Moral Motivation: A Survey of Attempts to Understand the Motivational Qualities of Moral Judgments

Moral judgments and moral action cannot be separated. Whether realist, anti-realist or hybrid, all agree that when a moral judgment is made, motivation to act on that judgment follows. Uncovering the nature and origin of this phenomenon will be invaluable to metaethical advancement, and will also help to shape people’s understanding and expectations of moral action from one another. This paper will explore and evaluate some of the best arguments anti-realists and hybrid theorists argue for, framing the metaethical debate in light of both current empirical and philosophical work. The general question for this thesis will be, “Which stream of thought provides the best account for the phenomenon of moral motivation?” More specifically, I will be arguing in the negative as to whether or not anti-realist and hybrid views successfully avoid significant weaknesses of their own in attempts to develop plausible theories.Moral MotivationRealismAnti-RealismExpressivismEmotivismMetaethic