Internal and External Reasons

Williams's 1979 essay 'Internal and External Reasons' introduced one of the most consequential distinctions in contemporary moral philosophy. An internal reason connects with something already present in the agent's subjective motivational set — her existing desires, commitments, projects, and evaluative dispositions. An external reason is supposed to motivate independently of what the agent actually cares about, simply because it is true. Williams argued that external reasons are philosophical illusions: a consideration that fails to connect with anything the agent actually values is not a reason she has failed to recognize but not a reason for her at all. The thesis has direct consequences for how transformative technologies should be argued for. The AI triumphalist discourse is saturated with external reasons and fails to persuade the practitioners it most needs to reach because those reasons make no contact with what those practitioners actually care about.