"Motivation and Agency": Precis

"Motivation and Agency": PrecisAuthor(s): Alfred R. MeleSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 123, No. 3 (Apr., 2005), pp. 243-247Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4321584 .

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Philosophical Studies (2005) 123: 243-247 ? Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s I 1098-004-4903-0

ALFRED R. MELE

MOTIVATION AND AGENCY: PRECIS

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.

Philosophers with very different theoretical concerns seek to understand motivation. The term 'motivation' appears prominently in theories about how purposive behavior is to be explained, in efforts to clarify the nature, structure, and power of practical reasoning, in work on the concept of a reason for action, in debates about the constitution of moral judgments and moral reasons, and in a related controversy over moral realism. In Motivation and Agency, I explore the nature of



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motivation and its place in explaining not only intentional behavior in general - including behavior in the moral sphere and such non-overt behavior as practical reasoning and decision-making - but also the acquisition of such states of mind as desires, intentions, and beliefs. With motivation as my primary focus, I develop a view of human agency.

Divergent conceptions of motivation seem to be in play in philosophical work on motivation. In my introductory chapter, I identify my concern as a notion of motivation that is consistent with (among other things) the following six popular theses in the philosophical and psychological literature on motivation.

1. Motivation is present in the animal kingdom but does not extend throughout it.

2. Motivated beings have a capacity to represent goals and means to goals.

3. A motivation-encompassing attitude may have either a goal or a means as its object.

4. Motivation varies in strength. 5. The stronger an agent's motivation to A is, in comparison to

the agent's motivation for alternative courses of action, the more likely the agent is to A, other things being equal.

6. Whenever agents act intentionally, there is something they are effectively motivated to do.

Readers who come to the book rejecting one or more of these theses or who believe that no acceptable conception of motivation is consistent with all of them are, I believe, offered good reason to change their minds!

The book has four main parts. Part I, 'Motivation and Ac- tion,' comprises Chapters I and 2. The former chapter prepares the way for subsequent ones by introducing some semi-tech- nical terminology and some important distinctions that facilitate forging ahead with the central project of this book. In Chapter 2, I argue for a constraint on a proper theory of motivation - roughly, that proper motivational explanations of goal-directed actions are causal explanations. I also criticize the thesis that acceptable teleological explanations of actions



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are not causal explanations and offer a solution to the main problem that deviant causal chains pose for a causal theory of action.

Chapters 3 through 6 make up Part II, 'Motivation and Normativity.' Some claims that are driven by normative con- siderations - prominently, some claims about the nature of agents' reasons, about practical reasoning, and about moral agency - are at odds with the position I defend on the place of motivation in human agency. In Part II, I criticize these claims in the course of developing my positive view, but I also argue that my view does not exclude nearly as much as it may seem to in normative spheres and that what it does exclude ought to be rejected. In Chapter 4, I examine a pair of competing views of the motivational power of practical reasoning: 'the antecedent motivation theory,' according to which, in actual human beings, all motivation non-accidentally produced by justificatory reasoning issuing, for example, in a belief that it would be best to A derives at least partly from motivation present in the agent before that belief is acquired; and 'the cognitive engine theory,' according to which, in actual human beings, some instances of practical evaluative reasoning non-accidentally produce motivation that does not derive at all from motivation already present. I defend the former view and criticize the latter. In Chapter 5, I argue that no plausible cognitivist moral theory requires that moral ought- beliefs essentially encompass motivation to act accordingly, and I defend an alternative, causal view of the connection between such beliefs and motivation. This chapter clears some ground for the analysis offered in Chapter 6 of a paradigmatic species of motivational attitude - one that essentially encompasses motivation to act, as action-desires and intentions do. Another ground-clearing project in Part II, which begins in Chapter 3, concerns two competing approaches to understanding reasons for action, one emphasizing their role in explaining intentional actions and the other highlighting their place in the evaluation of intentional actions or their agents. My aim in that project is to leave conceptual space for theories consonant with the latter approach while preserving the integrity of the project of



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explaining intentional human action, including moral conduct, in terms of states of mind, including motivational states.

Part III, 'Strength and Control,' develops an account of the motivational strength of desires of a certain important kind (Ch. 7) and explores the place of motivation and motivational strength in the sphere of self-controlled agency (Ch. 8). Although it is often taken for granted that desires differ in motivational strength, some philosophers are deeply skeptical of that idea - the 'motivational strength idea,' or 'MSI,' for short. Careful attention to their main objections removes obstacles to a broader acceptance of a promising causal approach to understanding human agency and promotes a better grasp of the nature and functions of motivation and motivational strength. One worry about MSI is that combining it with a causal theory about how actions are to be explained has the consequence that we are at the mercy of whatever desire happens to be strongest when we act. I have argued elsewhere that this worry is unfounded (Mele, 1987, Ch. 5; 1992, Ch. 4; 1995, Ch. 3). Chapter 8, which benefits from some well-known experiments by physiologist Benjamin Libet, provides a new route to that conclusion.

Part IV, 'Decision, Agency, and Belief,' offers an account of decision-making (Ch. 9), defends my causal conception of human agency in response to an objection against a 'standard' causal view (Ch. 10), and wraps things up with a discussion of motivationally biased belief and of what motivational explanations of various kinds have in common (Ch. 1 1). Practical decisions are motivated and play a role in generating a range of intentional actions. They also have been regarded as central to a distinctively human form of agency. For these reasons and others, it is important to understand what practical deciding is and how practical decisions may be explained. I defend an account of practical decisions as mental acts of executive assent to first-person plans of action and argue for the existence of decisions so understood (Ch. 9). Reacting to the objection I consider in Chapter 10 against the 'standard' view (Velleman, 1992, 2000) - even though I argue that the objection is mis- guided and does not undermine the view - provides me with the opportunity to reinforce the significance of aspects of my own



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causal conception of human agency that emerge earlier in the book and to show more fully and explicitly how that conception applies to the upper range of human action. I show that the conception of human agency that I defend accommodates the impressive practical reasoning, decision-making, and exercises of self-control that may be involved in the upper range of human action while fitting nicely with my general causal approach to action-explanation. The focus of Chapter I I is the bearing of motivationally biased belief on the project of producing an account of motivational explanation. I sketch a view of the role of motivation in explaining motivationally biased beliefs and outline the core of ordinary motivational explanations.

REFERENCES

Mele, A. (1987): Irrationality, New York: Oxford University Press. Mele, A. (1992): Springs of Action, New York: Oxford University Press. Mele, A. (1995): Autonomous Agents, New York: Oxford University Press. Mele, A. (2003): Motivation and Agency, New York: Oxford University Press. Velleman, J.D. (1992): 'What Happens When Someone Acts?', Mind 101,

461-481. Velleman, J.D. (2000): The Possibility of Practical Reason, Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Department of Philosophy Florida State University Tallahassee, FL32306-1500 USA E-mail: [email protected]



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"Motivation and Agency": Precis