Bernard Williams' Internal Theories

The internalists holds that to be an action reason, it must have something to do with desires of the agent, which is called internal reason. By developing the traditional internal reason theory, Bernard Williams proposes his own internal reason of new Humeanism:a real action reason must have something to do with one of the element in the subjective motivational set and moreover, the subjective motivational set must have a rational basis of rational deliberation. For Williams, there should be two explanations for’A have a reason to φ’:the internal and external explanation. He argues that, according to the principle that ’ought’ should imply ’can be’, if a reason cannot be accepted by the agent, then the Therefore, Williams thinks that there exists no external reason and the only real action reason is internal reason.Williams’ internal reason theory will at least face challenges from two aspects. One is from externalism, and the paper will focus on that from John McDowell. For McDowell, the action reason does not necessarily need the process of rational deliberation to have something to do with the subjective motivational set. Another is from internalism, which is a kind of Kantian internalism, and the paper will focus on that from Christine M. Korsgaard. She pays more attention to human’s rational ability, and thinks that one should strive to make their own psychological state follow normativity, which is contrary to that of Williams. Actually, we can find that philosophers have different views about the mission and limitation of Ethics from MacDowell’s and Korsgaard’s criticism.Daring face the complexity of ethical life, Williams has been trying to show that our moral life can’t and is not allowed to be described simply as theoretical, abstract, and systematic. In his view, on one hand, we should reflect and study ethics from the first-person and internal perspective; on the other hand, ethical life itself could not have no influence from luck and fortune, and so is moral evaluation. Our ideal society should be like this:everyone is able to be responsible to his words and deeds with as much rational tolerance as possible, and can get on well with others as well as the world by means of promoting social progress. However, his internal reason theory is not so perfect that in this paper I attempt to supplement and perfect Williams’ theory from the viewpoint of Peter Railton’s ’relationalism’ and ’rational advisers’.Williams’ internalism and his method of studying philosophy will have important research value for both the development of Chinese ethics and the practice of the ethics.