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3
Internal Reasons and the Scope
of Blame
JOHN SKORUPSKI
One of Bernard Williams’ most influential themes has been the claim that
there are only “internal” reasons. It is an important element in his moral
philosophy, constituting, in particular, the main thrust in a striking critique
of “modern morality,” a critique that has interesting affinities with that of
Nietzsche.
1
Yet despite the very extensive discussion this theme has pro-
duced, it also has been surprisingly elusive. Critics have found it hard to pin
down the difference between “internal” and “external” reasons, and even
harder to get clear about what bearing the claim that there are only internal
reasons has on modern morality. What is it about this thing that Williams
wishes to reject?
Here we shall set ourselves a twofold aim: to examine (§§1–3)Williams’
argument for “internalism” – the thesis that there are only internal reasons –
and to assess (§§4–6) what bearing internalism has on modern moral ideas,
or on modern ideas about the nature of the moral.
Williams often seems to weave his internalism into a Humean model
of practical reasons – a model that has struck many philosophers as uncon-
vincing, and indeed seriously misleading. However I shall suggest that
Hume’s conception of practical reasons is neither the only possible starting
point, nor the best starting point, for Williams’ questions about morality –
notably, about the scope of blame. In Williams’ own account of what it is
for something to be an “internal” reason the Humean conception some-
times retreats into the background, although it never quite disappears from
view. And in fact something like Williams’ internalism, with similar impli-

leaving out the unsound elements which derive from Hume. But let us begin
by considering Williams’ account of internal and external reasons.
1. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTERNAL
AND EXTERNAL REASONS?
In a paper published in 1980 Williams suggests that sentences of the form
“A has a reason to ϕ,” or “There is a reason for A to ϕ” (where “ϕ” stands
in for “some verb of action”) might be interpreted in two ways:
2
On the first, the truth of the sentence implies, very roughly, that A has some
motive which will be served or furthered by his ϕ-ing. . . . On the second
interpretation ...the reason-sentence will not be falsified by the absence of
an appropriate motive.
3
The first interpretation takes these sentences about reasons to express what
Williams calls internal reasons. The second allows that they may express
what he calls external reasons. Explaining the contrast further, Williams
notes that internal reasons always display a relativity to the agent A’s “sub-
jective motivational set,” which Williams labels “S,” and that comprises
2
Williams (1981).
3
Williams (1981), p. 101.
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A’s existing motivational states: “An internal reason statement is falsified
by the absence of some appropriate element from S.”
4
He also holds that

conclusion to ϕ:
The internalist view of reasons for action is that ...Ahasareason to ϕ only
if he could reach the conclusion to ϕ by a sound deliberative route from
the motivations he already has. The externalist view is that this is not a
necessary condition . . .
4
Williams (1981), p. 102.
5
Williams (1995), p. 35. Cf Williams (2001). However, he does sometimes argue from the
sufficiency as well as from the necessity of the condition.
6
Williams (1981), p. 102.
7
This is a slight modification of what Williams says: he includes such motives in S but says
they give no reasons. Williams (1981), p. 103.
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And
The central idea is that if B can truly say of A that A has reason to ϕ, then
(leaving aside the qualifications needed because it may not be his strongest
reason) there must be a sound deliberative route to ϕ-ing, which starts from
A’s existing motivations.
8
A large part of the obscurity about internal and external reasons has arisen
from this alternative way of putting the distinction. But I think Williams
intends it to agree with (I); and the obscurities to which it gives rise can be
clarified by referring back to (I).
9

10
Williams (1995), p. 37.
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informed, or even to be relevantly informed about what actions serve the
motives in their S. They still have various reasons to do various things – it’s
just that a general reason to get informed is not one of them. However the
point is clear if we derive it from (I). It will follow from (I) that any agent,
anyone who has motives at all, has reason to get the information and do the
reasoning that will serve the motives in their S, whatever these may be. But
it does not follow from (I) that anyone at all, whatever their S, has reason
to ascertain or to observe the principles of prudence and morality.
(2) Does it matter whether A – that person – could reach the conclusion
by a sound deliberative route, or are we asking only whether there is a
sound deliberative route? The question is important in ways which we will
come to only in Section 4. For the moment, note that there may be a
sound deliberative route which requires very complex reasoning that is well
beyond A’s powers. Suppose, for example, that A’s goal is to sink an enemy
battleship, and that a sound deliberative route starting from information
he already has shows that this goal would be served by sending the fleet
to a particular area of the ocean. However the route in question involves
cracking an enemy code that would take A’s best computers a long time
to unravel and is certainly well beyond A. Or again, suppose the sound
deliberative route calls on facts that A could not know. For example, Mount
Etna is about to erupt and that fact generates a sound deliberative route
from A’s S to the conclusion that he has reason not to climb it today.
Is there reason for A to send the fleet to that spot, or not to climb Mount
Etna? I’m not sure how Williams would reply – but (I) entails that there

