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At a climactic\u2014and, indeed, incendiary\u2014moment in Bernard Williams\u2019 classic essay, \u201cInternal and External Reasons,\u201d Williams says that those who advance moral criticisms by appealing to so-called external reasons are engaging in \u201cbluff\u201d. Williams thus alleges that condemning certain actions of others as somehow not only immoral, but also irrational or contrary to reason is nothing more than a kind of pretense. To say that a favorite pastime that so many of us happily engage in is empty, well\u2014to use an American colloquialism\u2014\u201cthem\u2019s fightin\u2019 words!\u201d Indeed, in criticizing certain moral criticisms in this way, Williams\u2019 words are fightin\u2019 words about fightin\u2019 words.

\tWhy does Williams proffer these meta-fightin\u2019 words? Readers\u2014and indeed perhaps Williams himself\u2014have struggled to articulate a precise argument for this claim that there are no external reasons and that those who try to invoke them in criticism of others are engaging in bluff. Thus, the force of Williams\u2019 point has remained, at best, elusive, perhaps even to Williams himself.

\tIn this paper, I first want to defend Williams\u2019 claim that the appeal to external reasons is illegitimate. But I will do so from a perspective that is radically different from the ones usually at work in considering Williams\u2019 position. Indeed, this perspective is one that may or may not (probably not!) be in the spirit of Williams\u2019 actual reasons for rejecting external reasons, so it is important to keep in mind (as I will remind you from time to time) that I am not offering an interpretation of Williams here. The distinctive aspect of my approach is that I argue that a rationalist line of thought can support Williams\u2019 claims. To bring out this line of thought, I will examine the metaphysical commitments of those who engage in what Williams calls bluff. I will then reject those commitments on powerful and widely popular rationalist grounds. I will, in other words, endeavor to support Williams\u2019 charge of bluff by investigating what I call the metaphysics of bluff and by offering a rationalist critique of that metaphysics.

Michael Della Rocca is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He has published widely in early modern philosophy and in contemporary metaphysics. His most recent book, The Parmenidean Ascent (Oxford 2020), defends a radical form of monism in metaphysics, philosophy of action, epistemology, and philosophy of language.

This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Della Rocca's talk - "Moral Criticism and the Metaphyscis of Bluff" - at the Aristotelian Society on 6th June 2022. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.