whenever ‘A has a reason to x’ is not related to A’s motives.4 For example, a reason-
internalist would say that ‘Tallulah has a reason to write her essay’ entails that
Tallulah has a motive to write her essay, whereas a reason-externalist would make
no such claim. Williams elaborates on reason-internalism by claiming that A can
only have a reason to x if ‘doing x’ can be reached by deliberative reasoning from
elements of A’s subjective motivation set.5 This set consists of desires; ‘dispositions
of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties’ and other such
internal features of A.6 So to say that Tallulah has a reason to write her essay is to
say that Tallulah is motivated to write her essay based on the fact that her subjective
motivational set contains a relevant element, perhaps the desire to do well in her
degree, and she reasons that writing her essay will enable her to achieve this desire.
If she did not have the relevant desire, she would not be motivated to write her essay
and so would not have a reason to. This is what it means for a reason statement to be
internal, and Williams claims that these can be the only kinds of reason statements
concerning action.
The challenge Williams poses to reason-externalism is that external reasons
cannot possibly explain action. Reasons for action intuitively have an explanatory
role; ‘if there are reasons for action, it must be that people sometimes act for those
reasons, and if they do, their reasons must figure in some correct explanation of their
action’.7 For example if Tallulah has a reason to write her essay, this reason must be
able to explain the fact that she goes on to write her essay. Reason-internalism, as
demonstrated, explains this by Tallulah’s deliberation from something in her
4
ibid
5
Williams, B (1995) pg 187
6
Williams, B (1981) pg 105
7
ibid pg 102
3
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