Philosophy of Mind - Reading Reflection

Moral Motivation

Page 1 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

The Moral Psychology Handbook John M. Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group

Print publication date: 2010 Print ISBN-13: 9780199582143 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582143.001.0001

Moral Motivation Timothy Schroeder Adina L. Roskies Shaun Nichols

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582143.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords To understand the nature of moral motivation, it is important first to understand the nature of motivation. This chapter begins with a discussion of motivation itself and then sketches four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories. It then evaluates these theories in light of recent evidence from neuroscience and allied fields.

Keywords:   moral worth, pain, motivation, desire, reward, sentimentalism, cognitivism, instrumentalism, personalism, neurophysiology

Jen is walking down the street when a homeless man asks her for money. She stops and gives him a dollar, wishes him well, and walks on. Jen appears to have done a morally good deed. But now, what motivated her to do it? Perhaps she was motivated by the thought that the man needed the money more than she did. Perhaps she was motivated by a desire to look like a nice person to the people around her. Perhaps she was motivated by an irrational surge of fear at the thought of what the homeless man might do if not appeased. And on we could speculate, for every action has many possible motivations.

In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we

Moral Motivation

Page 2 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosophical conclusion, it does present formidable obstacles to a number of popular philosophical approaches, and (2) theories of morally worthy motivation that best fit the current scientific picture are ones that owe much more to Hume or Aristotle than to Kant.

1. Motivation Motivation plays a prominent role in discussions of action, practical reason, and moral psychology. Despite its frequent appearance in philosophical discussions, philosophers have generally not been clear about what motivation is. In this first section, we redress this.

Is motivation psychologically real? Is there a state or process that can be identified as motivation? Some, like Alston (1967), deny that motivation has (p. 73) psychological reality, suggesting instead that “the concept of motivation is an abstraction from the concept of a motivational explanation, and the task of specifying the nature of motivation is the task of bringing out the salient features of this explanation” (p. 400). But we postulate that motivation is not merely an abstraction, and that it plays a causal role in the production of action.

To get an idea of what motivation as a causally efficacious independent mental state would have to be like, consider some apparent features of motivation.

(I) Motivation is closely related to action, yet distinct from it. When we intentionally perform action A, we are motivated to so act. However, not all motivation results in action: we can be motivated to A, yet fail to A for a variety of reasons.1

(II) Motivation is a causally efficacious kind of state. We A because we are motivated to A; that is, our motivational states are causally related to action‐production. It might well be that there exist factors that can block motivation from bringing about action (e.g. motivation not to do what one is also motivated to do, habits, phobias, lassitude, etc.) but motivation makes a causal contribution that promotes the production of action. (III) Motivation is occurrent. If someone has a standing desire for global peace, one might say she is motivated to bring about world peace. But we understand this to mean that, in appropriate circumstances, she would display an occurrent motivation—motivation properly so called—to bring about world peace. Because motivation is occurrent, it is distinct from standing—that is, dispositional and causally inert—desires. And since any desire can be a standing desire (if only briefly), there is something to motivation that is distinct from desire as such. This is obvious with desires such as a desire to create philosophical ideas, for it is often the case that a person with such a desire has it without being motivated at that moment to carry it out.

Moral Motivation

Page 3 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

(IV) Motivation is commonly associated with certain feelings. We have no strong claims to make about these feelings, and nothing hangs on this in what follows, but it seems helpful to acknowledge the potential range of feelings that go with motivation. These feelings cluster around two sorts of cases. In the first sort, one is motivated to achieve some larger goal, and feels “up to the challenge,” “bursting with energy,” or otherwise (p. 74) inspired. This first sort of feeling—feeling motivated in general—is non‐specific, and feels the same regardless of what one is motivated to do. In the second sort of case, one is motivated to perform some specific action by means of some specific bodily movement. In such cases, one might feel muscular tension preparing one for the action, or have an image of oneself performing it, or experience anticipatory pleasure at the thought of the action, or suffer from one's current non‐performance of the action. These feelings are, obviously, much more closely tied to the specific end one is motivated to bring about.

An investigation of moral motivation, then, is first an investigation of motivation: an investigation of an occurrent state, capable of causing actions, and associated with certain feelings. But it is also an investigation of something specifically moral. To the moral side we turn next.

2. Philosophical Approaches to Moral Motivation Theories of moral motivation are almost as numerous as the number of philosophers writing on the subject. Accordingly, in this section we shall not survey them comprehensively. Instead, our approach will be to sketch caricatures of four familiar approaches, those of the instrumentalist, the cognitivist, the sentimentalist, and the personalist, indicating as we go how these caricatures fit better or worse with the views of particular theorists. We have chosen to sketch our characters as starkly as possible, simplifying away many of the subtle features that would appear in a fleshed‐out theory in order to highlight what is fundamentally different in these approaches. These sketches will help make clear the significance of the scientific findings that follow in the next section.2

The Instrumentalist

Our instrumentalist holds that people are motivated when they form beliefs about how to satisfy pre‐existing desires.3 Motivation, says the instrumentalist, (p.75) begins with intrinsic desires. And desires are intrinsic just in the sense that what is desired is desired for its own sake, and neither merely as a realizer of what was antecedently desired, nor merely as a means to what was antecedently desired. Typical examples of intrinsic desires might include desires for pleasure, for the welfare of loved ones, for the will of God to be done on Earth, for the Montreal Canadians to win the Stanley Cup, and so on (compare Stich et al., Chapter 5, this volume).4

Moral Motivation

Page 4 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Having intrinsic desires is necessary for motivation, holds the instrumentalist, but not sufficient. These desires lurk in the minds of their possessors like buried land mines, waiting for the right conditions in order to explode into occurrent motivation. And the right conditions are conditions of occurrent belief. When a person has an intrinsic desire that P, and then occurrently believes that she can bring it about that P by taking action A, then she becomes motivated to take action A. Becoming so motivated is a matter of forming a new, non‐intrinsic pro‐ attitude toward taking action A. That is, motivation on the instrumentalist's view is a matter of having non‐intrinsic desires (or intentions, or the like) to do what is believed to be instrumental to (or a realization of) an intrinsic desire.

The instrumentalist's view is sometimes labeled ‘Humean’ by philosophers, though many have pointed out that the view is only loosely related to that of Hume himself. Most decision theorists are instrumentalists of our sort or something recognizably related,5 but relatively few ethicists seem to be. The best‐known self‐styled neo‐Humean at present is perhaps Michael Smith, and Smith's own view of moral motivation is decidedly non‐instrumentalist (see Smith, 1994).6

On the instrumental view, the story of Jen is straightforward. She desires to do what is right, and forms the belief that by giving the homeless man before her a dollar, she will be doing the right thing.7 She thus comes to have an occurrent instrumental desire to give the man a dollar. This new desire is her motivation to give the man a dollar. She then acts on her instrumental desire (p.76) and gives the man a dollar, thereby also acting on her intrinsic desire to do what is right. In so doing, she does what is right because it is right, and acts with moral worth.

The Cognitivist

The cognitivist rejects the thesis that moral motivation begins with desire and the thesis that belief plays a merely instrumental or realizational role in guiding moral action. The cognitivist—our sort of cognitivist, at any rate—is led to this rejection not least because she holds that to desire is merely to be in a state that generates a behavioral impulse. And how, she asks, can a behavioral impulse ever be the source of morally worthy action?8

What, then, is left? The cognitivist holds the view that moral motivation begins with occurrent belief. In particular, it begins with beliefs about what actions would be right. The cognitivist holds that, at least in cases of morally worthy action, such beliefs lead to motivation to perform those actions, quite independently of any antecedent desires. The cognitivist is happy to call this motivational state “a desire,” but thinks of it as entirely dependent upon the moral belief that created it.

Moral Motivation

Page 5 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

The cognitivist position has recognizable affinities to familiar positions in the philosophical literature (e.g. Korsgaard, 1994; McDowell, 1998: ch. 4; Smith, 1994). These philosophers, of course, hold that much more is going on in the mind of a morally worthy agent than the simple picture painted by our cognitivist.

They generally agree, however, that morally worthy action is not dependent upon antecedent desires, but stems in the first instance from one's judgments.

On the cognitivist's view, Jen's desires are not irrelevant to her action, but they are not the initiating engines of her action either. Instead, her desires are mere data that she considers (perhaps) in coming to be motivated. Given what is available to her, perhaps she comes to believe that it would be right to give the homeless man money, and it never occurs to her to even consider her desires. This consideration of the rightness of giving money to the homeless man motivates Jen to give him some money, and she does. Because she is moved by the right sort of belief, her action has moral worth.

The Sentimentalist

Emotions have not yet been featured in the above accounts of morally worthy action, but they are central to the account given by the sentimentalist. (p.77) According to all sentimentalists, the emotions typically play a key causal role in motivating moral behavior. Our caricature sentimentalist, like many real sentimentalists, takes a stronger view. Our sentimentalist maintains that an action can't count as being morally motivated unless it is driven by certain emotions. Of course it can't be any old emotion. If a person is motivated to save a drowning person only because he hates him and wishes to see him die a slower, more painful death at his own hand, this is emotional motivation, to be sure, but it is hardly moral motivation.

Our sentimentalist might opt for several different emotions as the right kind of emotion for producing moral motivation, and compassion is an obvious candidate. When a person is motivated to help an injured child because of a feeling of compassion, that counts as genuine moral motivation. Saying exactly why particular emotion‐driven motivations are moral is a controversial issue even among sentimentalists who agree with our sentimentalist, but this needn't detain us here.

The sentimentalist story about Jen is easy to tell. When Jen sees the homeless man, she feels compassion toward him. This feeling of compassion provides the motivation that leads her to treat him kindly. Since sentimentalists typically acknowledge that compassion is a type of emotion that can provide moral motivation, Jen's action was morally worthy.

Moral Motivation

Page 6 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

The Personalist

The previous three views have all highlighted specific mental states as central to morally worthy action, but the personalist holds a more holistic position. She holds that morally worthy action stems from good character. Good character involves knowledge of the good, wanting what is good for its own sake, long‐ standing emotional dispositions that favor good action, and long‐standing habits of responding to one's knowledge, desires, and emotions with good actions.

