Abstract
Some philosophers believe that a change in motive alone is sometimes sufficient to bring about a change in the deontic status (rightness or wrongness) of an action. I refer to this position as ‘weak motivism’, and distinguish it from ‘strong’ and ‘partial motivism’. I examine a number of cases where our intuitive judgements appear to support the weak motivist’s thesis, and argue that in each case an alternative explanation can be given for why a change in motive brings about (or, in some cases, appears to bring about) a change in deontic status.
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Notes
However, there are those who view Kant’s moral philosophy as a kind of virtue ethics, given that maxims are or involve a kind of motive. According to Onora O’Neill (1983, p. 397), for example, “Kant offers primarily an ethic of virtue rather than an ethic of duty”. For further discussion of the role of motive and virtue in Kant’s ethics see Louden (1986) and Johnson (2008).
Agent-based virtue ethics “understands rightness in terms of good motivations and wrongness in terms of the having of bad (or insufficiently good) motives” (Slote, 2001, p. 5), whereas according to motive-utilitarianism, a right action is one that springs from the overall set of motives that best promotes the general welfare, rather than the act that maximises utility (Adams, 1976, pp. 467–481).
This case, originally mentioned by Sidgwick, is discussed by Slote (2001, pp. 13–15) in his defence of agent-based virtue ethics.
I thank an anonymous referee for this journal for identifying this as a possible objection.
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van Zyl, L. Motive and Right Action. Philosophia 38, 405–415 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9214-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9214-4