The reasons-internalism is of course different as it is third-personal. I didn’t think that anything exactly like Williams’s internalism would follow. It seems right that on your account the awareness of p can have a causal influence by creating new desires and motivations. But I was thinking that the account limits the reasons to things the person whose reasons we are talking about can be aware. This is something the view shares with internalism and something that externalists will want to deny.

I know that the surprise party case is just a silly case in which you say what Lilian says. But, it does illustrate the structure of the problem. There are though more serious cases of with the same structure (I take it that we are talking here about the conditional fallacy). Ignorance and learning cases are another one where this comes up (I wish I had Robert Johnson’s paper here). The idea is that facts such as that I don’t yet know that Obama has dropped the missile defense system can be a reason for me to read today’s paper even if it would be odd to approve of that fact having a causal influence on me deciding to read the paper. If I were aware of that fact, there wouldn’t be a reason for me to read the paper. And, so it goes for all facts that I am unaware of. On this view, my ignorance of them could never be a reason.

I agree that you could deal with cases involving higher-order awareness that way. But in the case I was imagining, I approve of A’s first-order awareness of r’s causal effects on A’s behavior (the same sort of awareness featured in your thesis statement). It continues to seem to me that your view gives the wrong verdict in this sort of case.

Jussi, why do you think the account commits to internalism of either sort? I can’t see it at all. I can endorse awareness of r influencing you in the direction of φ-ing regardless of what’s in your actual subjective motivational set. And when I do so, I don’t necessarily endorse the awareness motivating you – that’s the point about the lack of isomorphism.

I guess adding a ‘in the right way’ clause wouldn’t make much difference. Everybody waves their hand in that direction anyway. But I’d just rather say that in the adrenaline case, it is the hormone rather than the awareness that’s influencing the agent (note that you could get the adrenaline rush without being aware of the height).

Lilian pointed out to me that there’s an alternative response to the surprise party cases, which is flat out denying that the agent has a reason. After all, it’s not an implausible constraint on reasons for action that the agent should be at least in principle able to act on them. And this type of ‘reason’ you couldn’t act on. We might want to say that ‘There is a reason for A to φ’, but this could amount to saying that φ-ing would be good for the agent (to some degree), which would be a different kind of judgment. (This kind of response would indeed draw on what’s plausible about Williams’s internalism.)

John, I think we have to be careful about what the object of awareness, and thus the reason, is in these cases. I think in your type of case we have a second-order awareness, so to speak, whose influence you approve of. So, Michael is a heavy drinker. His awareness of the fact that the Liquor and Guns Warehouse has a deal on Night Train causally influences his going there. This you don’t approve. But after attending some therapy as part of his parole program, he becomes aware of the detrimental influence that thinking about bargain spirits has on him. What you do approve of is this second-order awareness making a difference to his behaviour, most likely by way of putting such thoughts out of his mind, or by way of focusing on the long-term damage that acting on those thoughts has.

I think there is a more serious theoretical problem behind the surprise party situation. As you know, there’s two types of internalisms; judgment-internalism and reasons-internalism (or existence-internalism). Much of the motivation for expressivism is seems to be based on the judgment-internalism in Blackburn and Gibbard. Now, a lot of people think that these two internalisms go hand in hand, and your expressivist take on reasons seems to support this. I’m not sure though why we should think this. The Williams-styled reasons-internalism seems to be a substantial view about what reasons there are, and I don’t really see why a semantic, metaethical view should commit one to such a substantial theory about normative reasons. I think I’ve seen Daniel Elstein give a paper where he argued that expressivists should not do this and this seems right to me.

Something else occurred to me about your proposal.

To judge that r is a pro tanto reason for A to φ in C is to approve of A’s awareness of r having causal influence in the direction of φ-ing on the mechanism(s) responsible for A’s φ-ing or not in C.

Suppose I think that recognition is the first step on the road to rehabilitation. You must first become aware of how certain factors influence your behavior, in order to become a good person again.

Now suppose I’m considering A’s behavior. As is his habit, he’s once again doing something for a bad reason: he’s φ-ing for reason r again. And while I don’t in the least think that r is a pro tanto good reason to φ, I do approve of A’s awareness of r’s influence on A’s φ-ing (for the general reason indicated in the previous paragraph).

Doesn’t your view give the wrong result in this sort of case?