On the view of the personalist, morally worthy action begins with knowledge of the good. This knowledge is unlikely to be retained in a person in the form of an explicit theory, or in the form of a disposition to test one's possible principles of action against particular standards such as universalizability. Instead, it is likely to be retained through a combination of moral heuristics (lying is generally a bad idea, generosity does not require even‐handedness, and so on) and a learned sensitivity to particular sorts of situations as calling for one heuristic or another, or for a novel approach that nonetheless extends more familiar moral thought.9 (p.78) This moral knowledge leads through inference (often unconscious) to an occurrent belief that action A is the morally superior action in a given context. But this belief is impotent without a suitably responsive character. Such a character involves long‐standing conative dispositions, emotional dispositions, and behavioral dispositions (i.e. habits), with these complexes of dispositions generally being named “virtues.” Thus, if action A is one that requires facing a significant threat of harm for a good cause, then the conative emotional and behavioral dispositions required to perform A in a praiseworthy manner10 will be that complex known as “courage”; if A amounts to telling the truth against one's immediate interests, then the conative, emotional, and behavioral dispositions required will be that complex known as “honesty”; and so on. The personalist holds that neither the emotional dispositions nor the habits that make up good character are reducible to long‐standing intrinsic desires, and in this way she opposes the instrumentalist. The personalist's view has affinities to Aristotle's in Nicomachean Ethics, and also to contemporary neo‐Aristotelians such as Hursthouse and Slote (Aristotle, 2000; Hursthouse, 1999; Slote, 2001).

Jen's story begins with her moral cognitive capacities, on the personalist's account. Although she holds no explicit belief about what is right in every case, her sensitivity to moral patterns and her explicit (if generally unconscious) heuristics lead her to the view that it would be good to give the homeless man a dollar. Because of her character, Jen's moral thoughts engage her standing desires, lead her to feel relevant emotions, and—because of her habits as well— lead her to take the right action, and so she gives the homeless man a dollar. This amounts to the exercise of at least a partial virtue on Jen's part: compassion, as it might be. She thus does what is right for the right reason and is morally worthy.

Moral Motivation

Page 7 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

3. The Neurophysiology of Moral Motivation The previous section sketched four familiar accounts of doing the right thing with genuinely moral motivations. These accounts, though philosophical, should lead one to make certain empirical predictions. As should already be evident, accounts of moral motivation typically presuppose commitments (p.79) regarding the nature of psychological states such as beliefs, desires, choices, emotions, and so on, together with commitments regarding the functional and causal roles they play. Observations about the nature and the functional and causal roles of psychological states, it seems to us, are as much empirical as they are philosophical. At least, it is rather obscure how such claims are to be understood, if they are not to be understood as involving substantial empirical elements, and we shall not attempt such an exposition here. Instead, we shall adopt what seems to us a more natural and theoretically fertile approach, first laying out what is known from empirical work on the neurophysiology of motivation, then interpreting the neuroscience in psychological terms, and finally examining the consequences of the empirical work for those philosophical accounts we have just described.

To minimize the perils of reliance on cutting‐edge scientific work, most of this section will deal in textbook neuroscience. Thus, while we remain aware that neuroscience is as vulnerable to revolution as any science, we also remain moderately confident that the fundamentals of the empirical picture we sketch will remain substantially intact in the future. Our default source for textbook neuroscience is a very standard textbook: Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell (2000); neuroscientific claims with references not otherwise cited are drawn from this work.

Moral motivation must connect in the right way to voluntary action (or inaction), for no morally worthy action is performed involuntarily. Thus we focus on the neural realization of voluntary movement. The basic fact with which we begin is that, as complex as the brain is, all activity in the brain that eventuates in voluntary movement must eventually stimulate the spinal cord, and to do so must stimulate the parts of the brain that have exclusive control over the spinal cord: the motor cortex and pre‐motor cortical areas.11 Moreover, because the pre‐motor cortical areas have control over the motor cortex (except for some minor reflexes), any activity in the brain that eventuates in voluntary behavior must eventually stimulate pre‐motor cortex. The pre‐motor cortex will thus be the first focus of our interest. (Throughout this section, it will be helpful to refer to Figure 3.1.)

The pre‐motor cortex is divided into numerous sub‐regions that have control over different sub‐regions of the motor cortex, and thus control over different spinal neurons, and thus ultimately control over different possible bodily

Moral Motivation

Page 8 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Figure 3.1.

movements. This control can be thought of as the pre‐motor cortex being designed like the keyboards of an organ, with each region capable of (p.80)

playing “notes” of simple movements and “chords” of slightly more complex movements. Many neuroscientists working on motor and pre‐motor cortex write of the different regions of pre‐ motor cortex as having the ability to issue various motor “commands”: commands to the body to move this way or that, for various possible movements (e.g. Jeannerod, 1997). Thus, activity in one part of the pre‐motor cortex can cause the utterance of a syllable, while activity in another part can cause a strumming movement, activity in another part can cause the opening of a hand, and so on. Because these possible movements are fairly simple in character, the pre‐motor cortex needs to be under higher control if complex actions are to be performed. What, then, controls the pre‐ motor cortex? It turns out that almost every part of the brain contributes to such control. There is no uniquely behavioral higher‐level control system; instead, a whole host of factors simultaneously (p.81) bears down upon the pre‐motor cortex. These factors can usefully be divided into two categories based on their origins: cortical and sub‐ cortical.

Cortical inputs to the pre‐motor cortex come from perceptual structures in the brain and from higher‐level cognitive structures. Perceptual input can be quite simple (input carrying information about touch to the pad of one finger, for instance) or quite complex (input carrying information about whether or not one is looking at something that looks like one's father, for example). Higher‐level cognitive structures can have features as complex and diverse as that vague label “higher‐level” suggests. For instance, higher‐level structures in the brain include those responsible for precisely guiding reaching and grasping movements based on visual, somatic, and proprioceptive inputs. Although this turns out to be a very complex computational task, requiring quite a large region of cortex, it is also not the sort of thing that philosophers are likely to think of as “higher‐level,” and it will not be the focus of our attention here.12 More

Moral Motivation

Page 9 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

stereotypically higher‐level structures in the brain include those responsible for grasping the syntax of sentences one reads, those responsible for grasping the social significance of situations, structures capable of holding motor commands at the ready until some pre‐set condition is met, and so on. Neuroscience does not have fully detailed accounts of how the brain realizes complex moral beliefs, moral deliberations, one's principles of action, values, or choices. Nonetheless, if these things are real (as we have no reason to doubt), then they are realized in the higher‐level structures of the cortex.13 And all of these structures, when active, send output to the pre‐motor cortex.

Sub‐cortical input to the pre‐motor cortex comes largely from the motor output structures of the basal ganglia, in the form of global suppression of all activation in the pre‐motor cortex, and selective release of that suppression that permits the production of action. Think of the pre‐motor cortex as being full of young schoolchildren. Stimulated by cortical centers of perception and higher‐level cognition, some of the schoolchildren agitate for doing one thing (producing one movement), others of the schoolchildren agitate for another (producing another movement), and so on. Without further guidance, chaos is the result. Sub‐ cortical input from the motor basal ganglia prevents this chaos; it is like a teacher, quieting all the children except for a few, who are allowed to “do as they wish.” That is, the subcortical input literally blocks (p.82) the production of many possible motor commands, but selectively allows certain possible motor commands to go ahead and be turned into bodily movements.

On what basis do the motor basal ganglia selectively release actions? The answer is that four sources of influence combine. First, all the cortical regions that send input to the pre‐motor cortex also send input to the motor basal ganglia. Second, the active portions of motor and pre‐motor cortex send signals down to the motor basal ganglia. Third, there is input from the brain's reward system. And fourth, there is the internal organization of the motor basal ganglia themselves.

The first source of influence over action selection is simply perception and cognition. There is nothing too surprising here. Obviously, actions cannot be selected unless information about what is going on in the world is provided to the action selection system.

The second source of influence is a little more interesting. Why should active parts of motor and pre‐motor cortex send signals down to the brain's action selection system? The answer seems to be that the brain's action selection system responds differentially based upon information about what actions it has released, and what actions are more or less prepared to be performed (what motor commands are even partly activated) in order to select new appropriate

Moral Motivation

Page 10 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

actions. Seen in this light, this input is no more surprising than input from perception and cognition.

The third source of influence is input from the brain's reward system. The reward system is identified as such by neuroscientists because it possesses a number of properties: it is selectively activated by what are, intuitively, rewards (food, cooperation from partners in a game of prisoner's dilemma, and so on [see, e.g., Stellar and Stellar, 1985; Rilling et al., 2004]), its signaling properties carry exactly the information required of a reward signal by the mathematical theory of reward learning (Montague, Dayan, & Sejnowski, 1996), it is responsible for reward‐based learning but not for other forms of learning (Packard & Knowlton, 2002), its activity causes pleasure (Kandel, Schwartz, & Jessell, 2000), and if allowed to electrically stimulate it, rats have been known to do so to the exclusion of all other activities (Stellar & Stellar, 1985). Because it has these features, we are inclined to follow the scientists in speaking of this system as the “reward system.” (There is a natural tendency to think of the reward system as a pleasure‐causing system. The reader should suspend this tendency, however; we shall return to the topic below.)

The reward system influences action selection on a moment‐to‐moment basis. The reward system has a baseline level of activity, but it can increase or reduce its activity. So long as activity is within a biologically normal range, (p.83) actions can be produced regardless of activity level, but changes in activity level change the likelihood of different actions being performed. Positive reward information in the form of dopamine appears to increase the likelihood of actions being produced in general, and to play an important role in selecting which action is produced in particular (Mink, 1996).

There are two main influences upon reward signals. There are connections from select perceptual and higher cognitive representational capacities that make certain contents into rewards (that I get money, or food, for instance), and other possible contents into punishments (that I get pinched, or that I smell rotting meat, for instance). Representations of the contents exist in perceptual and higher cognitive centers, and send signals forward via the ventromedial portions of prefrontal cortex down to the reward system or to the (hypothesized, but not yet clearly demonstrated) punishment system (Schultz, Tremblay, & Hollerman, 2000). And then there is input to the reward system from the amygdala, a well‐ known structure that is responsible for many of the brain's strong emotional responses. Its best‐studied function is the production of classical fear conditioning, but it is known to be involved in anger and other emotions as well. In the case of fear conditioning, it is the amygdala that learns the association between a previously neutral stimulus (such as the presence of a bee) and an aversive stimulus (being stung), so that when one encounters the previously neutral stimulus again in the future, one's heart rate rises, one sweats, one's

Moral Motivation

Page 11 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

stomach churns and tightens, one feels displeasure, and one becomes motivated to avoid the stimulus: that is, one is subject to the familiar syndrome of fear.

