2014/2015
|
136th session
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volume cxv
proceedings of the aristotelian society Edited by
matthew soteriou (warwick)
issue no. 3
What are Sources of Motivation?
giles pearson (bristol)
draft paper
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proceedings of the aristotelian society 136th session
issue no. 3 volume cxv 2014 / 2015
what are sources of motivation?
giles pearson university of bristol
m o n d a y, 1 j u n e 2 0 1 5 17.30 - 19.15
room 349 senate house university of london malet street london wc1e 7hu united kingdom
This event is catered, free of charge, & open to the general public
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Š 2015 the aristotelian society
biography Giles Pearson is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Bristol. He has been at Bristol since 2007. Prior to that he was a lecturer at Birkbeck College, London (2006-2007), and a research fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge (2003-6). His research is in ancient philosophy and metaethics, with particular interests in Aristotle’s moral and philosophical psychology, and philosophical accounts of motivation. He is the author of Aristotle on Desire (2012, Cambridge University Press) and he co-edited (with M. Pakaluk) Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle (2011, Oxford University Press). He is currently working on his second monograph, on contemporary metaethics, concerning the role of desire in motivation.
editorial note The following paper is a draft version that can only be cited or quoted with the author’s permission. The final paper will be published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Issue No. 3, Volume CXV (2015). Please visit the Society’s website for subscription information: www.aristoteliansociety. org.uk.
what are sources of motivation?
giles pearson
In this paper I investigate sources of motivation. In particular, I address what sort of thing – what kind of entity – we are motivated by when we are motivated. I argue against two accounts of sources of motivation, in the sense I intend, in favour of a third. On my view, sources of motivation are not, as some think, to be identified with psychological states, nor are they, as others think, to be identified with facts. Instead, sources of motivation should be identified as the contents of psychological states, in particular, the contents of cognitive states.
SUPPOSE MIKE IS MOTIVATED to go to the pub. Something moves him to do so, perhaps the cosy feeling of being in the pub, or the prospect of drinking a beer or two, or the chance to see some friends. My question is: what sort of thing are we picking out when we refer to what motivates us in such cases? In particular, are we picking out a psychological state or states e.g. a belief, a desire, or a belief-desire pair, or are we picking out the content of such a state or states, or are we picking out a (putative) fact? My use of ‘sources of motivation’ should be contrasted with another. There is a debate in metaethics concerning whether beliefs can bring about desires (and so motivation) on their own or, conversely, whether motivation requires an underived desire or, at least, a desire that is traceable back to such a desire.1 Suppose Mike is motivated to go to the pub and this entails that he desires to go to the pub.2 That could still be compatible with a cognitivist account of motivation since it could be that it was Mike’s belief (that he would enjoy a pint) that brought about his desire. But if his desire to go the pub must be traceable back to a desire (say, for pleasure) that isn’t itself brought about by a belief, the cognitivist account will be mistaken. Philosophers sometimes refer to this issue as concerning whether Wallace (1990, p. 370) calls this the ‘Desire-Out Desire-In principle’ and formulates it thus: ‘the process of thought that gives rise to a desire (as ‘output’) can always be traced back to a further desire (as ‘input’), one which fixes the basic evaluative principles from which the rational explanation of motivation begins’. Sinhababu (2009, p. 465) offers this formulation: ‘Desires can be changed as the conclusion of reasoning only if a desire is among the premises of the reasoning’. 1
The ‘Motivation-Out Desire-In’ principle this relies on has, of course, been contested (see e.g. Platts (1979, p. 256), Shafer-Landau (2003, p. 123)), even though, unlike the Desire-Out Desire-In principle, it is compatible with a cognitivist account of motivation. 2
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sources of motivation must terminate in desires.3 This is not my usage. I am not asking whether the explanation of motivation must always ultimately be traceable back to an underived desire. I am asking what sort of thing - what kind of entity – one is motivated by when one is motivated. (The ‘by’, here, will receive further specification.) Investigating sources of motivation, in the sense I intend, is often approached via examining the nature of motivating reasons. I shall address this too. i. Many philosophers suggest, or write in ways that suggest, that psychological states - desires, beliefs, or belief-desire pairs - are sources of motivation.4 And, indeed, in various contexts, this can seem appropriate. Why is Mike going to the pub? He is motivated by his desire for a beer. What motivates him to order a pint of Pitchfork rather than a pint of Butcombe? This is what he