But suppose I think people (or maybe just Ben) only have reason to go to a party if it’s a surprise to them (that is, if they’re not aware of it). This is a real challenge. It is partly for analogous reasons that I didn’t formulate the proposal in terms of deliberation: some things might only be worth doing spontaneously. So let us be careful. What exactly is the reason I think Ben has in this situation? It seems that it is the fact that there is a party for him at his house that he’s not aware of. And my proposal says that when I think this is a reason, I endorse the influence of his (possibly counterfactual) awareness of the fact that there is this very party for him he’s not aware of on his homegoing-relevant mechanism (which in this case may be just habit – another reason not to talk of deliberation).

Now, it seems impossible for one to be aware of p that she’s not aware of. (Similarly, you can’t know a fact you don’t know – though you know there are some facts you don’t know.) But were it possible to be aware of something that you’re unaware of, I would approve of your awareness of the surprise party influencing you. So maybe the proposal could be saved with the addition of a ‘perhaps per impossibile’ clause. Otherwise things get really tight for the expressivist.

It is perhaps worth noting that here what we might call a comparative approval model would give a more straightforward answer. It seems natural to say that given the fact that there is a surprise party for Ben, I endorse his going home more strongly than in the absence of the surprise party. This approach, as I pointed out, fails to account for desideratum 3, non-additivity. It also requires us to be able to make sense of very fine-grained differences in the level of (dis)approval of actions.

As to the bridge case, I still think we don’t approve of the influence of the awareness that it’s dangerous in the relevant sense, which is more like endorsement. We don’t criticize the guy for being influenced by it, to be sure, and we may think he’s quite lucky to have been influenced by it, if it leads to a happy marriage. It turns out he did have plenty of reason to ask the girl out, though the fact that they met in a dangerous place wasn’t among them. As I suggested, the difference between approving of something as a lucky influence and as a reason to act will be clearer if we go negative. We wouldn’t disapprove of the guy if he wasn’t influenced in the direction of asking the girl out as a result of being aware of the dangerous situation.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if the case is correctly described as guy being influenced by his awareness that the bridge is scary or high or dangerous. Rather than the awareness, the influence is hormonal – he needn’t be aware of why for a burst of adrenaline to take place. Whether we approve of such hormonal influence is neither here nor there from the perspective of the proposal.

I’m not sure about the bridge though. That sounds still somewhat counterintuitive. The scariness of the bridge seems to be a wrong kind of consideration for being a reason no matter how much a approve of its causal influence. Don’t seem to count in favour of asking the girl out. I’m sure we can tell a story where it’s clearer that we would have the approving attitudes – the guy we are talking about would never have the courage to ask the girl out without the adrenalin, they would live happily ever after and so on.

Also, while I was away, I thought that your account would face the classic surprise party objection.

I happen to think that the fact that there is a surprise party at Ben’s house for him is a reason for Ben to go home. But, surely I don’t think in any way, positive or negative, that the fact that there is a party at Ben’s house should play any role in Ben’s deliberation about whether to go home or not. That would spoil the surprise.

John, short answer: yes. At least I take it I can approve of your φ-relevant mechanism being influenced by your awareness of r even though you’re not in fact aware of r. If that sounds odd, I’ll need to add ‘influenced by A’s (possibly counterfactual) awareness of r’ as a qualification.

Clayton, I certainly don’t want to say the agent needs to feel a tug for every pro tanto reason – that would be going the isomorphism way rejected in 4. (I would reject even the weaker version that Mark Schroeder defends.) If we stick to the agent’s deliberative system as the paradigm φ-relevant mechanism, I think it can be influenced in the direction of φ-ing by other things than motivational states like desires (which themselves need not be felt, as many have emphasized). Say that the fact that it’s sunny is some reason for your to play tennis after teaching. At the same time, the fact that tonight is an important deadline is a much stronger reason for you to stay in your office all night. And not only are they competing reasons for you, but I think they are.

