Chapter 13
Practical Reasons and Environmental
Commitment
Alan Holland
This discussion of practical reasons has two main aims. The first is to distil the findings of some recent work on the topic and to draw attention to some important distinctions, especially the distinction between reasons that are internal and reasons that are external (Williams, 1981). The second is to use those findings in order to ascertain what kinds of rea- sons might be the most effective in promoting an “environmentalist” stance— the stance of one who, as Aldo Leopold succinctly puts it, “cannot live without wild things” (1949: vii).
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something are different again. They do not necessarily form part of the explanation for our action, nor are they necessarily reasons that we actually have or would consciously avow. For example we might be said to have a reason to do something but fail to act for that reason due to ignorance, which means, in turn, that it will not figure as part of the explanation for our action. And this is true whether or not we perform the act that we have reason to perform.
“Reasons for” both explain and justify our actions. “Reasons to” in fact do neither but are capable of doing both. “Reasons why” explain but do not justify.
1.2 Reasons and Desires
Two versions of what it is to have a reason for action go, very roughly, as follows:
(i) An agent has a reason for doing X if he or she has reason to believe that X- ing is a step toward or is partly constitutive of something worthwhile: this is an “internalist”
reading.
(ii) An agent has a reason for doing X if there is reason to believe that X- ing is a step toward or is partly constitutive of something worthwhile: this is an “externalist” reading.
We shall return shortly to the distinction between the internalist and externalist readings, and to the claim, implied by the inclusion of the notion of what is worthwhile, that the ascrip- tion of reasons has a normative dimension. Already we see that reasons for action are by no means always instrumental to the achieving of some desired or desirable end, but might, for example, be experimental, creative, or expressive (cf. Holland, 2002: 28– 31). And note also that whether the end is described as desired or desirable, we face a dilemma. If it is desired, then it may in addition be highly undesirable— which makes it at least a moot point whether we have reason to pursue it. If it is desirable, this is to say that there is reason to desire it, so that to include the notion of what is desirable in an account of what it is to have a reason for action is to generate a regress.
It was claimed earlier that reasons “make sense of” what we do. If this is true, and in light of the considerations just mentioned, it seems clear that bare wants or desires, which are some- times assumed to be paradigmatic (or at least default) reasons for doing something, are not reasons at all (Raz, 1997: 113– 115).1 In the first place, to say that we are doing “what we want”
does not “make sense of” what we do at all, but merely signals the fact that we are acting vol- untarily rather than performing some involuntary movement. In the second place, there is no reason whatever for supposing that doing what we want achieves anything that can be described as worthwhile, or that it can supply the slightest justification for doing something.
As distinct from bare wants or desires, considered or informed desires— more usually called
“preferences”— present a different case. But if considered or informed preferences provide rea- sons for doing something, it is not because they are preferences, but because they are consid- ered or informed. As Joseph Raz persuasively argues (1997: 115), desires function as reasons only if there are reasons for the desires. More generally, it would seem that only of a being who is already conceived of as a voluntary agent, and who is therefore capable of action (rather than mere movement), could it be said that he or she acts for a reason (cf. Scanlon, 1998: 20– 22).
The task of reasons is thus to explain or justify why this action rather than that action was per- formed; it is not to explain or to justify, de novo, why any action at all was performed.
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1.3 Internalism and Externalism
But how does what there is reason to do become a reason that we have, an operative reason, something that we have a reason for doing? In an article that has become a classic in the field, Bernard Williams provides the following answer: an agent has a reason for performing action A only if she could reach the conclusion that she should A by a “sound deliberative route” from her “subjective motivational set,” which he refers to simply as “S,” where S is understood to contain “dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties … projects … [and] … commitments” (1981: 105).2 He proceeds to defend this
“internalist” view of reasons for action against an “externalist” view that denies the necessity for such a condition: the externalist claims that an agent can be said to have reason for per- forming action A even though no such deliberative route is available.
