Physiology of motivation

Abstract

Researchers into motivation often wish to pursue the behavioural phenomena in which they are interested to their component elements and processes. Reductionism is the research approach whereby systems of interest are broken into their component elements for purposes of generating explanations in terms of these elements, and was described by Nagel (1961) as follows: ‘Reduction ... is the explanation of a theory or a set of experimental laws established in one area of inquiry, by a theory usually though not invariably formulated for some other domain’. In its extreme form, as developed in logical positivism, reductionism aims at descriptions of biological phenomena entirely in the language of physics. Reductionism thus inspires those workers seeking the nervous and hormonal mechanisms underlying behaviour. In the case of behavioural causation, the reduction of motivation to physiology is sought. Conflicting with reductionism is the attitude of emergentism, i.e. that at any specified level of organization there are phenomena which emerge unpredictably from the interactions of the underlying components: ‘An emergent thing ... is one possessing properties that none of its components possess’ (Bunge, 1977). Churchland (1986) presents an excellent review of why reductionism is a philosophically sound strategy for behavioural science.