wants to drink. Why does he choose his favourite seat by the bar? This is the chair he always wants to sit in. And so on. In such contexts it can seem natural to think of desires as sources of motivation. Indeed, if someone were to ask Mike why he is drinking Pitchfork rather than Butcombe he can legitimately answer ‘That’s what I want to drink’, and that may also reflect some sort of phenomenological experience he possesses. Beliefs, too, can naturally be cited as sources of motivation in certain contexts. Good examples are cases in which one is motivated to do something owing to an erroneous grasp of the situation. Suppose Mike walks to the pub in the rain one Sunday lunchtime anticipating his usual ‘Bacon Banjos’ and ‘Sausage Sizzlers’, but – unbeknownst to him – there is no food on this time. If asked what motivated him to walk to the pub, Mike would no doubt cite his belief that Bacon Banjos and Sausage Sizzlers were in the offing. He will concede that, gravely, his belief was mistaken this time, but nonetheless that was his source of motivation. Finally, consider belief-desire pairs. Suppose Mike walks to the pub because he wants to talk to Tim, the landlord, whom he believes will be there. But suppose – unbeknownst to Mike – Tim is away visiting his mother. Mike might say he that was motivated to walk to the pub by his See e.g. Korsgaard (1996, p. 314), Lenman (1996, p. 292), van Roojen (2002, p. 308), Barry (2010, p. 197). 3
E.g. desires: Nagel (1970, p. 29 - his ‘unmotivated’ desires), Audi (1993, pp.146-148), Mele (2003, pp. 15-19, Ch. 6), Sinahabu (2009); beliefs: Locke (1982, p. 247), Dancy (1993, p. 29), Shafer-Landau (2003, pp. 122-123); belief-desire pairs: Lenman (1996, p. 297). 4
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belief that Tim would be there in conjunction with his desire to speak to Tim. In such ways, psychological states may seem to be sources of motivation. However, this conclusion has been resisted. Let us focus on desires. Feeling extremely thirsty on a hot day would appear a strong case of a desire (the desire to drink) acting as a source of motivation. But T. M. Scanlon invites us to consider more carefully what is going on: First, there is the unpleasant sensation of dryness in my mouth and throat. Also, there is the thought that a cool drink would relieve this sensation and, in general, feel good. I take this consideration, that drinking would feel good, to count in favour of drinking, and I am on the lookout for some cool drink. This description includes three elements: a present sensation (the dryness in my throat), the belief that some action would lead to a pleasant state in the future, and my taking this future good to be a reason for so acting. It is this future good – the pleasure to be obtained by drinking – that makes it worth my while to look for water. The present dryness in the throat, and the fact that this condition is not about to go away on its own, give me reason to believe that a drink of water in the near future will give this particular pleasure. But the motivational work seems to be done by my taking this future pleasure to count in favour of drinking. (1998, p. 38)
The key to Scanlon’s analysis is to consider the structure of the desire from the agent’s perspective. With this in view, he thinks we can see that ‘[h]aving a desire to drink is not merely a matter of feeling impelled to do so; it involves seeing drink as desirable (because, for example, it would be pleasant)’ (1998, p. 38)5, and it is the latter, on Scanlon’s account, that serves as the source of motivation, not the desire itself. If this generalises, as Scanlon thinks it does, sources of motivation will not be desires, but taking some desirable feature of an act to count in favour of acting.6 Is Scanlon right? Even given that we are focusing on what agents are motivated by, rather than what motivation can be traced back to (see Intro.), it seems to depend on how we construe ‘sources of motivation’. Scanlon’s understanding of this - he uses the expression himself (1998, p. Scanlon refers to Quinn’s example (1993, pp. 236-237) of an agent who is moved to turn radios on without seeing anything good about this. Perhaps such urges are possible, but ‘the idea of such a purely functional state fails to capture something essential in the most common cases of desire: desiring something involves having a tendency to see something good or desirable about it’ (1998: 38). 5
In fact, he thinks experiential (unmotivated) desires, such as thirst, are the harder case. With ‘motivated desires’ (see Nagel 1970, pp. 29-30) he thinks it clear that desires aren’t ‘sources of motivation but rather the motivational consequences of something else, such as the agent’s recognition of something as a duty, or as supported by a reason of some other kind’ (1998, p. 37). 6
