Abstract
Chapter 2 develops a first sketch of a systematic answer to Aristotle’s question as to what it is in “the soul” that originates movement. As I take it that this is the founding question not only of a philosophy of practical mind, but also of empirical motivational psychology, I approach the topic with an eye to how motivational psychologists circumscribe their discipline. The chapter proposes a skeletal understanding of motivated behaviour, the type of “movements” with which Aristotle’s question is plausibly concerned. On the basis of a non-standard understanding of “behaviour”, I propose a three-factor analysis of the kind of state to which creatures must be playing host when behaving in a manner that can count as motivated. According to the proposal, which urges recognition of the importance of “the Frege point”, motivational states require a representational component, including a form of primitive self-reference, alongside a marker of attitudinal mode and the functional feature of motivational force. On this basis, I argue that James’ ideo-motor theory, which has gained considerable popularity in psychology, cannot be a theory of motivated behaviour. I also examine the relationship between motivational force and arousal and offer arguments as to why, pace the Logical Connection Argument, the conceptual relation between motivational states and motivated behaviour does not exclude the relation also being explanatory.
The chapter closes with a discussion of whether there are non-linguistic animals whose behaviour we should classify as motivated. Various empirical phenomena that are best explained by flexibility in the animals’ adaptation of means to ends suggest that the answer is affirmative. Moreover, a case of what I call “one-way triangulation” provides an indication that, in contrast to what Davidson thought, motivational states may be possessed by a creature in the absence, not only of language, but also of doxastic states.
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- 1.
Everyday talk of whether bringing about some state of affairs is really “up to us” might be given a stronger interpretation, requiring perhaps indeterministic free will or at least the exercise of decision. This is not what Aristotle understands by the phrase. In spite of the efforts of Alexander of Aphrodisias to establish an identity between behaviour that is “to eph’hêmin” and actions deriving from “prohairesis”, this is, as Susan Sauvé Meyer shows, clearly not Aristotle’s position (Sauvé Meyer 1998, 227ff.).
- 2.
Some non-movements are omissions in virtue of norms or expectations that specify relevant performances, independently of whether the agents in question have had thoughts concerning those performances. On the significance of this for intention, see Section 10.5.2.
- 3.
Hobbes explicitly denies this (cf. above Sect. 1.4). For similar reasons, Bentham (PML X, iii, note) suggests that in cases of forebearance, we should talk not of “motives”, but of “determinatives”.
- 4.
Although this is acknowledged by Dretske (1988, 29), he apparently thinks that the basic idea of defining “behaviour” as a kind of movement can be upheld. I fail to see how. A similar acknowledgement, followed by a similar dismissal of the problem is to be found in Davidson’s action theory. Davidson claims (1971, 49) that, if the idea of bodily movement is interpreted “generously”, it will include “mental acts”, among which he numbers deciding. There is such a thing as misplaced generosity, of which this is surely an example.
- 5.
This is not to say that someone suffering an undergoing may not also be behaving, as when a victim of a robbery struggles against the robber (Thalberg 1972, 49). The point is simply that, in as far as some event involving a person is an undergoing of that person, it cannot also be a form of his behaviour.
- 6.
Here I agree with Galen Strawson (1994, 308–312).
- 7.
Equivalence with “doing” is suggested by G. Strawson (1994, 292) as one possible criterion for “behaviour”.
- 8.
Dretske applies his criterion not only to humans and other animals, but also to plants and artefacts. I shall not consider cases of the latter kind.
- 9.
- 10.
On the relativity of causal ascriptions, see Feinberg (1968, 112ff).
- 11.
The controversial details of the analysis of “representation”, particularly in as far as it may be thought to facilitate a transition from the physical to the intentional (Tye 1985, 100f.; Dretske 1995, 48ff.), shall not be my concern here. As will become clear in Section 2.4 at the latest, my use of the term does not entail that what is represented is represented as being the case, an assumption often made by those theorists such as Dretske and Tye who are generally dubbed “representationalists”. It is this narrower use that leads Dretske to deny that desires are representational states (1995, 127).
- 12.
Of course, this cannot mean that the active imagining of what an old acquaintance’s face looked like need be preceded by the agent already imagining the face as represented by herself. The details of the imaginative representation may well be inaccessible to the agent prior to the mental action. A parallel point regarding practical deliberation will be of key importance in Section 8.6.
- 13.
For the reasons, Kenny denies that “I” is a referring expression at all (Kenny 1989, 28).
- 14.
Richard Holton emphasizes the fact that Lewis’s concept of de se reference works with an equally primitive notion of self-ascription (Holton 2015).
- 15.
To what extent the relevant behaviour is itself mental, and to what extent the relevant mental behaviour is representational, are disputed questions in the theory of emotions. For James (1890, 1058ff.), the essence of emotion is affect and the essence of affect is the representation of bodily changes in the bearer. For Broad (1954), emotions are affectively “toned” representations (“cognitions”), where affective tone is itself non-representational. Goldie has argued (2000, 56ff.) that feelings can themselves be representational (“feeling towards”), whereas Griffiths (1997, 77) claims that neither affective nor “cognitive” phenomena are essential to emotions.
- 16.
Note that if attitudes are only postulated as theoretical constructs “in a mature science which aims at explaining behaviour” (Stich 1979, 27), imagination may drop out of the picture, or at least end up with a negligible role. I would suggest that this tells against seeing the explanatory project as providing the only rationale for granting the existence of the attitudes.