it. Similarly, we could say that A had no reason not to climb Mount Etna,
even though the fact that it would erupt was a reason not to climb it, and
so on. In §5,weshall find this distinction between the two locutions useful,
but it is not needed just for the moment.
12
(3) What should we say about the following possibility: if A were to delib-
erate about how to realize some goal that is in his S, that very process of
deliberation would remove the goal from his S?
13
Williams emphasizes that
deliberation can change the agent’s S:
We should not . . . think of S as statically given. The processes of deliberation
can have all sorts of effects on S, and this is a fact which a theory of internal
reasons should be very happy to accommodate.
14
However, how should it accommodate it? Should we say that the reasons A
has at a time are relative to his S at that time, or to the S he would have if he
deliberated? Since deliberating may have various effects on his S, depending
on how good he is at deliberating and what particular deliberations he
goes in for, should we somehow idealize A’s abilities and the amount of
deliberating he can do at a time, so that his reasons are relative to the
conclusions he’d come to as an ideal deliberator? Many pitfalls attend this
line of thought.
Again, however, the issue is clarified if we refer back to (I) and bear in
mind Williams’ frequent insistence that A’s reasons depend on A’s existing
motivations, motivations A already has. The reasons A has are the rea-
sons (I) says he has given his existing S, not the reasons he would have
12
Williams sometimes distinguishes “A has reason to ϕ” and “there is reason for A to ϕ”–
for example, Williams (1985), p. 192 – but seems not to do so systematically.

The point will become clearer when we examine
Williams’ arguments for internalism. But before we come to these, it will
be useful to consider how Williams differs from Hume. The question has
often puzzled his readers, and it raises the further question of how inclusive
one is supposed to be, on Williams view, about the “motivations” in a
person’s S.
2. DOES WILLIAMS DIFFER FROM HUME?
In “Internal and External Reasons,” Williams starts from what he calls
the “sub-Humean model” of reasons, intending, he says, “by addition and
15
Scanlon (1998), p. 365. Parfit (1997), p. 10 suggests that Williams rejects “Analytical Inter-
nalism” in Williams (1995b)–Parfit cites in support of this interpretation page 188. What
Williams denies here is only that if someone concludes, by deliberating, that he has reason
to ϕ,hehas thereby concluded that if he deliberated correctly he would be motivated to ϕ.
(Williams is discussing the “sound deliberative route” version of his view.) It may be that
even a strictly “Analytical Internalist” could deny that (in virtue of the paradox of analysis);
more importantly, Williams’ view need not be read as a strict definition of the meaning
of statements about reasons. It is best understood as offering a “deeper-down” account of
their conceptual content (and thus not a substantive, normative, thesis).
16
Williams (1995), p. 35. Cf p. 40, “I think the sense of a statement of the form ‘A has reason
to ϕ’isgiven by the internalist model.” He also suggests that external reasons statements
are “false, incoherent, or really something else misleadingly expressed,” Williams (1981),
p. 111.
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revision, to work it up into something more adequate.” The model is very
like (I); it says that:

theorist, could surely have allowed. So if there is a difference between
Williams and Hume it will lie either in the difference between desire and
motive – the possible play that is allowed by the difference between (I)
17
This is close to Williams (1981), p. 101. He uses the phrase “A has reason to ϕ,” and he
adds, “Alternatively, we might say...some desire the satisfaction of which A believes will
be served by his ϕ-ing” – but in fact he makes nothing more of this alternative.
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and (II) – or alternatively, it will lie in the different meanings that can be
attached to the term “desire.”
Now Williams says that he wants to be “more liberal than some theorists
have been about the possible elements in S”: he is willing, he says, to use the
term “desire” “formally,” for all these elements, noting however, that desire
must then be understood to include “dispositions of evaluation, patterns
of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects embodying
commitments of the agent.”
18
How liberal is this? To put the question in
another way: is the concept of desire meant so “formally,” or thinly, as to
cover every possible motive?
Let us say that a motive is whatever can be adduced, in our everyday
explanations of intentional action, as explaining (in combination with a
person’s factual beliefs) why the person did an action. A can have various
motives, to do various things; the operative motive is the one that explains
why he did what he actually did. Now suppose A has the following beliefs.
He believes that he’s just trodden on your toe and he believes that that’s
a reason to apologize. Because he believes these things, he apologizes, for

