Motivational Judgement Internalism and the Problem of Supererogation

Motivational judgment internalists hold that there is a necessary connection between moral judgments and motivation. There is, though, an important lack of clarity in the literature about the types of moral evaluation the theory is supposed to cover. It is rarely made clear whether the theory is intended to cover all moral judgments or whether the claim covers only a subset of such judgments. In this paper I will investigate which moral judgments internalists should hold their theory to apply to. I will argue that the possibility of the supererogation amoralist, someone who makes genuine supererogation judgments but remains unmotivated by them, makes it implausible to be an internalist about moral goodness. As a result, internalists should restrict their claim to moral requirement judgments. I will then argue that this creates an explanatory burden for internalism. In order for their view to be plausible they must explain why some moral judgments and not others are necessarily connected to motivation.