Now, suppose that you know it’s sunny. Perhaps this awareness doesn’t give rise to a desire to play tennis, but gives rise to some wistful tennis-related thoughts, or better yet, causes playing tennis to appear as an option in the background options file in your deliberative system. (The background options file is what you reach for if your current plan reaches completion before you’ve scheduled anything else.) I think these are ways of influencing the mechanism in the direction of φ-ing without counting as motivation to φ, and certainly not a felt pull towards it. If I approve of your awareness of r having such influence on your deliberative system (in this case), I regard r as a reason for you to φ – even if I wouldn’t approve of your actually φ-ing, since I think you have much stronger reason to not φ (in this case finish the paper by the deadline). Could I consider the fact that the sun is shining is some practical reason for you to play tennis if I didn’t approve of some such influence? The expressivist is bound to answer in the negative, and that doesn’t seem so implausible to me.

Jussi, interesting points. I wanted to take care of generality by placing conditions on approval (more precisely, on its characteristic aetiology). Very very roughly, the approval would only count for reason judgments if any unbiased and informed observer would approve, either in the position of those affected (in the moral case) or in the position of the choice-actualized future self of the agent (in the prudential case). That would take care of the snake example – to make a prudential reason claim, I’d have to approve of awareness of the snake causing the agent to jump back after having adopted the perspective of his informed future self. More traditional expressivist views of approval would also handle it – you wouldn’t accept a norm in Gibbard’s sense, or disapprove of others not approving of the influence, as on Blackburn’s story.

In the shaky bridge case, if I do approve of awareness of the scariness of the bridge influencing asking out – and let’s bear in mind that the relevant sort of approval is not just the absence of disapproval, but the presence of a complex set of attitudes that constitutes a normative stance – am I really not thinking that the fact that the bridge is scary is a reason for the guy to ask the girl out? I personally don’t, in this sense, endorse the causal influence, and I also don’t think that the scariness is a reason for the guy. Presumably, and this is of course the point of the experiment, the guy wouldn’t approve of the influence himself – this is why the study is used by skeptics about rational control. If he did approve of it, wouldn’t that amount to him endorsing the scariness as a reason for asking out?

If this isn’t convincing yet, take the stronger formulation: would you disapprove of the awareness not having the influence it does? Surely not. But suppose you did, and on top of that as a result of at least trying to consider the matter from an informed and unbiased perspective, which would explain why regarded your attitude as carrying some authority. Wouldn’t you then necessarily consider the scariness of the bridge as a reason for the guy to ask the girl out?

In this situation, I approve of A’s awareness of the snake having a causal influence in the direction of jumping on the mechanism that is responsible for whether A jumps or not. However, I have not judged that awareness of the snake is a reason for A to jump.

So, I think you have to add something like ‘approves of anyone’s in awareness in A’s situation…’. Given that I don’t approve of the causal influence in my own case, in this case the example would not go through.

I’m also worried about deviant causal chains and the lose formulation of the mechanism. Remember the study where people who crossed a scary bridge were more likely to ask out the research assistant who was asking the subjects random questions than the people who hadn’t crossed the bridge. In this case, the awareness of the bridge may causally influence the mechanism that is responsible for asking the assistant or not to the direction of asking out. And, we may also approve of this. But, we don’t think that the hight of the bridge is a reason to ask the assistant out. So, somehow the analysis should specify the correct deliberative mechanism and how the awareness of r should affect it.

This is an interesting suggestion:

“Expressivism about reason judgments
To judge that r is a pro tanto reason for A to φ in C is to approve of A’s awareness of r having causal influence in the direction of φ-ing on the mechanism(s) responsible for A’s φ-ing or not in C. ”

I don’t have any clear sense as to how these sorts of cases are described, but suppose that r is a pro tanto reason for A to do X in C but there’s another reason, r’, that is a stronger reason for A to do Y in C. I guess I don’t see that I’m approving of r having some (but not sufficient?) causal influence in the direction of X-ing in C. Part of this is probably that I don’t quite get what it means to say that r has some causal influence towards X-ing when the agent Y’s rather than X’s. Part of this is probably based on the intuition that if it is just obvious that A ought to Y rather than X I guess I don’t know that I’d think favorably of A’s being causally influenced by r to do what is obviously the thing that A oughtn’t do. Yet, I feel like I do have some sense of why I’d think of r as a pro tanto reason to act in those circumstances. Maybe if you spelled out this idea of r having causal influence to do what the agent ends up not doing. Is that just the agent’s feeling the tug towards doing what r counts in favor of?

Is your account consistent with (a) there being a reason for you to φ that you’re presently unaware of, or (b) there being a reason for you to φ that isn’t presently causally influencing the φ-relevant mechanism?