Finally, the fourth influence upon the selection of action by the motor basal ganglia is the internal structure of the motor basal ganglia themselves. This internal structure is the locus of our habits and related behavioral inclinations. Scientific research on habit learning and habit retention in human and non‐ human animals has shown that the internal structure of the basal ganglia is where our unconscious behavioral habits get stored, while consciously retrievable memory (for instance) is localized elsewhere (Knowlton, Mangles, & Squire, 1996; Packard & Knowlton, 2002).

4. Initial Implications of Neurophysiology Perhaps the above neuroscience has been taxing for the reader. This material is certainly unfamiliar to many moral philosophers, and indeed to many philosophers of any stripe, and as a result it can be pretty tough going. In (p. 84) this section, we hope to repay the reader's patience by interpreting some of the neuroscientific story in terms that make its philosophical significance more apparent.

Implications for Instrumentalism

Consider first what the instrumentalist might make of the neuroscience. The instrumentalist needs there to be intrinsic desires realized somewhere in the neural architecture. But where? The brain's reward system makes an excellent candidate, as has been argued by a pair of philosophers (Morillo, 1990; Schroeder, 2004). When one desires that P intrinsically, one has a representation that P (the content of the desire); by having the desire one both tends to become motivated to bring it about that P and tends to feel pleasure at the prospect of P, or if it comes to be the case that P. The only structure poised to play all of these roles in the brain is the reward system. The reward system also begins with a representation that P (more carefully, a capacity to represent that P), and when triggered (when the representation is occurrent), the reward signals that are caused tend to cause motivational states and to cause pleasure.14 And further, no other system in the brain could plausibly represent the contents of desires while also causing both motivational states and pleasure. The instrumentalist, then, should hold that intrinsic desires are realized by the reward system.

The instrumentalist holds that intrinsic desires combine with beliefs: beliefs about what actions would be instrumental to satisfying intrinsic desires (or would realize the satisfaction of intrinsic desires). Where will these beliefs be realized? Presumably, in the higher cognitive centers of the brain, for what is a belief if not a higher cognitive state? So the instrumentalist hopes to find brain structures by which the reward system (intrinsic desire) can interact with certain higher cognitions (beliefs about instrumental actions). Fortunately for the instrumentalist, such a structure exists: it is the motor basal ganglia. In the

Moral Motivation

Page 12 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

motor basal ganglia, information from higher cognitive centers combines with reward information, and also with information from perception and from current motor commands. Thus the instrumentalist should tentatively accept that the beliefs relevant to motivation are found in higher cognitive centers, for if they are, then they are capable of playing something much like the role he requires, and no other candidates present themselves. (p.85)

Furthermore, the instrumentalist holds that intrinsic desires, when combined with relevant beliefs, produce motivational states. Once again, he can be happy with the neuroscience. Intrinsic desires (realized by the reward system) combine with beliefs (in higher cognitive centers) to produce activity in the motor basal ganglia that releases motor commands and ultimately, if all is working normally, produces behavior. So long as the instrumentalist is willing to say that motivation is realized by either activity in the motor basal ganglia, or by activity in its immediate downstream structures, pre‐motor or motor cortex, then his picture would seem to be realized very much as he imagined it would be.15 And there seems to be no good reason for the instrumentalist to deny that motivation is realized in one or more of these structures. These structures have the properties mentioned in Section 1 above: they have occurrent states that are causally real, distinct from intrinsic desires and beliefs, and necessary for the production of voluntary action under normal conditions.

Still, a little more than this is needed. These states of the motor basal ganglia and pre‐motor and motor cortex should also have the right contents. Suppose Jesse wants to raise her hand. Activity in the motor basal ganglia will release the appropriate motor program for raising her hand, and so cause her hand to rise. In such a scenario, it would seem reasonable to say both that Jesse was motivated to raise her hand and that the content of the motor basal ganglia state that initiated her hand raising (or the state of her pre‐motor cortex that was also crucial to her hand raising, or both) was that she raise her hand. But not every case will go as smoothly. If Jesse has a desire to look good for the party, we might be similarly tempted to say that Jesse is therefore motivated to look good for the party. However, as we have discussed, commands issued by the motor cortex and pre‐motor cortex are commands for fairly specific bodily movements or otherwise very simple actions, and looking good for the party is not a simple movement or action. What should the instrumentalist say? We suggest that there is no need to throw out his picture. He can maintain, first, that Jesse is also motivated to thrust her left arm into the sleeve of the sweater she is putting on, motivated because she desires to look good and believes that getting her arm into the sweater will be instrumental to that. This very elemental motivation is one that has a content that can credibly be attributed to motor or pre‐motor cortex, or to the motor basal ganglia, for it is the sort of content that is reliably made true by the activity of such structures. Second, the instrumentalist can maintain that any other motivation to bring it about (p.86) that Q attributable to Jesse on the basis of her intrinsic desire to look good for the party—such as a

Moral Motivation

Page 13 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

motivation to wear interestingly contrasting colors—is simply a recognition of the fact that Jesse believes that bringing it about that Q would be instrumental to her intrinsic desire (or a realizer of it) and that Jesse's belief in this instrumentality is in the process of guiding her basic motivations: motivations to thrust this arm into this sleeve, to grasp that pair of pants and this boot, and so on.

Or, the instrumentalist can follow Davidson (1980: ch. 1) in holding that because actions are always “actions under a description,” it is correct to maintain that among the proper descriptions of the content of motivational states is the description of their goal, or of the content of the desires that cause them. Thus, although a particular brain state might command for a thrust of an arm, this command might equally be described, in context, as an attempt at “putting on an appealing sweater,” and under this description make sense as the motivation to put on an appealing sweater. Whichever route the instrumentalist prefers, it seems that there is a way for the instrumentalist to treat the brain structures that are the immediate causes of bodily movement as the realizers of instrumentalist motivation, which should be just what he wants.

We have so far assumed that what we would ordinarily think of as a motivational state exists either in the motor basal ganglia, or downstream of the motor basal ganglia, in the pre‐motor cortex (which seems to realize immediate intentions to act). This assumption is required in order for beliefs and desires to be possible causes of motivation, as the instrumentalist holds: after all, these are the structures that produce actions that are “downstream,” so to speak, from association cortex, which realizes belief, and from the reward system, which realizes desire. Can this assumption be defended?

Evidence suggests that localized lesions to parts of the basal ganglia result in the elimination of motivation, both motor and intellectual, in the absence of intellectual impairment. Though imperfect, this is certainly some evidence that we are localizing motivation in the right place. Consider one case of localized bilateral damage to the head of the caudate nucleus (part of the motor basal ganglia). A case report relates:

On admission, [the patient] was clearly hypokinetic with decreased spontaneous movements, facial amimia and Parkinson‐like gait. Neurological examination was otherwise normal, except for a moderate limb stiffness. EEG showed mild nonspecific diffuse slowing and CT scan was interpreted as normal for the patient's age. His general behavior was characterized by a dramatic decrease in spontaneous activity. Totally abulic, he made no plans, showed no evidence of needs, will, or desires. He showed obvious lack of concern about relatives' as well as his own condition. When questioned (p.87) about his mood, he reported no sadness or anxiety. Also noteworthy were a loss of appetite (he never asked

Moral Motivation

Page 14 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

for food, even if left more than 24 hours without eating) and food preferences (he would eat with the same apparent satisfaction dishes he did or did not like before). Finally, on every instance he was questioned about the content of his mind, he reported a striking absence of thoughts or spontaneous mental activity. Contrasting with these massive behavioral changes, purely cognitive functions seemed relatively spared.–(Habib, 2004: 511)

In many cases it is difficult to differentiate between motor impairment and motivational impairment. However, this patient with damage to the caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia provides reason to think that severe damage to motor basal ganglia results in a thoroughgoing motivational deficit, encompassing both motivation to act and to think. Similar profiles have been described in cases of discrete lesions of the globus pallidus, another component of the motor basal ganglia (Strub, 1989; Levy & Dubois, 2006; Vijayaraghavan et al., 2008). Patients with lesions in these regions appear to lack desire and motivation. These case reports are reminiscent of cases of akinetic mutism, in which patients have preserved motor and verbal abilities, but lose the motivation to act in any way. Akinetic mutism is usually caused by bilateral lesions to portions of pre‐motor cortex, a target of the output of the motor basal ganglia, but also results from damage to parts of the motor basal ganglia and, more rarely, from lesions to other parts of the fronto‐striatal circuit we are considering. All this seems to show fairly clearly that ordinary motivation is massively dependent on the motor basal ganglia.

Implications for Cognitivism

Consider next what the cognitivist might make of the neuroscientific picture. It might seem bleak for her, since the instrumentalist seems to have been given everything he wants. But this impression would be premature, for the cognitivist also has reason to be happy with the neuroscientific picture.

The cognitivist needs for beliefs to have the power to produce motivational states independently of antecedent desires. Given what was just said about motivation, it then seems that the cognitivist needs her beliefs, realized in higher cognitive centers, to directly influence motivational states, realized in the basal ganglia or in the pre‐motor or motor cortex. But this is indeed possible. Although the instrumentalist took comfort from the knowledge that intrinsic desires, in the form of reward signals, contribute to motivation, the cognitivist can also take comfort from the knowledge that this contribution made by intrinsic desire is not the only contribution to motivational systems. (p.88) In fact, simply looking at Figure 3.1, it is evident that there are direct anatomical connections between the neural realization of higher cognitions and motivational systems, connections that might conceivably by pass the influences of desires. Because of this, the cognitivist and the instrumentalist ought to be ready to agree on the interpretation of the neurophysiology, and simply disagree over

Moral Motivation

Page 15 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

how moral action production will proceed in human beings (which is, after all, an empirical question). While the instrumentalist will bet on the pervasive influence of intrinsic desires, the cognitivist will predict that this ancient system, shared with rats and other animals, will by and large be suppressed in human beings in favor of the power of reason, at least in cases of morally motivated behavior. The details of the neural wiring so far canvassed do not decide in favor of either position all on their own.

