In the Thick of Moral Motivation

Buckwalter, W., & Turri, J. (2017). In the thick of moral motivation. Review of philosophy and psychology, 8(2), 433–453.

We accomplish three things in this paper. First, we expose the motivational internalism/externalism debate in moral psychology as a false dichotomy born of ambiguity. Second, we provide further evidence for a crucial distinction between two different categories of belief in folk psychology: thick belief and thin belief. Third, we demonstrate how careful attention to deep features of folk psychology can help diagnose and defuse seemingly intractable philosophical disagreement in metaethics.