Nevertheless, as noted, for example, by both Richard Norman (2001: 17) and John Brunero (2007: 23), Williams allows considerable latitude in how we are to interpret the notions of
“subjective motivational set” and “sound deliberative route.” And this fact makes it a little difficult to determine where exactly the line between the internalist and externalist positions is to be drawn.3 The problem is this: there just is no telling whether the agent could in prin- ciple, and by some conceivable deliberative route, come to believe the purportedly external reason or not. Absent belief in some strong form of determinism, this has to be a totally inde- terminate matter. Suppose, for example, that an agent indulges in counterfactual delibera- tions as even a necessary and salutary part of her strategy in coming to a decision about what to do. Suppose, specifically, that it is part of her current motivational set to be disposed to ask herself: “What if one or more of my current motivational set were different— how would things look then?” In that event it seems possible that any purportedly external reason could turn out to be an internal reason after all. It is not obvious, at any rate, that she could not in this way reach a conclusion somewhat at odds with the one to which the balance of her cur- rent motivation set would seem to point. Nor does the indulgence in counterfactual delib- eration have to be self- initiated. It might be suggested by a friend or adviser.
Williams defends the internalist position by arguing that if R is someone’s reason for acting then R must figure in an explanation of that action, and that “no external reason statement could by itself offer an explanation of anyone’s action” (1981: 106). What also needs to be true (at least) is that the agent believes R to be a reason for the action in question. But even for an agent to believe R to be a reason for the action in question, it is Williams’s contention that an appro- priate “actual or potential motivational repertoire” needs to be in place (1981: 107– 108).
However, we cannot at this point brush off a concern that motivates many externalists and is articulated most clearly by John McDowell (1995). To express the concern bluntly, if melodramatically: we cannot countenance a theory of practical reason that has as a possible consequence that a torturer or serial killer has a perfectly good reason for what they do. For if the torturer counts among her subjective motivational set a determination to seek out that activity that best fits her particular set of skills, or if the serial killer counts the killing of any- one who should annoy him as among the most basic of his projects or commitments, then each can no doubt find a “sound deliberative route” to her or his chosen careers. Nor does it seem adequate to respond by saying that it is their morality rather than their rationality that is at fault. For it is the fact that they might claim to have a perfectly good reason for what they do that cannot be allowed to stand. But neither is it an adequate response to say that they are
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irrational, for it may be that their reasoning, as such, cannot be faulted. However, what can, perhaps, be said, is that the torturer or serial killer is exhibiting a condition that is “patho- logical.” In itself, this is hardly an explanatory term. But it is, perhaps, symptomatic: symp- tomatic of the fact that those who exhibit such proclivities are considered to be answerable in some way to what we might call “the court of human sentiment.”
Thus, what seems rather to be true is that ascriptions of reasons contain an external “justi- ficatory” element: to claim that an agent has a perfectly good reason for what she does implies among other things not simply (and perhaps not at all) that she believes she is justified in what she does, but that she really is justified. And different accounts are, of course, available, as to what makes actions unjustified. Perhaps the action itself is judged to be morally wrong, whether for utilitarian reasons or on Kantian grounds. Perhaps it is judged to exhibit one or more of the serious vices. Or perhaps it is held, simply, to display characteristics that lie far outside the acceptable range of human responses. If any of these criticisms stand, the claim that an agent has a perfectly good reason for what she does is open to challenge. But at the same time, and even if one or more of these criticisms should stand, they do not automati- cally defeat the claim that an agent acts for good reason. This depends on the situation.
And here we glimpse another factor that bears on the question of whether an agent has a good reason for her action: the concrete situation in which she finds herself.4 Our moti- vational repertoire, including our beliefs about what we do and do not have reason to do is, in part, a function of our external circumstances. So if, for example, an agent must steal in order to survive, she may be said to have good reason for her action. But however strongly motivated she may be, it is not this that makes her reason a good one. Whether it is or not will still depend on an external critical judgment to the effect that her situation makes the action defensible.5 The example brings out two important, if surprising, corollaries. The first is that if it remains wrong to steal even in these circumstances, then we do not always have good reason to act morally; or, at any rate, that any reason to act morally can be outweighed by nonmoral considerations such as need, pure and simple. The second is that the external critical viewpoint can override what agents themselves believe they have reason to do.6
To summarize: for people to be said to have good reason for what they do, in a sense that also explains what they do, all of the features upon which internalists insist have to be in place— in particular, the appropriate motivational repertoire and the sound deliberative route. This is not sufficient, however, for the persons to be said to have good reason for what they do. For this to be the case, the action also has to withstand external critical scrutiny. Thus both internalists and externalists draw attention to features that are necessary for it to be said that agents have a per- fectly good reason for what they do. But neither account is by itself sufficient.