Online research in philosophy

An exploratory discussion. Call a desire “finitisic” if some conceivable eventuality would fulfil it completely (so that no conceivable eventuality would fulfil it more). That flexibility of behaviour distinguishing the animate from the mindless is accounted for fundamentally by supposing ultimate motivation all infinitistic and outweighable. Decision-making by the counterpoise of such motivation contrasts with algorithmic thinking; and this suggests a non-computational view of mentation, a compatibilist understanding of creative imagination, and (with some additional conceptions) a possible definitional avenue for breaking the circle of intentionality.

In Motivation and Agency, I defend answers to a web of questions about motivation and human agency. I benefit from – and react to – not only important philosophical work on mind, action, and morality but also relevant empirical work in such fields as the psychology of motivation, social psychology, physiological psychology, and neurobiology. The questions include the following. Can a plausible cognitivist moral theory require that moral ought-beliefs essentially encompass motivation to act accordingly? Where does the motivational power of practical reasoning lie? How are reasons for action related to motivation? What do motivational explanations of different kinds have in common? What is it to decide to do something? What is it for an attitude essentially to encompass motivation to act? What is it for one such attitude to have more motivational force or strength than another? What room does an acceptable view of the connection between motivational strength and intentional action leave for self-controlled agency? Is it likely that a proper account of motivated, goal-directed action will be a causal account? Can a causal perspective on the nature and explanation of action accommodate human agency par excellence? What emerges from my answers is a view of human agency.

Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. The authors offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject.

Jean-Paul Sartre is probably the only existentialist who describes in detail, mainly in Being and Nothingness, the problems arising from the concept of 'motivation'. More precisely, Sartre describes a group of notions - motivation is one of them - that reveal the same basic ontological problem. Like these other notions, he states, the concept of 'motivation' ignores the primordial freedom that is central to human existence, that the human being is freedom, that every person is condemned to be free. I acknowledge that there may be a minor linguistic problem with the term 'motivation'. In translations of Sartre, 'motivation' is used, alongside 'motive', to render a number of terms used in the original French, such as 'motif' and 'mobile'. In this essay, however, I relate only to the English term 'motivation', as it is used in contemporary psychological and educational research. In short, in what follows I do not relate to the other possible translations of the French term for motivation, but rather to its accepted scholarly use in English-speaking countries.

In sum, the non-cognitivist account of motivation is far from unproblematic. The non-cognitivist has trouble telling us what moral attitudes are in a way that is consistent with the phenomenon of variable motivation. Given that the cognitivist has an easy explanation of variable motivation, it seems that cognitivism is preferable to non-cognitivism on the score of motivation, which is a reversal of the way the issue is usually perceived.

This paper argues for a novel interpretation of Hume's account of motivation, according to which beliefs can (alone) motivate action though not by standing as reasons which normatively favour it. It si then suggested that a number of contemporary debates about concerning the nature of reasons for action could benefit from such an approach.

Discusses the different ways in which the concept of imagination has been construed, and provides fascinating glimpses of the role of imagination in the creation and management of Modernity.

Alfred R. Mele defends a broadly 'Humean' theory of motivation. One common dispute between Humeans and anti-Humeans has to do with whether or not a desire is required to motivate action. For the most part Mele avoids this dispute. He claims that there are reasons to think that beliefs cannot motivate action, but finally allows that it might be that it is a contingent fact that beliefs can motivate action in human beings. Instead Mele argues for the claim that certain kinds of desires - namely action-desires - are 'paradigmatic motivational attitudes', similar in an essential way to intentions, and that beliefs are not. Hence it is a necessary truth that action-desires encompass motivation to act; if beliefs encompass motivation to act, it is not a necessary truth that they do. In this way Mele preserves some of what is intuitively right about the Humean account, while admitting that the arguments normally offered in support of the standard Humean claims are open to objections. I argue that Mele's account is implausible. His argument against the claim that state-desires are essentially motivation-encompassing attitudes is convincing, but the same argument proves that action-desires are not essentially motivation-encompassing either. If this difference between desires and beliefs cannot be maintained, however, then Mele fails to defend any motivationally relevant difference between beliefs and desires.

One version of the Humean Theory of Motivation holds that all actions can be causally explained by reference to a belief–desire pair. Some have argued that pretense presents counter-examples to this principle, as pretense is instead causally explained by a belief-like imagining and a desire-like imagining. We argue against this claim by denying imagination the power of motivation. Still, we allow imagination a role in guiding action as a script . We generalize the script concept to show how things besides imagination can occupy this same role in both pretense and non-pretense actions. The Humean Theory of Motivation should then be modified to cover this script role.