Implications for Sentimentalism

Consider next the sentimentalist. Emotions are at the center of our sentimentalist's picture of motivation, rather than desires. But there is room in our neuroscientific picture for this, because the reward system gets inputs from brain regions making up the limbic system, thought to be critical neural structures for emotion. For instance, the amygdala receives input from perceptual and cognitive centers, and it can produce a diverse assortment of outputs: it can produce the bodily changes associated with strong emotions (changes in heart rate, breathing, vasoconstriction, digestion, and so on), it can produce bodily changes that are hard to consciously perceive (pupil dilation, galvanic skin response), it influences characteristic emotional facial expressions, it influences felt pleasure and displeasure, and it sends output to the reward system, influencing the release of dopamine (and hence— it would seem— influencing desire).16 The role of the amygdala in fear has been especially well studied, but it seems to play an important role in other emotions involving fairly consistent patterns of bodily changes, emotions such as anger, disgust, joy, and others. This simple picture will need to be augmented, for it is recognized that a number of brain regions contribute differentially to the various emotions. Some philosophers have been ready to localize certain emotions to the activity of the brain regions themselves (Griffiths, 1997), while others have preferred to identify emotions, following William James, with the feelings of bodily changes that are typically brought about by the amygdala and other brain regions (Prinz, 2004). The sentimentalist might prefer the former account, however, since activity in the limbic system has more direct influence over reward signals, and (p.89) so behavior, than sensory perceptions of changes in bodily states seem to have. Influence from sensory perceptions of changes in bodily states would seem to influence behavior primarily through connections between such perceptions and the reward system, and so be of a piece with influences on behavior that are central to the instrumentalist's account. To retain a truly distinctive account, our sort of sentimentalist treats the limbic system, especially the amygdala, as central to the emotions.

Implications for Personalism

Consider finally the personalist. Again, there is room for optimism on the personalist's part. Like the instrumentalist and cognitivist, the personalist has a particular idea of what sorts of cognitive inputs drive morally worthy motivation. But once again, because higher cognitive centers in the brain are diverse, there

Moral Motivation

Page 16 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

is no reason to doubt that the personalist can find what is needed in this domain. Implicit knowledge of the good, explicit knowledge of heuristics, perceptually driven judgments of the differences between apparently similar situations—all of these can be expected to be realized in perceptual and higher cognitive centers, and all of them can be expected to feed into motivational systems.

The personalist holds that moral perceptions and thoughts combine with morally decent desires and emotions to create moral motivation only in the presence of appropriate habits: that is, only when one has a good character. The personalist will thus be pleased that there is a good candidate for the neural realization of behavioral habits that is poised to take input from perception, thought, desire, and emotion, and deliver motivation as output. This is all possible because the internal structures of the motor basal ganglia are the best candidate realizers for such habits—as discussed in the previous section—and the motor basal ganglia take input from perception and cognition (perceptual and higher cognitive centers), and from emotions (e.g from the amygdala, via the reward signal). On the basis of input plus internal structure, the motor basal ganglia send signals causing the release of motor commands, and these processes constitute motivation. Hence the personalist can for the moment rest content in the knowledge that the brain realizes a system for producing motivation very much in keeping with personalist thinking, with every influence identified by the personalist coming together in action. As things stand, the personalist is in a reasonable position to make an empirical bet with the instrumentalist, cognitivist, and sentimentalist that the story of paradigmatic morally worthy actions will favor the totality of structures central to the personalist story and not the proper subsets of these structures that are held to be uniquely important by the other stories. (p.90)

5. Some Pressing Questions At this point, the groundwork has been laid for asking and answering some pressing questions. We shall take up seven: (1) Does neuroscience really bear on the truth of theories of moral motivation? (2) What problems does neuroscience pose for the instrumentalist? (3) What problems does neuroscience pose for the cognitivist? (4) What problems does neuroscience pose for the sentimentalist? (5) What problems does neuroscience pose for the personalist? (6) What does neuroscience reveal about weakness of will? and (7) What does neuroscience reveal about altruism?

Does Neuroscience Bear on the Truth of Theories of Moral Motivation?

We think so. Any theory of moral motivation should include a theory of how moral motivation is instantiated—or at least approximated—in human beings, or provide a compelling argument as to why a theory of moral motivation need not undertake this burden. We know of no such argument, so we shall continue to assume that such theories need to provide an account of psychological phenomena such as moral perceptions, moral beliefs, instrumental beliefs, moral

Moral Motivation

Page 17 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

desires, instrumental desires, intentions, moral emotions, and habits. Any plausible theory of moral motivation will thus have to be consistent with what we know about such things as they are instantiated in human beings, and neuroscience has something to say about this.

It might be thought that neuroscience is incapable of imposing significant constraints on moral theorizing, because it is always open to the philosopher to interpret brain activity as she likes. If the instrumentalist sees the motor basal ganglia as combining beliefs and desires, the cognitivist can always interpret it as combining non‐moral beliefs and moral beliefs, it might be said. But whatever the merits of this particular idea, we disagree with the claim that there is no limit to such interpretative strategies. This is because philosophical theories of the mental states involved in moral motivation are theories that include causal claims.

Consider pleasure. There are limits to where a reasonable interpretation can localize pleasure in the brain, given the facts about what sorts of damage to the brain provoke and what sorts impede pleasure, given the facts about brain stimulation and pleasure, and so on. Suppose that, for these reasons, one has tentatively localized pleasure to structure P. And now suppose that one has causal claims about desire that can be realized in the brain only by structure D. The question now arises: is structure D a structure that is causally connected to structure P, in a way that supports the observation that desires (when (p.91) satisfied) are normal causes of pleasure? If it is, then the idea that D realizes desires and P realizes pleasure is consistent, and in fact somewhat confirmed. But if it is not, then something has gone wrong: either P does not realize pleasure, or D does not realize desire, or we were wrong in thinking that desire satisfaction is a common cause of pleasure. If the localization of P is well supported, but the grounds on which D was identified as the realizer of desires are highly contested, then there is going to be good reason to think that the mistake was with identifying D as the realizer of desires.

Of course, if one is absolutely determined to hold on to the idea that D realizes at least some desires, then one can always do so. Perhaps D realizes desires that play all the functional roles of immediate intentions to act, and none of the standard functional roles of desires that differ from those of immediate intentions to act, but nonetheless realizes desires all the same, a theorist might hold. Well, it's always a possibility! But of course this will look like special pleading to most philosophers. And the fact that the interpretation of the brain is as open to special pleading as any other kind of interpretation is no reason to think that there is no constraint on theorizing that comes from neuroscience.

For these sorts of reasons, we are convinced that there are important conclusions to draw from the neuroscience described earlier. We now turn to drawing some of them.

Moral Motivation

Page 18 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

What Problems does Neuroscience pose for the Instrumentalist?

The neuroscience already described seems to make things easy for the instrumentalist, as one of us has suggested (Schroeder, 2004: ch. 5). Candidate belief structures send output to the same place as candidate desire structures, these converging streams of information then generate candidate immediate intentions to act, and these lead to bodily movement. What more could the instrumentalist want?

One lurking problem for the instrumentalist is the incompleteness of this account. There are more influences on the production of action than recognized by the instrumentalist, and this might prove troublesome. For instance, the intrinsic connections of the motor basal ganglia are important to the production of movement, and one reasonable way to interpret these connections is as realizing habits, according to the research cited earlier. If correct, then it would seem to follow that no action is ever taken entirely independently of one's habits. Similarly, there seem to be influences upon the motor basal ganglia that stem from the amygdala, a candidate for the realizer of certain emotions. If this is correct, then it would seem to follow (p.92) that actions produced when one is subject to such emotions are not produced independently of such emotions.

What should the instrumentalist make of all this? The instrumentalist might hold that these constant (in the case of habits) or sporadic (in the case of emotions) causal contributors to moral motivation make no contribution to the moral worth of moral motivation. If so, then they can be safely ignored, as much as the details of the neurotransmitters involved can be safely ignored. Pursuing this line of thought, the instrumentalist might hold that motivation that makes one morally worthy is simply moral motivation that stems from a desire to do what is right and a belief that a certain action A is necessary to doing what is right.17 If this motivation also happens to rely on a weak or strong habit of doing what one takes to be necessary to doing what is right, that makes no difference—positive or negative—to the moral worth of any instance of moral motivation. Likewise, the instrumentalist might hold that a particular instance of moral motivation is neither impugned nor improved by being caused in part by activity in the amygdala realizing stereotypical anger. All that matters, the instrumentalist might hold, is that the right belief and the right desire are at least a part of the cause of the motivation in question.

The instrumentalist might, however, be made queasy by the facts that have come to light about how many different factors are at work in the production of moral motivation. For instance, the idea that habit always plays some role in the production of moral motivation might be in tension with another view she might hold, that moral motivation is only fully worthy when it follows exclusively from the right beliefs and desires. This sort of thought might come from thinking about cases of mixed motives: a person who helps a mother struggling with a toddler, a bicycle, and a bag of groceries just because of believing it is the right

Moral Motivation

Page 19 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

thing to do and wanting to do the right thing seems like a case of fully worthy moral motivation, whereas a person who is similarly motivated but also partly motivated by wanting to help pretty young women and believing the mother in question to be pretty and young seems rather less fully worthy. If being moved partly by habits is like being moved partly by morally irrelevant desires, then there is a threat in the neuroscientific data that no action will ever be fully morally worthy, because every action is performed partly out of habit (specifically, the habit of doing what seems required to do what is right). And it might not appeal to the instrumentalist to hold this conclusion, if it conflicts with other ideas the instrumentalist had at the outset about moral worth.18 (p.93)

For at least these reasons, it is not obvious that the instrumentalist should be happy with the details of the neuroscience of moral motivation. But perhaps the instrumentalist need have no worries at all—it seems to depend as much on the details of the particular instrumentalist view as on the neuroscience.

What Problems does Neuroscience pose for the Cognitivist?

Of our four caricature theorists, it is obviously our cognitivist who is most likely to have difficulties accommodating the neuroscientific evidence. Although it was pointed out earlier that the theoretical possibility exists that moral cognition can lead directly to moral motivation independently of the reward system (and so independently of desire), this theoretical possibility proves to be problematic upon closer inspection.