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37) - is what we might call ‘forward-facing’. He is, in effect, inviting us to consider what the agent looks to when he or she is motivated. This is similar to John McDowell’s ‘favourable light’ in which agents view acting (1978, p. 15) or Tom Nagel’s ‘considerations’ in view of which agents are motivated (1970, p. 29). The thought is then that desires do not enter into this viewpoint; rather, agents are motivated by what they see as desirable about the acts in question.7 But there seems to be another understanding of ‘sources of motivation’ (in the ‘motivated by’ sense). We can say we were motivated to scratch an itch by our desire to scratch it, and that Mike was motivated to go to the pub by his desire for a Sausage Sizzler. It can be granted, for the sake of argument, that we must have seen something desirable about these acts (alleviating discomfort, pleasure, etc.), but this alone does not seem to undermine the appropriateness of claiming that we were motivated by desires – as psychological states – for those things. The desires themselves might not be something we focus on, or themselves cast a favourable light on the act, but they are nonetheless attributable or ascribable to us and can be said to be states we possess which motivate us.8 Thus, even if desires do not serve as sources of motivation in the forward-facing sense they may nonetheless do so in this (what we might call) ‘backward-facing’ sense. And, I take it, this notion goes some way towards accounting for the intuitions we started with. In this paper I am concerned with sources of motivation in the forward-facing sense. But is it even correct to maintain that desires cannot serve as sources of motivation in this sense? What about when we try to work out what we want; for example, when choosing a dish on a menu or what to do on a day off? We might think: ‘What do I fancy?’ ‘What do I really want to do?’ and thereby bring our desires into conscious reflection. And it seems possible that what we resolve on can be a source of motivation. Or consider cases in which we have to resist doing something we avow we really want to do. Mike might judge that he really shouldn’t go to the pub tonight since he has an early start tomorrow, but suppose he really wants to go to the pub because some old friends are in town. Mike Using ‘desirable’ rather than ‘good’ enables us to side-step some putative counter-examples to the claim that desiring something involves seeing something good about doing it. Even Satan sees something desirable about doing evil (cf. Blackburn 1998, p. 61; Raz 1999, pp. 31-34). ‘Desirable’ is also intended to be understood broadly enough to include ‘deontic’ considerations. 7
Being motivated ‘by’ desires in this sense need not entail that desires should be thought of as causing behaviour; the states could simply be attributable to agents and something we can invoke in certain explanations. Equally, there is a question about precisely what we are attributing to agents when we attribute such a state to them (see esp. Collins 1987). 8
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might say to himself: ‘I shouldn’t go, I’ve got to get up early tomorrow, but I really want to go’. If this motivates him, his desire may seem to serve as his source of motivation.9 We clearly can reflect on the desires we possess and weigh them in our deliberations, but does this really show that sources of motivation (in the forward-facing sense) can actually be psychological states, our desirings? Suppose one is trying to decide between two dishes on a menu. Possibly one tries to envisage how the two dishes might taste and then seek to select the one that one would enjoy most, or perhaps considerations pertaining to the dishes’ calorie-count or size may come into play? Nonetheless, either way, in such scenarios it is, again, not really the desire for either dish that is serving as one’s source of motivation, but (the contents of the) evaluative cognitions revealing what is desirable about them. I suppose it might be suggested that one could simply ask oneself: ‘Which dish do I want?’ and then imagine both dishes until an answer pops into one’s head, without explicitly rehearsing the putative desirability-features of both dishes. But even if this description can be appropriate, it still wouldn’t show that desires, as psychological states, can serve as sources of motivation. For, in such a scenario, what serves as the source of motivation seems to be the content of the thought resolved on, say, ‘I most want the chicken’ or simply ‘The chicken!’ and this seems to be a conclusion one arrives at in response to raising the question of what one most wants, not a psychological state itself.10 The same points would seem to hold, mutatis mutandis, for any proposed psychological state, or combination of such states.11 If we think of sources of motivation as what we look to or that in light of which we are motivated (the forward-facing notion) it becomes mysterious how a psychological state could be a source of motivation. What we encounter in our experience are the contents of psychological states, not psychological states themselves. And even when we do consciously reflect on our psychological states, and consider that we have them, we are again encountering the content of such a state (content that refers to the states we possess), not a state itself. Before we move on, we should pause to consider the identification of If MO-DI is correct (see n.2) then even if he is motivated to stay in by thoughts about the importance of getting up early the next day, this will still reflect a desire he possesses, in some suitably broad sense of ‘desire’. 9
Even here there would presumably be a desirability-feature that is at least seen by the agent, even if not explicitly reasoned about (cf. Anscombe (1957, pp. 70-71); Stocker (1979); Dancy (1993, p34-35)). For another argument that desires are not sources of motivation (‘motivating reasons’), see Alvarez (2010, Ch. 4). 10
11
See also Dancy (2000, p. 124) and Hyman (1999, p. 444) on beliefs.