Does believing that a particular consideration is a reason to act in a particular
way provide, or indeed constitute, a motivation to act? . . . Let us grant that
it does – this claim indeed seems plausible, so long at least as the connexion
between such beliefs and the disposition to act is not tightened to that
unnecessary degree which excludes akrasia. The claim is in fact so plausible,
that this agent, with this belief, appears to be one about whom, now, an
internal reason statement could truly be made: he is one with an appropriate
motivation in his S.
19
Williams agrees here, as it seems to me quite rightly, that a belief on A’s part
about reasons – for example, his belief that treading on your toe is a reason
for him to apologize – can “provide, or indeed constitute, a motivation to
act.” In allowing that, and thus including the belief in A’s S, he seems to
depart from Humeanism about motivation.
The essential point for the Humean was that any motivating state must
contain an affective element. That still leaves open a response to the case
we’re considering which would depend on what is often called “expres-
sivism.” Expressivism says that what we treat as “beliefs” about reasons for
action aren’t really beliefs. They are affective attitudes, of approval or dis-
approval, toward action. On the expressivist view, A’s motive includes an
attitude – that treading on your toe is a reason for him to apologize – which
is not to be thought of as a belief but as an affective state: a disposition to
approve of apologizing to people whom one has inconvenienced. It is this
affective attitude of approval that does the motivating.
But Williams does not take this line. Accepting that propositions and
beliefs about reasons are genuine propositions and beliefs, he provides a
truth-condition for them in the form of (I). He then challenges the external
reasons theorist to explain the content of propositions about reasons in a
way which shows how external reasons can exist:
What is it the agent comes to believe when he comes to believe he has a

in order to see why it might lead him, after all, to the Humean (II).
It is not, as we have just seen, because he endorses Hume’s desire-belief
psychology. Williams accepts that A’s belief that he has reason to apologize
can motivate A; he says that the belief is then itself a motive in A’s S – as
in the passage quoted above: “this agent, with this belief, appears to be one
about whom, now, an internal reason statement could truly be made: he is
one with an appropriate motivation in his S.”
This conclusion, however, has a peculiar consequence. For it now seems to
follow in general – for any belief I have about what there is reason for me to
do – that so long as the belief has motivating force it’s true. If the belief that
I have reason to ϕ is in my S then it is a motive which would be “served”
by ϕ-ing.
22
So by (I) the “internal reason statement” that I have reason to
ϕ can truly be made about me.
Can this be right? I can certainly have false beliefs about what reasons
I have to act; Williams does not dispute that.
23
And surely such beliefs can
be false even if they do have motivating force! Williams could accept this
in part, too: he could answer that beliefs about reasons can be excluded
from the agent’s S when they are based on false beliefs about the facts. That
would simply be an application of the general point that motives based on
false factual beliefs can be excluded from S. But what, now, of fundamental
21
As noted by Hooker (1987).
22
Take it that the belief that one has reason to ϕ is “served” by ϕ-ing.
23
See, e.g., Williams (1981), p. 103 – point (iii)(a).

externalism distinction to see this as a limiting case of internalism.
24
At first glance, this looks inconsistent with something we saw Williams
saying earlier, namely, that considerations of prudence and morality should
not be included in the agent’s deliberative route. However, one can make a
distinction here between the intuitionist and the Kantian. The intuitionist
thinks that you can directly intuit the demands of morality. He wants, so
to speak, to write these demands into every agent’s deliberative route by
an intuitive fiat. The Kantian, in contrast, is more indirect: he argues that
if you accept that you have any reasons for acting at all, then you can be
shown to face the demands of morality. This claim is of the form: if you
24
Williams (1995b), p. 220, n. 3. (Williams is responding to Martin Hollis’ view that Kant
should be classified as an externalist about reasons, and agreeing with Christine Korsgaard’s
[1986] internalist reading of Kant – cf Williams [1995], p. 44, n. 3.)