We begin with evidence from Parkinson disease. As will be familiar to many, Parkinson disease is a disorder that results in a number of effects, including tremor, difficulty in initiating movement, and (if taken to its limit) total paralysis. Parkinson disease is caused by the death of the dopamine‐producing cells of the substantia nigra pars compacta (the SNpc in Figure 3.1), the very cells that make up the reward system's output to the motor basal ganglia. Thus, on the interpretation of the reward system advocated earlier, Parkinson disease is a disorder in which intrinsic desires slowly lose their capacity to causally influence motivation. As it turns out, Parkinson disease impairs or prevents action regardless of whether the action is morally worthy or not, regardless of whether it is intuitively desired or intuitively done out of duty, regardless of whether the individual trying to act gives a law to herself. Thus Parkinson disease appears to show that intrinsic desires are necessary to the production of motivation in normal human beings, and this would seem to put serious pressure on the cognitivist's position.

The cognitivist might allow that intrinsic desires must exist in order for motivation to be possible, but hold that intrinsic desires normally play no significant role in producing motivation. After all, Parkinson disease shows that intrinsic desires are necessary for motivation, but it does not clearly reveal the role played by intrinsic desires in producing motivation when the desires exist. If

Moral Motivation

Page 20 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

sustainable, this would be just a minor concession, and so it is well worth investigating.

What might motivation of the cognitivist's sort look like, if desires play no substantive role in it? It was suggested in the previous section that it might (p. 94) look like motivation that stems directly from activity in the higher cognitive centers—like motivation that stems from choosing a law for one's action, in other words. And it turns out that motivation derived from higher cognitive centers independently of desire is possible—but also that the only known model of it is pathological. It is the sort of motivation found in Tourette syndrome.

Tourette syndrome is a disorder characterized by tics: eye blinks, shoulder jerks, barks, obscenities, profanities, and so on. Something like 70–90% of sufferers report that they often voluntarily produce their tics, because the effort of not ticcing is unpleasant and often doomed to failure in any case. But a typical sufferer from Tourette syndrome will also report that tics are quite capable of forcing themselves out regardless of how fiercely they are resisted. Tourette syndrome appears to be caused by a dysfunction in the motor basal ganglia, in which the motor basal ganglia inhibit most motor commands initiated by perceptual and higher cognitive centers, but not quite all. Some motor commands initiated by perceptual or higher cognitive centers get through in spite of the inhibition, and in spite of the fact that reward signals (intrinsic desires) have not released these inhibitions. A tic is the result (Schroeder, 2005). Thus direct causation of motivation by higher cognition via this pathway, quite independently of desire, is the sort of thing that results in a Tourettic tic, but a Tourettic tic is anything but the paradigm of morally worthy action. This seems a very unpromising parallel to be drawn for a cognitivist picture of motivation.

There are other ways to investigate the biological plausibility of our cognitivist's position as well. If reason alone were responsible for moral motivation, one would expect that injuries that spare reason would also spare moral motivation, but there are clinical case studies that suggest otherwise. Damage to the ventromedial (VM) region of prefrontal cortex (located in the OFC in Figure 3.1), a form of brain damage studied extensively by Damasio and colleagues (see, e.g., Damasio, 1994), impairs cognitive input to the reward system, and so alters the output of the reward system to the motor basal ganglia. Such damage seems to render subjects incapable of acting on their better judgments in certain cases—a finding that we think ought to capture the imagination of any moral psychologist.

In a well‐known non‐moral experimental task, subjects with this sort of injury were asked to draw cards from any of four decks of cards. Each card was marked with a number indicating a number of dollars won or lost, and subjects were asked to draw as they liked from the four decks, attempting to maximize their winnings. Normal control subjects tended to draw at first from two of the

Moral Motivation

Page 21 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

decks, which quickly revealed themselves to have high‐paying cards when (p. 95) drawn from. But those same decks also had high‐costing cards in them, and normal subjects soon enough learned to stay away from these decks and shift to the other two decks, where returns were lower but penalties less punitive (Bechara et al., 1997). Subjects with VM prefrontal injuries—with injuries to structures that are crucial input to the reward system—started their play just as normal subjects did, but strongly tended not to switch to the safer decks, instead staying with the high‐paying, high‐costing decks until they ran out of money. Fascinatingly, these same subjects sometimes reported being aware of what the better strategy would be, but they nonetheless failed to follow it (Bechara et al., 2000).

This sort of finding should once again give our cognitivist pause, for it suggests that, at least in non‐moral contexts, reason alone does not suffice to guide action independently of reward information; it is reasonable to speculate that reason may fail to produce motivation in moral cases as well. Damasio himself interprets these findings as specifically vindicating the role of felt emotional responses in decision‐making, a more personalist than instrumentalist conclusion. However, the precise interpretation of the mechanism by which VM prefrontal cortical injury leads to its own peculiar effects is not yet well understood. We return to a discussion of these people with VM damage after exploring the consequences for the cognitivist thesis of another population of people with disorders of moral motivation: psychopaths.

Psychopaths are people who seem cognitively normal, but evince little remorse or guilt for morally wrong actions. Psychopaths are identified by scoring high on a standard psychopathy checklist (Hare, 1991), and seem to be deficient in two respects: (1) emotional dysfunction, and (2) antisocial behavior. Psychopaths seem able to comprehend social and moral rules, and they typically do not seem to have impaired reasoning abilities. (Recent studies suggest that limbic system damage is correlated with psychopathy, and this is consistent with the fact that psychopaths show diminished affective response to cues of suffering in others, but it does not suggest any particularly cognitive impairment [Kiehl, 2006; but see Maibom, 2005].)

As a population apparently capable of making moral judgments but not at all motivated by them, psychopaths present an obvious challenge to the cognitivist. However, research suggests that psychopaths' moral cognition is deficient in at least the following respect: they show a diminished capacity to distinguish moral from conventional violations (Blair, 1995, 1997). For instance, children with psychopathic tendencies are more likely to judge moral violations as authority‐ dependent (so the morality of hitting another child in a classroom will be held to depend on whether or not the teacher permits it, rather than held to be independent of such rules, as it is by normally developing (p.96) children). This deficit has led some to argue that psychopaths have impaired moral concepts

Moral Motivation

Page 22 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

(Nichols, 2004: 113). Although they are able to say whether an action is right or wrong, permitted or prohibited, philosophers such as these suggest that psychopaths merely mouth the words, or make moral judgments in the “inverted commas” sense: judgments of what is called “moral” by others.

The ability of psychopaths to stand as counter‐examples to cognitivism rests upon some argument to the effect that psychopaths really do make moral judgments. If psychopaths indeed lack moral concepts or moral knowledge, then their failure to act morally or to appear to lack motivation is no challenge to cognitivism, for it can plausibly be argued that to make moral judgments at all, one must have moral concepts and possess some modicum of moral knowledge (Kennett & Fine, 2007). However, if the ability to make the moral/conventional distinction is not required for moral concepts or moral knowledge, then psychopaths appear to be candidate counter‐examples to our cognitivist (see, e.g., Kelly et al., 2007). Although some arguments have been offered to suggest that psychopaths have requisite abilities to make moral judgments (Roskies, 2007), these arguments remain indecisive. On our view, it remains unclear whether psychopaths are competent moral judges.

Many of the objections that have been raised against the psychopath as a challenge to internalism are moot when it comes to people who have sustained damage to their VM frontal cortex (see above). Subjects with VM damage exhibit a fascinating pattern of behavioral deficits often referred to as “acquired sociopathy.” Cognitive tests indicate that VM patients have no deficits in reasoning, nor is their knowledge of the world affected by their injury. In particular, on a variety of measures, the moral reasoning of VM patients is unimpaired: they reason at a normal level on Kohlberg's moral reasoning scale (Saver & Damasio, 1991), and make normal moral judgments in a variety of hypothetical scenarios (Koenigs et al., 2007).19 Nonetheless, case reports suggest that people who had been normal and responsible adults prior to their injury exhibit dramatic changes in their manners and their actions, and among their (p.97) deficits is a moral one. The following case study, of patient EVR, illustrates the deficits:

By age 35, in 1975, EVR was a successful professional, happily married, and the father of two. He led an impeccable social life, and was a role model to younger siblings. In that year, an orbitofrontal meningioma was diagnosed and, in order to achieve its successful surgical resection, a bilateral excision of orbital and lower mesial cortices was necessary. EVR's basic intelligence and standard memory were not compromised by the ablation. His performances on standardized IQ and memory tests are uniformly in the superior range (97th–99th percentile). He passes all formal neuropsychological probes. Standing in sharp contrast to this pattern of neuropsychological test performance, EVR's social conduct was profoundly affected by his brain injury. Over a brief period of time, he

Moral Motivation

Page 23 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

entered disastrous business ventures (one of which led to predictable bankruptcy), and was divorced twice (the second marriage, which was to a prostitute, only lasted 6 months). He has been unable to hold any paying job since the time of the surgery, and his plans for future activity are defective.–(Damasio et al., 1990)

VM patients with damage late in life exhibit a number of deficits in navigating complex social demands. Although the case reports of these patients do not specifically examine their moral behavior, it has been suggested that among their deficits is a deficit in acting in accord with what they take to be right or best. Although VM patients apparently know what is right and wrong, they do not appear motivated to do what they apparently judge the right thing in a number of quotidian situations. These deficits do not appear to be specifically moral, but this does not impugn them as challenges to cognitivism, since the deficits appear—if anything—broader than those necessary to pose a serious threat to cognitivism. Recently, however, it has been argued that people exhibiting acquired sociopathy do not exhibit moral deficits at all, but that their deficits in non‐moral aspects of life merely manifest occasionally in moral situations (Kennett & Fine, 2007). Resolution of this issue must await further studies on these patients, since the available literature does not resolve the question.20

Some insight into the role VM cortex plays in moral judgment and motivation can be gained from considering the effects of damage to VM cortex early in life. These people are more like psychopaths in their profile: they are violent and pursue their own ends without regard to others' welfare (Anderson et al., 1999). Therefore it seems that an intact VM cortex is necessary for acquisition but not retention of moral knowledge; the sociopathic behavior of these early damage patients is explained by the fact that they never acquire moral knowledge. Kennett and Fine (2007) have attempted to explain the (p.98) differences between the early damage and late damage cases in terms of retained moral motivation in cases in which moral knowledge is preserved: they argue that late damage patients are not violent because they are motivated by their moral judgments. However, alternative explanations of the modest moral infringements characteristic of late damage patients fit better with the psychological profile. Late damage VM patients do not show skin conductance responses (the small changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by changes in sweating) to moral situations, whereas normal people do (Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1990). This is due to the fact that the brain regions involved in making moral judgments are disconnected from regions involved in translating goals into action. In normal people there is a causal connection from regions associated with moral judgment to regions involved in desiring and executing action; this connection is disrupted with VM damage. Late damage patients' lack of violence is perhaps better explained by the absence in these people of immoral motivation and the operation of habit.

