Normative Belief and Motivation
This chapter begins by explaining and endorsing the view that normative beliefs can motivate us to act. Views in this vicinity are normally labelled as versions of ‘judgement internalism’, but I argue that that view has often been understood in ways that render it less plausible. The chapter then combines this claim about the motivational power of normative belief with ODM (Only Desires Motivate) in order to show that desires and reasons beliefs are the same state of mind. This argument is often thought to be an argument for non-cognitivism, which reduces normative beliefs to desires, but the chapter shows that non-cognitivism makes poor sense of normative beliefs about other people, and so the argument instead strongly favours desire-as-belief. The chapter ends by briefly showing how this argument against non-cognitivism and in favour of desire-as-belief connects in a natural way to the Frege-Geach problem for non-cognitivism.