COMM 2273 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Strake Jesuit College Preparatory, Joseph Butler, Internalism And Externalism

• School: University of Arkansas-Monticello
• Department: Communication
• Course: COMM 2273
• Professor: Key

Document Summary

At internalism: internalism can"t be the basis of morality because it has no normative power. The problem here is a general one, which applies to any attempt to derive normativity from a natural source of power. Suppose the authority of obligation derives from the power of our sympathetic motives. Then if you lack sympathetic motives, you lack obligations. Your obligations vary along with your motives, and so you can do no wrong. Suppose, as hume sometimes seemed to think, that the authority of our reasons for action must be de- rived from the strength of our desires. Then you will always do what you have reason to do, and you can do no wrong. Joseph butler would later point out, this sort of argument shows that authority cannot be reduced to any kind of power. And the relation in which moral claims stand to us is a relation of authority, not one of power.