- 17.
What Geach called “the Frege point” (1965, 449), that the same content may appear asserted or unasserted within conditional assertions, was for Frege of restricted application. For this reason, Peter Hanks says that Frege only advanced “an attenuated form of the content-force distinction” (Hanks 2007, 143).
- 18.
Castañeda denies that it is possible to think about the same thing in different attitudinal modes. Indeed, according to Castañeda (1975, 158ff.), it is not only impossible for me to have a want and a belief with the same content. It is also impossible for me to want to do the same thing as you want to do. Following Castañeda, Pendlebury has argued that difficulties at the seams between content and force should persuade us to abandon the distinction in the theory of speech acts (Pendlebury 1986, 362ff.; similarly Hanks 2007, 144ff.).
- 19.
The standard post-Fregean view, represented by Geach and Scruton, is that belief involves more than imagination or supposition, which is the mode-less representation of a proposition. For doubts about this, see the end of Section 4.1.1, especially footnote 4.
- 20.
It should be noted that Atkinson’s generic use of the term “motive” here – as synonymous with what I have been calling “motivational states” – is unusual among psychologists. In social and motivational psychology, the term “motive” generally refers to enduring dispositional structures that explain the formation of specific preferences, independently of whether the bearer of those preferences is aware of why she has them (cf. McClelland et al. 1976, 76–81; Heckhausen 1991, 8). The “achievement motive”, the “affiliation motive” and the “power motive” are the three classical species of the genus thus construed.
- 21.
My emphasis.
- 22.
Prinz (1987, 50) states explicitly that the phenomena plausibly explained by some “ideo-motor” mechanism “usually arise unintentionally, frequently even counterintentionally”. Their non-motivated character entails non-intentionality, although their being unintentional need not make them unmotivated. I make the case for nonintentional, but motivated behaviour in Section 5.1.
- 23.
This characterisation offers merely necessary conditions. The reason for the second disjunct is the fact that we can do things as parts of motivated behavioural complexes without having to represent those parts individually (cf. Sect. 9.5.3). But clearly, not everything we do in the course of doing something we are motivated to do is itself something we are motivated to do. Moreover, the concept of motivated behaviour shares the problem of all aetiological concepts – such as hail damage or sunburn – which need not be satisfied if the relevant causal route is particularly unusual, or “deviant”.
- 24.
Cf. also the case of little Pia (Sect. 5.2.2).
- 25.
Al Mele has argued that it isn’t (Mele 2003a, 26f.).
- 26.
A radical view of this kind is offered by Nietzsche (FW §360), who pictures the relationship between “force” and representational states by means of the metaphor of steam and helmsman. Nietzsche goes on to suggest what appears to be a form of epiphenomenalism, according to which the idea of a helmsman is actually an illusion. In motivational psychology, drive theory suggested metaphors similar to Nietzsche’s, for instance Hebb’s picture (1955, 244) of engine and steering wheel.
- 27.
Alvarez claims that the argument should be understood to concern not a logical, but a “conceptual” connection.
- 28.
I return to worries about logical connections in detail in Section 4.4.
- 29.
Allen and Bekoff emphasize the epistemic character of the sceptical argument in the hands of Stich (Allen and Beckoff 1997, 80f.).
- 30.
For “cognition”, read “representation”. The relevant “cognitive” states include motivational states.
- 31.
For Davidson, and others who require language, even the chimpanzees in the last example must fall short.
- 32.
Talk of “proto-concepts” is a somewhat helpless attempt to deal with this fact (cf. Dummett 1993, 125). Hanjo Glock reacts to the problem by drawing strict lines around the use of concepts – unlike Dummett, within animal behaviour – construing forms of pre-conceptual thought as “holodoxastic” (Glock 1999, 181; 2010, 19ff.). (Presumably non-conceptual motivation should be “holo-orectic”.) In my claim that we should reckon with less-than-full forms of whatever it is we draw the line around, I am in agreement with Susan Hurley (Hurley 2006, 152f.).
- 33.
On the distinction between strong and weak versions of the constraint, see Carruthers (2009, 96ff.).
- 34.
Eric Saidel and Elisabeth Camp both argue that key evidence for the mentality of non-linguistic animals is provided by evidence for their ability to flexibly combine and recombine means and ends (Saidel 2009, 39ff.; Camp 2009, 292ff.). Hume argues in the Treatise that “adapting means to ends” is the obvious criterion (T I, iii, 16). I am basically agreeing, whilst arguing that we need to be extremely circumspect about what “adapting” might mean in this context.
- 35.
Papineau and Heyes suggest that a mechanism facilitating “sensitivity to demonstrator reward” is conceivable in the case of quails observing the feeding of conspecifics whilst themselves feeding – a naturally given situation, as quails tend to feed together. In such situations, the observer might come to associate its own food reward with seeing a conspecific feed. However, an analogous association-based explanation of learning by the Nimba mountain chimpanzees wouldn’t even get off the ground. Pestle-pounding is not something chimpanzees are hard-wired to do in the company of conspecifics – or alone.
- 36.
Glock claims that Davidson’s “lingualism” is a priori (Glock 2010, 28). It is unclear to me whether Glock is right. The kind of argument Davidson says he needs here, but doesn’t provide, could well be empirical.
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Roughley, N. (2016). Motivational States. In: Wanting and Intending. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 123. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7387-4_2
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