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the psychological state in question as cognitive, rather than, say, conative. Standardly, the contents of our desires refer simply to the actions or states of affairs we desire. We desire, for example, to eat a cream cake, or to go for a run.12 Let us assume, as before, that insofar as we desire these things, we must construe the acts as desirable in some respect. We want the cake for the pleasure that would provide, and we want to go for a run for (say) the health-benefits. But the states that reveal the desirability-features, here, seem to be cognitive – cognitive states that underlie our desires - not desires themselves. It may, perhaps, sometimes seem natural to refer to desirability-features in our specifications of the contents of certain desires. We might, for instance, say that we desire a delicious-looking cake, or to view a beautiful sunset. But such cases don’t really undermine the point at hand; for they seem to be ones in which we incorporate (part of) the content of the underlying evaluative cognition into the content of the desire, perhaps for contextual emphasis. We take it that the cake is delicious (or looks delicious), and so want to eat it, and we construe the sunset as beautiful, and so want to admire it, and we draw attention to these features for various reasons when expressing our desires. If we now consider sources of motivation, it seems clear that they are best thought of as the contents of such underlying evaluative cognitions, rather than the contents of the desires those cognitions underlie.13 What appears to us to motivate our performing an act is the action under the guise of the relevant desirability-feature, not simply the action itself. It is what we see as attractive about eating a cream cake, or going for a run, not simply eating the cake or going for a run that motivates us. And even if on some occasions we may simply refer to the action or object desired as what motivates us - ‘What’s motivating you to stay here?’ one might be asked, ‘The cream cake!’ one might reply – arguably this is because the cognised desirability-feature is simply assumed. It is understood that we construe the cake as something that would be pleasurable to eat, and that this is what motivates us. So let the proposal be that sources of motivation in the forward-facing sense are the contents of evaluative cognitive states, namely, those that reveal what we see as desirable about performing the acts in question. In what follows I shall refer to this proposal as the view that sources of I am assuming the standard propositional-attitude model of mental states, where we can have different attitudes to the same content (so, to facilitate transposing the content, the above could, without loss, be rephrased as desiring that I eat a cream cake or that I go for a run). For an alternative way of modelling mental states, see e.g. Goldman (1970, pp. 101-102). 12
Contrast e.g. Audi (1993, pp. 146-148) and Davis (2003, p. 453). See also Alvarez’s (2010, Ch. 4) interesting discussion of desires and goals. 13
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motivation are propositional content. Depending on how we understand propositional content this may turn out to be too restrictive, for it may rule out certain kinds of non-rational motivation.14 If so, we shall need to extend the contents of cognitive states beyond propositional content, but to pursue this issue now would take me too far astray. ii. Against my proposal, a number of philosophers instead identify sources of motivation (in the forward-facing sense) with facts. In the remainder of this paper I shall address the accounts of two central protagonists of this view: Jonathan Dancy and Maria Alvarez (although their views differ in important ways, as I shall bring out). Both Dancy and Alvarez arrive at the conclusion that sources of motivation are facts via the notion of motivating reasons. In effect, they think: (1) Sources of motivation (in success cases at least) are motivating reasons; (2) Motivating reasons are facts; So (3) Sources of motivation (in success cases at least) are facts. Let me elaborate. Concerning (1), Dancy refers to explaining an agent’s performing some action by specifying ‘the reasons in light of which he acted’ (2000, p. 5)15, and he notes: In what follows, the phrase ‘in the light of’ will be used to signify the relation between an agent and the reasons for which the agent acted. And I will speak of the agent’s reasons in a similar way. The agent’s reasons are the reasons that motivated him, namely the considerations in the light of which he chose to do what he did. (2000, p. 6)
Similarly, Alvarez claims: A reason is called a ‘motivating reason’ because it is something that motivates an agent, that is, it is what he took to make his f-ing right and hence to speak in favour of his f-ing; and which played a role in his deciding to f. (2010, p. 35) Scanlon, for example, takes sources of motivation to be perceived reasons, perceived reasons to be contents of beliefs, and suggests that contents of beliefs are propositions (see 1998, p. 57). I argue this is too restrictive in my 2011. For arguments that the contents of perceptual experiences aren’t propositions, see e.g. Crane (2009) and Montague (2007). 14
