Freeing Reason from Desire

The previous chapter showed that our beliefs about which actions we ought to perform frequently have an effect on what we do. But Humean theories, holding that all motivation has its source in desire, insist on connecting such beliefs with an antecedent motive. However, reason needn’t be a slave to the passions. We can allow moral (or normative) beliefs a more independent role to generate intrinsic desires by developing an anti-Humeanism (distinct from internalism) that is empirically sound. Since an anti-Humean theory provides perfectly ordinary and intelligible explanations of actions, Humeans have a burden to justify a more restrictive account. However, they cannot discharge this burden on empirical grounds, whether by appealing to research on neurological disorders (acquired sociopathy, Parkinson’s, and Tourette’s), the psychological properties of desire, or the scientific virtue of parsimony.