a scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 9 (completely agree). The responses to all scenarios except Psychopath were significantly higher than the neutral midpoint of the scale, and accordingly closer to “agree,” whereas the responses to this scenario were significantly lower than the midpoint of the scale (as tested with one-sample t-tests). All nine scenarios were administrated to all participants (within-subjects design) but in four different orders. There was no indication that order affected the responses. All the scenarios and subsequent questions were presented in Swedish and are available by request from the first author.

[10] McNemar tests reveal that significantly more participants considered it possible in Apathy than Psychopath, and in Depression than Apathy (ps < 0.001).

[11] More precisely, on this view a sentence of the type “I am morally required to φ” expresses a judgment such that, if a person judges that she is morally required to φ, then she is motivated to φ given that she fulfils C. Accordingly, it is part of our knowledge of the meaning of such a sentence that C accommodates those, but only those, mental conditions that might cause a person not to be motivated in accordance with her moral judgment.

[12] It might be objected that condition C can be understood as a negation of the disjunction of all types of mental conditions that can cause a person not be motivated in accordance with her moral judgment. However, this ad hoc solution would hardly constitute a genuine version of internalism. It might further be objected that advocates of Conditional Internalism can simply refuse to take a stance as to whether the mental conditions referred to in the argument above constitute examples of failures to satisfy C. For example, they might stay neutral as to whether these states of mind make up examples of practical irrationality. In that case, advocates of Conditional Internalism would not need to specify C in a way that accommodates these mental conditions. However, these conditions are generally assumed to constitute prototypical examples of factors that might disrupt the connection between moral judgments and motivation. Indeed, if it is not clear that these mental conditions can have this function, it can legitimately be asked which can. As a result, this move risks robbing Conditional Internalism of much of its explanatory value.

[13] There are significant differences between Nichols’ study and ours. For instance, whereas Nichols asked whether John (the psychopath) really understands that hurting others is wrong, we asked whether it could be the case that Anna (in case she is psychopath) thinks she is required to perform a certain action. The former formulation can be interpreted to ask whether John is aware that it is generally considered to be wrong to hurt others, whereas the latter formulation does not lend itself to this interpretation to the same extent. As a result, participants might be more willing to answer the first question in the affirmative than to respond to the second question in this manner. However, this does not explain why the responses to the two psychopath scenarios differ in the particular manner described in the main text.

[14] A person might fail to be motivated in accordance with her moral judgment more or less generally. For example, she might entirely lack the capacity for moral motivation, or she might lack moral motivation for a certain while. It might be argued that the difference in responses to, on the one hand, Psychopath, and, on the other hand, Apathy and Depression, depend on the fact that people who suffer from psychopathy are considered to belong to the former category, whereas people who suffer from apathy or depression are considered to belong to the latter. This consideration deserves further discussion. However, it fails to explain the difference between the responses to Psychopath and the responses to Nichols’ psychopath scenario.

[15] If this hypothesis turns out to be viable, it suggests that, on people's pre-philosophical conception, the capacity to emphasize with other human beings is fundamental for being able to form moral judgments. For philosophically relevant discussions on the relation between moral judgments and motivation in psychopaths, see e.g., Cholbi (2006 Cholbi, M. 2006. Belief attribution and the falsification of motive internalism. Philosophical Psychology, 19: 607–616. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Kennett (2002 Kennett, J. 2002. Autism, empathy and moral agency. The Philosophical Quarterly, 52: 340–357. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Kennett and Fine (2008a Kennett, J and Fine, C. 2008a. “Internalism and the evidence from psychopaths and “acquired sociopaths.”. In Moral psychology: Vol. 3, Edited by: Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 173–190. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [Google Scholar]), Nichols (2004 Nichols, S. 2004. Sentimental rules: On the natural foundations of moral judgment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], chapters 1, 3, & 5), and Roskies (2003 Roskies, A. 2003. Are ethical judgments intrinsically motivational? Lessons from “acquired sociopathy.”. Philosophical Psychology, 16: 51–66. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006, 2008).

[16] In Cholbi's (2011) view, internalists and externalists should stop appealing to their modal intuitions, since it can be suspected that these are shaped by antecedent theoretical commitments. Unfortunately, we cannot discuss this general methodological issue in the present paper.

[17] We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer and to Jon Tresan for stressing this point.

[18] We employed the following modified version of Community: Imagine a society X that in most respect is similar to ours: the citizens of X look roughly as we do, behave roughly as we do, and like pretty much the same things as we do. Like us, the citizens of X group actions into different moral categories. They put the label “morally right” on certain actions and the label “morally wrong” on certain other actions. In a similar manner, they classify some actions as being morally required to perform and other actions as not being morally required to perform. Their classification of various actions into moral categories is very similar to ours. For example, the action of giving money to starving people is classified as an action they are morally required to perform. However, none of the citizens of X is ever motivated, not to any extent, to perform any of the actions that, according to their classification, are morally required. Question: could it be the case that the citizens of X actually think that they are morally required to perform these actions, even if they are not motivated at all to do so? Participants were 101 students (42 males, 59 females, mean age 22, 46, SD = 2, 67), 5 of which had taken at least one philosophy class. The distribution of responses was very similar to that of the original community scenario; 82 responded “yes” and 19 “no” (Chi-2 = 39, 3, p < 0.001).