Dancy develops his views in his 1995, 1996, 2000 and 2003. In what follows I draw freely from these. 15
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‘Considerations that motivated the agent’ (Dancy) or what the agent ‘took to speak in favour of acting’ (Alvarez) are just the sort of thing I am trying to capture by ‘sources of motivation in the forward-facing sense’.16 The need (with Alvarez) for the parenthetical ‘in success cases at least’, in (1), will become clear. Turn now to (2). Dancy takes it to be bordering on a trivial truth that ‘a motivating reason, that in the light of which one acts, must be the sort of thing that is capable of being among the [normative]17 reasons in favour of so acting; it must, in this sense, be possible to act for a good reason’ (2000, p. 103). (By ‘normative’ or ‘good’ reasons he means reasons ‘we try to cite in favour of an action ... the ones that should show that the action was sensible or right or whatever’ (2000, p. 2).) Dancy is so sure that ‘someone can do an action for the very reason that makes it right’ (1996, p. 172), that is, that what motivates an agent to perform some action can be what actually favours doing it - in short, that ‘motivating reasons should be the right sort of thing to be normative reasons’ (2000, p. 103, my emphasis) - that he refers to the idea as ‘the normative constraint’, and rejects views simply if they don’t meet it.18 For ease of exposition I shall employ Dancy’s label, but whether the principle really is a ‘constraint’ shall be examined later. Dancy next claims that normative reasons are facts or states of affairs: What makes my action wrong is that she badly needed help and I just walked away from her. What makes overtaking on the wrong side of a bend not a very sensible thing to do is that there may well be something coming the other way. Once one has started in this vein one can go on for ever. [It must] be right to think of normative reason as facts, as states of affairs, or as features of the situation (2000, p. 104).
Dancy uses ‘source of motivation’ at e.g. 2000, p. 77. Cf. also Bittner, who writes of reasons as ‘something for which, and thus literally, before which, in front of which, one does something’ (2001, p. 77). Some think motivating reasons can be understood in two ways (corresponding to the dual use of ‘sources of motivation’ mentioned in §I); namely, either as psychological states (after e.g. Davidson (1980) and Smith (1994, Ch. 4 see also 2003, 464-6)) or as the contents of such states (Dancy (2000), Alvarez (2010)). See Smith (2003), Wallace (2003) and Parfit (2011, pp. 454-455) for assertions that both uses are legitimate, and Dancy (2003) for resistance. 16
Dancy omits the ‘normative’ but it is evidently assumed; see also 2000, pp. 6-7. (Ultimately Dancy wants us to give up the distinction between motivating and normative reasons because he thinks it leads us to believe (mistakenly) there are two fundamentally different kinds of reason. This directly relates to my discussion below.) 17
Dancy (1995, 1996, and 2000, Chapter 5) is particularly concerned to wield the normative constraint against those, such as Smith (1994, Ch. 4), who think that normative reasons are facts while motivating reasons are psychological states. 18
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But if normative reasons are facts or states of affairs, and motivating reasons can be normative reasons, it seems that when an agent’s motivating reasons are normative reasons, the agent’s motivating reason is a fact or state of affairs. As Dancy writes: [...] a matter of fact can be someone’s [motivating] reason for action. If my [motivating] reason for going to Georgetown is that a conference is to be held there, and I am right about that, then something that is the case is my reason for making the trip. (2003, p. 480; glosses added)
In fact, Dancy wants a stronger conclusion. Following Bernard Williams (1981, p. 102), he thinks (see e.g. 1995, p. 13) that whether or not the agent has true or false beliefs cannot affect the form of the explanation which will be appropriate to her actions. Call this ‘the explanatory maxim’. Since Dancy accepts this maxim, and wants to take his ‘lead’ from ‘the success cases’ (2000, p. 138), he must hold not merely that motivating reasons can be facts or states of affairs, but that motivating reasons are always facts or states of affairs, since according to the maxim whether or not we are mistaken cannot change the form of the account. Dancy, then, holds (2). Alvarez also claims that motivating reasons are facts, although, unlike Dancy, she takes facts to be true propositions, rather than states of affairs (see e.g. 2010, pp. 41-42, 151-154). (This of course brings her view closer to my own but, as we shall see, it is still importantly different, and the differences make it expedient to consider her with Dancy.) Why does Alvarez think motivating reasons are only true propositions? She writes: [...] if the truth or falsehood of what is presented as one’s reason for acting (or for believing) did not affect its status as a reason, then there would be no need to retract one’s claim that one’s reason for f-ing was that p on being confronted with the fact that not-p. But [...] there is an implicit contradiction in claims that one’s reason was something one knows to be false and, because of this, on finding out that it is not the case that p, one has to retract the claim that one’s reason was that p. (2010, p. 138)