In general, the evidence accords with thinking of patients with VM damage as examples of a disconnection syndrome. Recall the picture of motivation sketched above. As we understand it, moral judgment happens in higher cortical regions,

Moral Motivation

Page 24 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

either in frontal areas or in areas that project to them. Motivation is due to reward‐system‐mediated activity being sent to basal ganglia and pre‐motor areas. Associations between the cognitive moral judgments and the motivational system are mediated by connections from VM frontal cortex to the basal ganglia: fiber pathways from VM frontal cortex link the output of moral deliberation to the motivational system. The connection between VM cortex and motivation is thus a causal one, and causal connections are contingent. Damage to VM cortex would thus sever the link between the cognitive judgments and motivation, leaving intact the judgment and its content, but not causing motivation that might normally result. Such an effect would establish that moral judgment was not intrinsically or necessarily motivational, but that instead the link between judgment and motivation was contingent and defeasible (Roskies, 2006).

What Problems does Neuroscience pose for the Sentimentalist?

Evidence from psychology and neuroscience indicates that emotions are involved in normal moral behavior, and this is good news for the sentimentalist. Results from brain imaging suggest that at least some moral judgments involve operation of the emotional system (Greene et al., 2001, 2004; Moll et al., 2002). Studies of psychopaths also indicate that emotions play a role in moral behavior, since the moral emotions are blunted in psychopaths (Blair et al., (p.99) 1997; see also Blair et al., 2005). But what do these correlations suggest about causation? Are the moral emotions key causes of moral motivation, or are they typically by‐products of moral beliefs and moral desires? Or are they something else entirely?

The primary regions of the brain identified as realizing motivation (the motor basal ganglia, pre‐motor cortex, and motor cortex) are distinct from those brain structures, such as the amygdala, states of which have been most frequently identified with emotion. As indicated in Figure 3.1, there is input from the amygdala to the reward system and so (indirectly) to the motor basal ganglia, but it seems clear that the basal ganglia as influenced by the reward system can operate independently of the amygdala (a complete amygdalectomy does not prevent motivation, for instance). Upon a second look, then, it might seem as if the situation is just as dire for the sentimentalist as for the cognitivist.

One response available to the sentimentalist here is to claim that while motivation simpliciter might be intact in absence of emotions, moral motivation will be absent. Sentimentalists who hold that moral judgment depends on the emotions (e.g. Nichols, 2004) might defend sentimentalism about moral motivation by maintaining that moral motivation depends on moral judgment. Alternatively, the sentimentalist might maintain that motivation only counts as moral when it is generated by moral emotions. So if Jen lacks emotions but helps the homeless man, her motivation for doing so isn't properly moral. She can't be feeling compassion, for instance. Or guilt. Perhaps she is helping as a result of rational calculation about the benefits to her reputation. But a sentimentalist

Moral Motivation

Page 25 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

might say that this doesn't count as moral motivation. Although this move is available to some sentimentalists, it does require a substantial concession. One of the most important traditional Humean arguments for sentimentalism proceeds as follows: moral considerations motivate; only the passions motivate; therefore moral considerations motivate through the passions. The brain data undercut this traditional argument, for they suggest that motivation does not require emotions. Thus we can't conclude that sentimentalism is true from general considerations about the nature of motivation.

A much different sentimentalist response appeals to general considerations about the nature of the emotions. It is far from clear where one should localize the emotions in the brain. Much hangs on the nature of the emotions themselves. If emotions are, first and foremost, the immediate causes of the changes in heart rate, breathing, gut motility, and so on that we associate with powerful emotions, then emotions might be localized to the amygdala, or perhaps to a system made up of the amygdala, its immediate inputs from perception and cognition, and its immediate outputs to hormonal and visceral systems. On this (p.100) way of thinking, the fact that massive damage to the amygdala does not seem to impair motivation greatly in general would seem to be a damaging blow to the thesis that moral emotions are crucial to moral motivation—unless there were some special evidence that, while self‐protective motivation does not depend on fear, the motivation for restorative justice does depend upon guilt. Being aware of no such evidence, we conclude that prospects are not good for the sentimentalist who holds a purely amygdala‐centered theory of the emotions. However, as noted, other limbic and paralimbic areas are also crucial for normal emotional function, and so it is doubtful that the emotions should be localized to the amygdala in the first place.21

Some philosophers hold that, rather than being the causes of distinctive bodily changes, emotions are our experiences of these changes (James, 1890; Prinz, 2004). If this is right, then the emotions are perceptual states. In particular, they are perceptions of changes in heart rate, breathing, gut motility, piloerection, and the various other bodily changes we associate with emotions. Should the sentimentalist embrace this view of the emotions as correct for the moral emotions in particular, then it would seem that the moral emotions do their work motivating us through connections from the right perceptual structures to the motor basal ganglia. But this would seem to revive some of the problems that the cognitivist faced. The cognitivist has difficulties explaining moral motivation in part because there appears to be no reasonable pathway from mere perception or cognition through to motivation independently of the reward system (and so, independently of desire). And just as this held for beliefs about rightness, so it would seem to hold for feelings of gut‐wrenching guilt. As Figure 3.1 makes clear, there are no important structural differences between the connections that cognition enjoys to motivation and those perception enjoys.

Moral Motivation

Page 26 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

There does seem to be something special about feelings of gut‐wrenching guilt, however, that makes them more motivating than the mere belief that one has done wrong, and this is how very unpleasant it is to feel gut‐wrenching guilt. As the literature on pain has amply demonstrated, however, the displeasure of a perception of one's body needs to be sharply distinguished from the perception of one's body itself (Dennett, 1978: ch. 11; Hardcastle, 1999). If the unpleasantness of gut‐wrenching feelings of guilt is what is so motivating, then this is because displeasure itself is what is so motivating. Note, however, that this need not be inimical to the sentimentalist's view of things. The sentimentalist might hold that the moral emotions are what motivate (p.101) morally worthy behavior, and hold that they do so by involving, as an essential constituent, pleasure or displeasure.

If this is the position of the sentimentalist, then it is unclear how successful the sentimentalist is in accommodating the neuroscientific facts. For it is unclear exactly how important a role pleasure and displeasure play in the production of behavior. Morillo (1990) argues that pleasure is realized by the activity of the reward system, and so pleasure is the immediate cause of much of normal motivation (and likewise, one would assume, for displeasure). But following Berridge (1999) and Schroeder (2004), we have treated pleasure as often caused by reward signals rather than identical to them or realized by them. In Figure 3.1, for example, pleasure and displeasure are treated as having the structural properties of perception and cognition, so far as connections to motivation are concerned. If this interpretation of the neuroscience is correct, then again it would seem that there are difficulties for the sentimentalist: if the causal connections of pleasure and displeasure are just those of any perceptual or cognitive state, then they will be subject to all of the problems facing the cognitivist. However, many philosophers hold that pleasure and displeasure have privileged connections to motivation, perhaps necessarily so. If they are correct, then the problems facing the sentimentalist might be less severe.

The position on the emotions that seems most likely to assist the sentimentalist is a form of cognitivism found in, for example, Green (1992), on which the core of any emotion is a combination of a belief and a desire regarding the object of the emotion. On this view, feeling guilty that P entails believing that one did P and desiring not to have done P, for instance. (This is only a necessary condition on guilt, on the view in question. Other factors are required to distinguish guilt from non‐moral regret, sadness, etc.) If moral emotions are constituted in whole or in part by combinations of beliefs and desires, then they can produce motivation in just the way that beliefs and desires can produce motivation, and the sentimentalist is at least as well off as the instrumentalist.

Moral Motivation

Page 27 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

What Problems does Neuroscience pose for the Personalist?

Our personalist might seem the best off of all the theorists we have considered, for our personalist holds that a complex combination of factors jointly produces moral motivation, and this might seem to fit the neuroscientific picture better than any more restricted view. Invoking both desires and emotions, the personalist would seem to have the virtues of the instrumentalist and the sentimentalist combined, while lacking the problems of the cognitivist (see, e.g., Casebeer, 2003). (p.102)

Considering again the details of our personalist's view suggests two changes that might be appropriate, however. One is a form of liberalization. The other change is more conservative.

As we sketched the view, the personalist begins with perceptions and thoughts that might well be unsystematically linked to morality, and eventually reaches a moral belief. Perception of someone crying might lead to the thought that the same person is in distress, for instance. But until a specifically moral belief is formed—that the crying person should be comforted, for instance—no morally worthy action can begin. Is this restriction necessary? As Figure 3.1 suggests, there are dense connections between all of our perceptual and cognitive abilities and our motivational system, both directly and via the reward system. So it is certainly possible to see someone crying, for that perception to be desire frustrating, and so for someone to be moved to offer comfort—all without the intervention of a belief that comfort is what is morally appropriate. Should the personalist hold that this is not an appropriate route to moral motivation?

The issue is difficult. After all, it is not morally worthy to be moved by every tear one perceives—even every genuine tear. Sometimes it is wrong to offer comfort: perhaps it would have been wrong to offer comfort to those convicted at the Nuremberg trials, for instance. This suggests that being moved just by the perception of tears and a desire that others not cry is insufficient to be moved in the morally worthy way.

There are ways of getting more sophisticated without ever arriving at a belief that a certain course of action is morally right, however. For instance, it might be that all the factors perceived and believed in by the subject—all the factors that would justify the belief that a particular action is the morally right one in the context—bear down upon the motivational system, directly and through their connections to the reward system, so as to bring about the action that is, in fact, the right action. This holistic combination of causal influences appears very complex, but there is no reason to be found in Figure 3.1 to think that the motor basal ganglia cannot learn (through processes such as habit formation) to respond with the morally right output to input that entails what is morally right even though it does not explicitly encode what is morally right. We suggest that philosophers who think of themselves as allied to the personalist should consider

Moral Motivation

Page 28 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

keeping their ears open for information that confirms or disconfirms this possibility.

