Responding to Normativity

To many it seems obvious that normativity or justification depends upon desire. Few answers to the question, ‘Why should I?’ seem more natural than ‘Because I want to,’ and if we are told, ‘You should do this,’ there is something natural about the objection, ‘But I don’t want to, so why?’ I believe that the very nature of normativity can be comprehensively explained in terms of desire: the mysterious ‘force’ of value, reasons, and obligation are explicable by appeal to the ‘force’ of our motivating psychological states. This desire-based normativity (DBN) thesis faces serious difficulties, however, that seem insuperable to most sophisticated minds who contemplate them. I remain convinced that DBN is correct, although as yet unvindicated. This paper seeks to lay the cornerstone of what could prove a successful strategy, sketching an Argument from Voluntary Response that is based on the autonomous character of our experience of normative authority and the voluntary character of our responses to it. In the first section, I consider the fortunes of its ancestor, the rickety standard Argument(s) from Motivation. The second section sketches an account of what it is to desire, the third explores the character of experience and response to normativity, and the fourth examines the necessary conditions for voluntary behaviour. The fifth section explores what implications the argument contained in sections 2–4 have for the plausibility of the DBN and anti-DBN models of response to normativity, and the final section provides some reflections on the question of how to bridge the gap