Professor Thorpe has provided us with an intriguing alternative to Bernard William’s view of how an internalist can account for a universally shared reason. The reason in question is yielded by the fact that deliberating according to the established rules of deductive and inductive logic greatly increases an agent’s chances of satisfying her desires. Were there no distinction between being a reason and having a reason, as an externalist maintains, every deliberative agent would, thus, have a reason to follow these rules. Things are not so simple, however, for the internalist. The reason in question does meet her criterion for being a reason: suggesting a means by which a desire can be satisfied. But having this reason, by her lights, would also require a conative element being entailed by the recognition of logic’s usefulness: viz., the desire to reason correctly. Thus, in order to account for the fact that all deliberative agents have an internal reason to follow the rules of logic, Williams assumes that all deliberative agents desire to reason correctly.

On William’s behalf, Thorpe offers the following argument in support of this assumption:

1. A deliberative agent would acquire the desire to reason correctly iff she believed that reasoning correctly is advantageous.
2. A deliberative agent would believe that reasoning correctly is advantageous iff she carefully reflected upon her decision making skills.
3. A deliberative agent will carefully reflect upon her decision making skills
4. Thus, a deliberative agent will acquire the desire to reason correctly.

She proceeds to point out that the third premise here is false: most deliberative agents are not inclined to evaluate their decision-making skills, being preoccupied with workaday concerns. We are left, then, with no reason to believe that the desire to reason correctly is common to all deliberative agents. Thorpe concludes that this desire can not form the basis of a deliberative agent’s reason to follow the rules of logic, if that reason is universal.

The basis of this reason, on her view, is not a single desire but a disjunction of desires- all of the desires that reasoning correctly could help satisfy. The fact that reasoning correctly could help satisfy any desire provides a deliberative agent, someone attempting to satisfy a particular desire, with a reason to deliberate according to the rules of logic. It is not a universally shared desire that grounds the reason to reason correctly, according to Thorpe, rather it a truth that holds for all deliberative agents: decision making facilitated by the rules of logic is an effective means of desire satisfaction.

This fact, however, is what grounds the externalist’s reason to follow the rules of logic in deliberation. And, as noted above, that fact does not entail having an internal reason to employ those rules when making a decision. Whereas Williams maintains that a reason must be grounded in a conscious desire, a possible motive, Thorpe seems to hold that the above fact, sans its being realized, grounds an internal reason. But a fact of which one is unaware could not move one to act, even if it suggests a prudent course of action. Moreover, to have an internal reason, an agent must be somehow motivated to follow the rule entailed by a fact. Thus, Thorpe’s alternative fails to meet the internalist’s criterion for having a reason.

In light of this failure, we would do best here to revisit William’s proposal. Specifically, we should ask ourselves: is "academic" reflection upon one’s reasoning skills a necessary condition of acquiring the belief that Reason is useful? It seems that an agent merely needs to notice a correlation between logical deliberation and successful agency. As much thought would be required here as is involved in a pitcher’s deciding while on the mound to continue throwing curves to a certain batter. My point is that we typically become aware of ‘what’s working’ sans cogitation. If that is right, then all moderately successful deliberative agents would arrive at the belief that Reason facilitates the satisfaction of desires. It seems, then, that there is a basis for William’s assumption after all and that the internalist can account in the traditional way for the universal sharing of the reason to exercise Reason in decision-making.