Abstract
The article begins with Jonathan Dancy’s attempt to refute the Humean Theory of Motivation. It first spells out Dancy’s argument for his alternative position, the view he labels ‘Pure Cognitivism’, according to which what motivate are always beliefs, never desires. The article next argues that Dancy’s argument for his position is flawed. On the one hand, it is not true that desire always comes with motivation in the agent; on the other, even if this was the case, it would still not follow that desire is identical with the state of being motivated. When this negative work is done, the article turns to some positive, albeit admittedly tentative remarks about what sort of cognitivist theory of motivation one should endorse. The aim at this point is not to present a brand new theory, but rather to sketch an alternative that stems from what Dancy himself says and is in line with many of his endorsed commitments in other areas. In this way, by moving beyond Pure Cognitivism, the paper sketches a different, but still ‘Dancyesque’ theory of motivation.
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Notes
Cf. Smith (2010). Sometimes a fourth criterion is cited among the defining theses of HTM; see Cuneo (2002). Roughly, it is the claim that the desire that motivates one to act is not causally generated solely by cognitive states. However, many Humeans do not endorse this view (Smith 1994: 179-181, 213-4; Hubin 1996: 43; Shaver 2006: 5-6), and Dancy (2000: 79) also argues against it.
This is deliberately metaphorical since it is an unresolved debate how one cashes out the different roles desire and belief play in motivation on HTM.
Dancy’s main cognitivist targets are pure ascriptivism (Nagel 1970: 29-30), motivated desires (Nagel 1970: 29), and besires (McDowell 1978, 1979; McNaughton 1988: Chap. 7; Phillips 1977). In addition, Dancy (1993: 29-30; 2000: 91) claims that PC tackles Michael Smith’s (1994: Chap. 4) master argument in favor of HTM.
The only sustained treatment is in Lohmar (2008). However, his focus is different from mine.
Here is Dancy (2000: 77): ‘We need to understand that the cognitive lies at the basis of motivation if we are to get into a position from which we can see that what motivates us is not a state of ourselves at all, but rather the nature of the situation.’ See also Dancy (2003, 2005, 2006) for similar statements.
In his unpublished manuscript ‘Non-Actable Desires.’ In my discussion I focus mostly on points that Friedrich does not take up in his paper and will note when I am relying on Friedrich’s discussion. Timothy Schroeder (2004: 17) also discusses the case of a non-actable desire, that of a committee member who wants the committee to decide in his favor without his doing anything to influence their decision. Again, my discussion differs from Schroeder’s own on most points, and where it does not, I make a note of this.
What about non-instrumentally related actions? For instance, Harry might be motivated to search for signs of Paula’s love, to watch her in secret, and so on. One might use Al Mele’s (2003: 23-5) distinction between a desire’s providing motivation and encompassing it to support this idea. Harry’s non-actable desire for Paula’s love would then contribute to the motivational strength of his desire, e.g., to watch Paula secretly and thereby provide, albeit not encompass motivation to act. However, although one might argue that providing motivation is just encompassing motivation to act indirectly, it is an open question if this would be enough to support premise (6).
The first claim is also problematic. See, e.g., Timothy Schroeder’s (2004: 20) interpretation of Galen Strawson’s example about the weather-watchers who desire the weather to be one way rather than another without any disposition to do something about this. Such creatures, Schroeder points out, can still have feelings of despair if their desires about the weather are not realized: that their desires are not motivationally potent does not rule this out.
Note, though, that if hopes and wishes entail desires, this response turns out to be a non-starter. Although I am not able at this point to argue for this claim, it does, intuitively, appear to me to be a plausible suggestion.
With the exception of the phenomenological account (for which see Platts 1979, 1981; Schueler 1995), here I follow Schroeder (2009), where further references can also be found. What I do not consider in the text is the action-based theory of desire and the functionalist account. The reason for omission is straightforward in both cases. It would be question-begging to assume the truth of the former, since this is exactly what is at stake here. And the functionalist (dispositional) theory, as my earlier remarks indicate, allows for a mental state like Harry’s, unless, as a result of another question-begging move, we assume that the correct dispositional theory includes action-dispositions. In fact, it is worth nothing that Velleman put forward his account exactly as a remedy of the shortcomings of Smith’s (1994) dispositional theory of desire.
Of course, it is a possibility that in all these cases one holds that motivation is necessarily involved, i.e., that it is intimately tied to pleasure, affect, reward-based learning, or evaluative thoughts. However, such a move would be unwarranted without further argument. Note, in fact, that some of these theories, such as the reward-based account, are explicitly constructed against the rejection of the idea that desire necessarily involves motivation.
This requires that we have an account of when one is entitled in endorsing the representational content of one’s emotions. For more on this, see Döring (2004).
What if it is not the case that emotions (i.e., affective perceptions) necessarily motivate? Some hold this view, cf. Döring (2010: 192). Then I think the best explanation would be the one Dancy (1993: 24-6) also makes use of: that emotions intrinsically, but not necessarily motivate, and when they don’t, this is because of the factors mentioned above. There is still the question of psychopaths, though, that is, of amoral or outright wicked people. There is a huge literature on this, but the ‘emotional theorist’ would probably say that these people simply don’t possess the relevant moral emotions.
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Acknowledgments
This article has been long in the making. Over the years I have accumulated much debt to many audiences and colleagues across Europe, so many, in fact, that it would be hardly possible to name them all here. Therefore, in this way, I would like to thank all of them for their help with the article. Finally, I would like to thank Daniel Friedrich for giving me permission to use his unpublished work in the article and also an anonymous referee for Acta Analytica who made me rethink (and rewrite) important parts of the article. My research on the subject has been funded by a project grant from the German Research Foundation (grant no. TA 820/1-1) and earlier by a grant from the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 435-2007-7830).
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Tanyi, A. Pure Cognitivism and Beyond. Acta Anal 29, 331–348 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-013-0210-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-013-0210-8