Turning now to the way in which the personalist might need a more conservative view than that sketched: the personalist holds that all three of desires, emotions, and habits are necessary to produce morally worthy motivation. But as we saw in discussing the sentimentalist, it is unclear that (p.103) the emotions have a privileged role in action production that is distinct from the role accorded to desires. If this is borne out by future research, then the personalist should contract her list from three items to two: it might well be that morally worthy motivation requires only desires and habits as inputs, along with appropriate perceptions and beliefs. Because this was the central issue discussed in the previous section, we shall not belabor the point any further here.

Turning now from our four views of moral motivation, we finish by considering two further topics: weakness of the will and altruism.

How is Weakness of the Will Possible?

It is an old worry in philosophy that it is impossible to act voluntarily in a way that flouts one's considered judgment about the best thing to do. The worry goes as follows. If Andrea says that she thinks it best to skip dessert, but then plunges into the crème brulée, then either she didn't really think it best to skip dessert or her action wasn't voluntary. For it seems plausible that one acts voluntarily when and only when one acts from one's considered judgments. There is a voluminous literature that tries either to explain how akratic actions—actions contrary to one's best judgments about the best thing to do—are possible, or to show that the cases of apparent akratic action are only apparent, and that there are no real cases of akratic action.

Considered judgments are, of course, a product of higher cognitive processes, and such judgments are produced in cortical brain regions associated with perception and belief (so we suppose, at least, in the absence of evidence to the contrary). As we stressed earlier, the action selection system (i.e. the motor basal ganglia) is guided by higher cognitive processes, but it is also guided by other, subcortical, factors including the amygdala and the reward system (again, see Figure 3.1). It is worth noticing that the basal ganglia form a relatively ancient system that was presumably involved in action selection prior to the evolution of cortical areas capable of realizing complex deliberative processes. This suggests, first, that it is likely that action selection can sometimes completely bypass considered judgments (perhaps in the case of phobias). Second, it suggests that more primitive pathways are still operative in action selection in normal humans. These subcortical contributors sometimes carry the day, leading to action selection that differs from the action preferred by considered judgment.22

Moral Motivation

Page 29 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Now, somewhat less neutrally, map Andrea's consumption of the crème brulée onto this model. The worry about the possibility of akrasia is, to repeat, (p.104) that either it was not Andrea's considered judgment to skip dessert or her eating of the crème brulée was not voluntary. To take the first disjunct, on our model there is an obvious way to preserve the claim that it is Andrea's considered judgment that it would be best to skip dessert. The higher cognitive processes that go into those judgments are in cortical regions, and we could, no doubt, find numerous signs that Andrea actually has the higher‐cognitive judgment that she should skip dessert. Indeed, in light of our model, it strikes us that it would be rather desperate to deny that it is Andrea's considered judgment that it would be best to skip dessert.23 Of course, there are also subcortical factors that strongly incline Andrea to eat the crème brulée. Sometimes these subcortical factors get integrated into the process of coming to a considered judgment. But it is also the case that the subcortical factors can influence action selection in the basal ganglia in ways that are not routed through cognitively oriented cortical regions. That is, the subcortical mechanisms make direct contributions to action selection, unmediated by considered judgments. In such cases it would be strange to identify those subcortical contributors as part of the considered judgment. Why should structures we share with many animals short on considered judgments count as constituting part of our considered judgments just because they move us?

The philosopher who is skeptical of akrasia might opt instead for the view that while Andrea did have the considered judgment that it is best to skip dessert, her consumption of the crème brulée was not voluntary. The issue here is more delicate, because the philosophical category of the voluntary is far from any neuroscientific category, but we will attempt to integrate the taxonomies. One conceivable way to exclude Andrea's dessert eating from the realm of the voluntary is to maintain that it is a necessary condition on voluntary action that the action is selected because it is one's considered judgment. That is, actions are voluntary only when the considered judgment carries the day in the basal ganglia. This would serve to exclude Andrea's dessert eating from the realm of the voluntary, but it is hard to see what the basis would be for such an exclusion. Appeal to folk practice would be no help, for the folk are quick to say that Andrea chose to eat the crème brulée and it is her own damn fault if her pants no longer fit!

We think that a more promising approach is to consider again the role of the basal ganglia. It strikes us as a plausible sufficient condition that when an action is selected from among other possible actions (represented in the pre‐motor (p. 105) cortex or motor PFC) by the basal ganglia, then that action is voluntary. Recall from earlier in this section that Tourettic tics are bodily movements produced without the movement being promoted by the basal ganglia. This seems to show that promotion by the basal ganglia is a necessary condition for a movement being voluntary. But we think it is also sufficient, at least barring

Moral Motivation

Page 30 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

injury, disease, and the like.24 For—turning again to our pre‐human ancestors—it would seem that other animals are also able to perform voluntary behaviors, even in the absence of beliefs about courses of action being best. (Voluntary in what sense? At least in the senses that (i) these actions are not compelled (not compulsions, fixed action patterns, and the like) or produced by otherwise pathological processes, and (ii) these actions can be evaluated as more or less reasonable given the epistemic and conative standpoint of the animal. And this seems voluntary enough.) And again, actions performed with such spontaneity that there was never any time to consider whether or not the action was best (rapid‐fire conversation perhaps best illustrates this phenomenon) are nonetheless performed in part through the action of the basal ganglia, and appear to be as voluntary as any action might be. If these considerations stand up, then Andrea's consumption of the crème brulée is voluntary. Several different actions were available in the motor cortices, and the basal ganglia selected eating the crème brulée from among them.

Thus akratic action can easily be accommodated on our model of motivation. The key fact is that action selection depends on contributions not just from our considered judgments, but also on less exalted psychological factors, like reward, dopamine, and emotions.

What does Neuroscience Reveal about Altruism?

Hedonism is perhaps the most prominent view that denies the existence of altruistic motivation. According to hedonism, all ultimate desires are desires to get pleasure for oneself and avoid one's own pain. If hedonism is true, then an individual's actions will always be ultimately motivated by narrow self‐interest— the motivation to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Hence, if hedonism were true, there would be no ultimate desires for the welfare of others. If I am motivated to help a neighbor child with a skinned knee, this motivation ultimately gets traced back to my pursuit of pleasure and flight from pain. (p.106)

One of the more interesting implications suggested by the neuroscientific work is that hedonism is false. For as we argued in Section 4, it is plausible that intrinsic desires are realized by the reward system, and it is also plausible that the reward system is distinguishable from the structures that support pleasure and pain. A person can have an intrinsic desire to act in a certain way even in the absence of any pleasure (or pain) signal.

A number of studies have shown that there is significant overlap in the brain regions involved in experiencing pain, imagining pain, and perceiving pain in others (Singer et al., 2004). Since reward signals are involved in governing actions that lessen one's own pain, it is plausible that reward signals (to be distinguished from pleasure) may also be involved in lessening others' pain.

Moral Motivation

Page 31 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

This is hardly the final word on whether altruism exists. For there are non‐ hedonistic versions of egoism (see Chapter 5 for further discussion). Furthermore, it might turn out that all of our other‐regarding desires do derive from connections to pleasure and pain. Nonetheless, if the neuroscience helps to rule out hedonism as a universal account of desire, this will be an important result for the longstanding debate about altruistic motivation.

Summary Motivation is a causally efficacious, occurrent mental state. An exploration of the neuroscience underlying motivation provides a structure from which to consider the question of what the neural states are that realize morally worthy motivational states. We have characterized four familiar philosophical views of what moral motivation consists in: the instrumentalist's, the cognitivist's, the sentimentalist's, and the personalist's. The instrumentalist's story of desire and belief leading to moral action fits well with the neuroscientific picture, and suggests that motivational states are to be identified with states of the motor basal ganglia or immediate “causally downstream” structures, such as pre‐motor or motor cortex, that directly control bodily movement. The neuroscience raises difficulties for the cognitivist's story, since our moral behavior does not appear to be under the control of cognitive states alone, independently of desire. The sentimentalist's view is also under threat, because the emotional system, while closely linked to the system underlying voluntary action, will turn out to be nonetheless distinct from it unless emotions are themselves built in part from desires. The personalist's story, on the other hand, fares relatively well. At this point our understanding (p.107) of the neuroscience is only partial, and each of the criticisms raised may be countered. However, our understanding of the neurobiological systems underlying complex social cognition are still in their infancy. We suggest that further attention to the actual structure and function of the systems underlying moral motivation and action could serve to constrain future theorizing about the structure of moral agency, as well as have an impact on discussions of other philosophically interesting phenomena, such as weakness of will and altruism.

References

Bibliography references:

Alston, William. 1967. “Motives and Motivation.” In P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 399–409.

Anderson, Steven, Bechara, Antoine, Damasio, Hanna, Tranel, Daniel, & Damasio, Antonio. 1999. “Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex.” Nature Neuroscience, 2: 1032–1037.

Aristotle. 2000. Nicomachean Ethics. T. Irwin (trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Moral Motivation

Page 32 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Arpaly, Nomy. 2003. Unprincipled Virtue: An inquiry into moral agency. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bechara, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. 2000 “Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex.” Cerebral Cortex, 10: 295–307.

Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. 1997. “Deciding Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy.” Science, 275: 1293–1295.

Berridge, K. C. 1999. “Pleasure, pain, desire, and dread: hidden core processes of emotion.” In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well‐Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 527– 559.

Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. 1998. “What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?” Brain Research Reviews, 28: 309‐369.

Blair, R. 1995. “A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath,” Cognition, 57: 1–29.

—— 1997. “Moral Reasoning and the Child with Psychopathic Tendencies,” Personality and Individual Differences, 26: 731–739.

Blair, R., Jones, L., Clark, F., & Smith, M. 1997. “The Psychopathic Individual: A Lack of Responsiveness to Distress Cues?” Psychophysiology, 34: 192–198.

Blair, R., Mitchell, D., & Blair, K. 2005. The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain. New York: Wiley‐Blackwell.

Casebeer, W. 2003. Natural Ethical Facts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam's.

