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Prichard, Falk, and the End of Deliberation1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
In moral deliberations we must be acquainted beforehand with all the objects, and all their relations to each other; and from a comparison of the whole, fix our choice or approbation. No new fact to be ascertained; no new relation to be discovered …. If any material circumstance be yet unknown or doubtful, we must first employ our inquiry or intellectual faculties to assure us of it; and must suspend for a time a moral decision or sentiment. - David Hume
Although many associate the terms with Bernard Williams’ work on practical reason, the terms ‘intemalism’ and ‘externalism,’ along with the general contours of debates in ethical theory between views so dubbed, were originally introduced by W.O. Falk in a response to H.A. Prichard's intuitionist account of ‘ought.’
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 33: Reasons to be Moral Revisited , 2007 , pp. 131 - 147
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2007
Footnotes
1
Thanks to Evan Tiffany, Sam Black, Stephen Darwall, Arnie Zweig, and especially Michael Gill for helpful comments and discussion.
References
2 Thanks to Michael Gill for reminding me of this passage, one that Falk himself thought of as quite significant. Hume, DavidAn Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, “Appendix I. Concerning Moral Sentiment,” ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. and Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Clarendon), 290.Google Scholar
3 Falk, W. D. “'Ought’ and Motivation.” Reprinted in Ought, Reasons and Morality: The Collected Papers of W. D. Falk (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 21–41;Google ScholarPrichard, H.A. “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, Mind n.s. 21, no. 81 (1912): 21–37;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilliams, B. “Internal and External Reasons,” in Rational Action, ed. Harrison, R. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 17–28.Google Scholar
4 Most of the important distinctions we have because of the work of Darwall, Stephen for instance, in his “Autonomist Intemalism and the Justification of Morals.” Nous 24 (1990): 257…fJ7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 The first to point this out was Frankena, in Frankena, W. “Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral Philosophy,” in Perspectives on Morality: Essays of William Frankena, ed. Goodpaster, K. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1976).Google Scholar
6 A question others have asked. For instance, see Setiya, K. “Against Intemalism,“ Nous 38 (2004): 266-98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Prichard himself appears to think of himself as both a realist and an intemalist -although Falk himself argues that Prichard is confused.
8 I am thinking foremost of Darwall. Also see Schroeder, M. “Cudworth and Normative Explanations,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 1–27.Google Scholar
9 Falk himself found this passage to be significant. See, e.g., Falk, W.O. “Hume on Practical Reason,” Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 E.g., Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy …”, 36.Google Scholar
11 Prichard, H.A. “Duty and Interest,” in Moral Obligation: Essays and Lectures (Oxford: Clarendon, 1949), 486.Google Scholar
12 Falk, “Hume on Practical Reason,” 29.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., 38.
14 Ibid., 38. Emphasis added.
15 Ibid., 36-37.
16 Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy …”, 22.Google Scholar
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 23.
19 Ibid., 27.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 32.
23 See, for instance, his remarks on “Morals without Faith,” in Falk, Ought, Reasons, and Morality, 163-179.
24 Ibid., 231.
25 See, for instance, Bennett's, Jonathan well-known paper, “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn,” Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 49 (1974): 123-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 “'Ought’ and Motivation,” 127.
27 See, e.g., Scanlon's, T.M. argument for the notion of ‘reason’ as a primitive term, in What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), e.g., p. 17.Google Scholar
28 Buck-passers such as Scanlon; see ibid., 95-98.