Damasio, Antonio, Tranel, Daniel, & Damasio, Hanna. 1990. “Individuals with Sociopathic Behavior Caused by Frontal Damage Fail to Respond Autonomically to Social Stimuli.” Behavioral Brain Research, 41: 81–94.

Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (p.108)

Dennett, Daniel. 1978. Brainstorms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gibbard, Alan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Moral Motivation

Page 33 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Green, O.H. 1992. The Emotions. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Greene, Josh, Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. 2001. “An FMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment.” Science, 293: 2105–2108.

Greene, Josh, Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. 2004. “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment.” Neuron, 44: 389–400.

Griffiths, Paul. 1997. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Habib, Michel. 2004. “Athymhormia and Disorders of Motivation in Basal Ganglia Disease.” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 16: 509–524.

Hardcastle, Valerie. 1999. The Myth of Pain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hare, R. (1991). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised. Toronto: Multi‐Health Systems.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

James, William. 1890. Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt.

Jeannerod, Marc. 1997. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Action. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Jeffrey, Richard. 1990. The Logic of Decision: 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Kandel, Eric, Schwartz, James, & Jessell, Thomas. 2000. Principles of Neural Science: 4th ed. New York: McGraw‐Hill.

Kelly, D., Stich, S., Haley, K. J., Eng, S., & Fessler, D. M. T. 2007. “Harm, affect, and the moral/conventional distinction.” Mind & Language, 22: 117–131.

Kennett, Jeanette, & Fine, C. 2007. “Internalism and the Evidence from Psychopaths and ‘Acquired Sociopaths'.” In Walter Sinnott‐Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 173–190.

Kiehl, K. 2006. “A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction.” Psychiatry Research, 142: 107–128.

Moral Motivation

Page 34 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. 2007. “Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments.” Nature, 446: 908–911.

Knowlton, B., Mangels, J., & Squire, L. 1996. “A Neostriatal Habit Learning System in Humans.” Science, 273: 1399–1402.

Korsgaard, Christine. 1986. “Skepticism about Practical Reason.” Journal of Philosophy, 83: 5–25.

Levy, R., & Dubois, B. 2006. “Apathy and the Functional Anatomy of the Prefrontal Cortex‐Basal Ganglia Circuits.” Cerebral Cortex, 16: 916–928.

Maibom, H. 2005. “Moral Unreason: The case of psychopathy.” Mind & Language, 20: 237–257. (p.109)

McDowell, John. 1998. “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” In J. McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 77–94.

Mink, Jonathan. 1996. “The basal ganglia: focused selection and inhibition of competing motor programs.” Progress in Neurobiology, 50: 381–425.

Moll, J., de Oliveriera‐Souza, R., Eslinger, P. J., Bramati, I. E., Mourao‐Miranda, J., Andreiuolo, P. A., et al. 2002. “The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions.” Journal of Neuroscience, 22: 2730–2736.

Montague, Read, Dayan, Peter, & Sejnowski, Terrence. 1996. “A Framework for Mesencephalic Dopamine Systems Based on Predictive Hebbian Learning.” Journal of Neuroscience, 16: 1936–1947.

Morillo, Carolyn. 1990. “The Reward Event and Motivation.” Journal of Philosophy 87: 169–186.

Nichols, Shaun. 2004. Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment. New York: Oxford University Press.

Packard, M., & Knowlton, B. 2002. “Learning and Memory Functions of the Basal Ganglia.” Annual Review of Neuroscience, 25: 563–593.

Prinz, Jesse. 2004. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rilling, J., Sanfey, A., Aronson, J., Nystrom, L., & Cohen, J. 2004. “Opposing BOLD Responses to Reciprocated and Unreciprocated Altruism in Putative Reward Pathways.” Neuroreport, 15: 2539–2543.

Moral Motivation

Page 35 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Roskies, A.L. 2006. “Patients with ventromedial frontal damage have moral beliefs,” Philosophical Psychology, 19 (5): 617–627.

—— 2007. “Internalism and the evidence from pathology.” In Walter Sinnott‐ Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 191–206.

Saver, J. L., & Damasio, Antonio. 1991. “Preserved access and processing of social knowledge in a patient with acquired sociopathy due to ventromedial frontal damage.” Neuropsychologia, 29: 1241–1249.

Schroeder, Timothy. 2004. Three Faces of Desire. New York: Oxford University Press.

—— 2005. “Moral Responsibility and Tourette Syndrome.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 71: 106–123.

Schultz, Wolfram, Tremblay, Leon, & Hollerman, Jeffrey. 2000. “Reward Processing in Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex and Basal Ganglia.” Cerebral Cortex, 10: 272–283.

Sen, Amartya. 1982. Choice, Welfare, and Measurement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Singer, T., Seymour, B., O'Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R., & Frith, C. 2004. “Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain.” Science, 303: 1157–1162.

Slote, Michael. 2001. Morals from Motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell. (p.110)

Stanovich, Keith. 2004. The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Stellar, Elliot & Stellar, Jim. 1985. The Neurobiology of Reward and Punishment. New York: Springer‐Verlag.

Strub, R. L. 1989. “Frontal lobe syndrome in a patient with bilateral globus pallidus lesions,” Archives of Neurology, 46(9): 1024–1027.

Vijayaraghavan, Lavanya, Vaidya, Jatin G., Humphreys, Clare T., Beglinger, Leigh J., & Paradiso, Sergio. 2008. “Emotional and motivational changes after bilateral lesions of the globus pallidus.” Neuropsychology, 22 (3): 412–418.

Williams, Bernard, 1981. “Internal and External Reasons.” In Moral Luck. New York: Cambridge University Press, 101–113.

Moral Motivation

Page 36 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

Notes:

(1) Here we focus solely on motivation to act in specific ways, not motivation to refrain from acting. It is likely that neural basis of the latter depends upon a neural system the underlying neurobiology of which is not well understood.

(2) It should be noted that each of these four views provides a story about moral motivation, assuming that the judgments or feelings are elicited by a moral situation. We have nothing to say about what sorts of things make judgments or feelings genuine responses to moral facts, features, or situations; to the extent that an account of the moral facts is required, we don't presume to provide a complete characterization of moral motivation. But we take it that a variety of different accounts of moral facts can be added on to our stories about moral motivation, and so we set this issue to one side.

(3) Contrast this with Michael Smith's Humeanism, in which beliefs about what it would be rational to want guide the formation of desires (Smith, 1994). On Smith's Humeanism, belief often precedes desire, rather than vice versa.

(4) Our instrumentalist thus ignores Hume's own distinction between the calm and the violent passions.

(5) See, e.g., Jeffrey (1990), Sen (1982).

(6) Williams (1981) is often taken to be the starting point for contemporary instrumentalist argument.

(7) There is a substantial literature about what, exactly, the content of Jen's desire and belief must be for her motivation to be morally worthy. Michael Smith has argued that to act on a desire to do what is right as such is to fetishize morality (Smith, 1994), and Nomy Arpaly has argued that one can perform morally worthy actions even while being mistaken about what is right, so long as one's motivating desire has morally relevant content (Arpaly, 2003). In this work we do not mean to take a particular stand on these issues, and will write of desires to do what is right and beliefs about what is right purely for the sake of convenience.

(8) For intimations of this, see, e.g., Korsgaard (1986).

(9) The personalist can, but need not, hold an explicit theory of right action on which the right action is the one the person of full virtue would perform (Hursthouse, 1999).

(10) Like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, the personalist holds that doing what courage requires merely out of love of money, or irrational optimism about one's chances, or the like, does not amount to action out of a virtue.

Moral Motivation

Page 37 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

(11) We include the cranial motor neurons with the spinal cord for our exegetical purposes.

(12) See Jeannerod (1997) for more on this sort of input to action production.

(13) Things get complicated if you are a neosentimentalist. If, like Gibbard (1990), you hold that moral beliefs are endorsements of norms for certain emotions, then moral belief will not be realized entirely in higher cortical structures, but rather by a relationship between these structures and conative regions of the brain.

(14) Morillo (1990) holds that the reward signal realizes pleasure, rather than causing it. But work published since 1990, much of it summarized in Berridge & Robinson (1998) and Berridge (1999), suggests that the reward signal is rather a crucial normal cause of pleasure.

(15) Except insofar as the instrumentalist maintains that instrumental motivation is the only form of moral motivation; in the next section, we address the extent to which the scientific evidence rules out certain views of this sort.

(16) Kandel et al. (2000), ch. 50.

(17) As noted earlier, there is room for many more subtle specific details about the contents of the desire(s) and belief(s) in question. We continue to set these details aside for ease of exposition.

(18) One theory of moral worth that might be congenial to the instrumentalist in general, but that might hold moral worth to be diminished insofar as an action expresses a mere habit, is found in Arpaly (2003). Although Arpaly is not focused on the moral significance of habits, this sort of conclusion seems in keeping with her theory of moral worth, since she holds that moral praiseworthiness is proportionate (all else being equal) to the degree to which the act expresses a desire for what is morally good.

(19) Koenigs et al. demonstrate that the moral judgments of patients with acquired sociopathy do not exhibit the profile of normals across the board. They are statistically different, in that in situations that Greene et al. (2001, 2004) categorizes as “up close and personal,” VM patients make judgments that are more utilitarian than emotionally driven. This result comports with their neurological profile. Nonetheless, we think that this minor difference in moral reasoning does not preclude their inclusion as moral reasoners for two reasons. First, a proportion of normals (and in particular, some moral philosophers!) make moral judgments with this pattern; second, despite the difference in pattern, there is no evidence that the content of their judgment is impaired, so there is no reason to think they are making judgments that don't qualify as

Moral Motivation

Page 38 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.  Subscriber: University of Central Florida; date: 03 February 2021

moral. If they make moral judgments and are not motivated, our cognitivist is refuted.

(20) Roskies (2007) suggests what data are needed to resolve the issue.

(21) There are compelling arguments to the effect that it is not possible to have a single, unified localization of the emotions (Griffiths, 1997).

(22) Related ideas are explored in depth in Stanovich (2004).

(23) Here we are assuming that judgments about what it is best to do are genuine cognitive states, and not mere expressions of motivational states or complex combinations of these two things.

(24) One empirical bet we are thus making is that obsessive‐compulsive disorder and related disorders will prove to be like Tourette syndrome in that they generate behavior that is not released by the basal ganglia in the normal way we have described.