She spells out the ‘implicit contradiction’ as follows: I cannot, without an air of paradox because of the implicit contradiction, say something like: ‘My reason for giving him the money is that he needs it, although he doesn’t’ […] such statements remain paradoxical when recast in the third-person: ‘Her reason for giving him the money is that he needs it, although he doesn’t’ […] [and again] in the past tense. Thus compare ‘My reason for giving him the money was that he needed it, although he didn’t need it’ and ‘I believed that he needed money, although he didn’t’: the first retains an air of paradox that the second does not have. (2010, p. 134)
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One might question whether ‘My reason for giving him the money was that he needed it, although he didn’t’ really does sound paradoxical. If I subsequently discovered the chap didn’t need the money, can’t we still say that that was my reason for giving him it? Alvarez would resist this: we should then say that my reason was not his needing the money – he didn’t after all – but my believing he needed the money (see, 2011, p. 178). (On Alvarez’s account this would then be an ‘explanatory’ reason, not a motivating one. The agent would have been motivated only by an apparent reason.19) I suppose one might instead suggest that when we are motivated by false beliefs we are motivated by false reasons? Against this, Alvarez writes: [...] this is analogous to saying that a Vermeer that has been shown to be fake is still a Vermeer – only it is a fake Vermeer. And clearly this is just a way of saying that it was not really a Vermeer, just as saying that something is a false reason is just a way of saying that it is not really a reason. Of course, one might, if one wishes, call false beliefs that motivate ‘false reasons’ but I think that is misleading as it suggests that they are reasons, which they are not. (2010, p. 140)
It does sound odd to say that a fake Vermeer is a Vermeer, only a fake one. It is not a Vermeer at all - it just looks like a Vermeer (to the untrained eye). If reasons are analogous to this, a mistaken reason would not be a reason, only a mistaken one. It would not be a reason at all - but just appear one. Both Dancy and Alvarez, then, affirm (1) and (2) - albeit with different uses of ‘fact’. From these premises we are able to infer (3). iii. What should we make of these views? Let us take Dancy first. It is surely highly plausible to think that an agent’s beliefs are relevant to how he or she is motivated. If Mike believed the pub wasn’t serving Sausage Sizzlers, he wouldn’t have walked there. In fact, Dancy agrees. Even though, as we have seen, he thinks motivating reasons are facts, he also thinks that motivating reasons can be characterised as things believed or what is believed (see e.g. 2000, p. 101). The conjunction of these views, however, seems problematic. For it is natural to think of things believed as the contents of beliefs and to equate contents of beliefs with propositions (where proposi-
For her distinctions between motivating, explanatory and normative reasons, see 2010, pp. 33-39. 19
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tions are, as Dancy accepts20, truth-bearers, not states of affairs). It seems, then, that Dancy must either give up the idea that things believed are the contents of beliefs, or else give up the idea that the contents of beliefs are propositions. If the former, he would seem to be faced with the difficulty of telling us what these ‘things-believed’ are, on his view, if not the contents of beliefs (see 2000, pp. 147-8). If, instead, he gives up the idea that contents of beliefs are propositions, he will, by his own admission, be rejecting a ‘philosophical commonplace’ and advancing an ‘outlandish’ philosophy of mind (2000, p. 114). (That said, later on (2000, p148, quoted below), when addressing his own view, he nonetheless freely exchanges ‘contents of belief’ with ‘what is believed’.) There is a further problem. As we have seen, Dancy accepts the explanatory maxim and so holds that whether the agent is mistaken cannot affect the form of the account we provide. But then Dancy owes us an explanation of what it is that agents are motivated by when they possess false beliefs. Clearly, they cannot then be motivated by facts as obtaining states of affairs. So by what? Dancy responds as follows: Perhaps the only answer is that it is something that may or may not be the case. But I do not pretend that this is very enlightening. (2000, p. 147)
A little later, he adds: Perhaps all that needs to be said, and all that can be said, is that the content of a belief, what is believed, is something that either is the case or is not. (2000, p. 148)
Given the insistence that motivating reasons can be facts, it seems that to accommodate the explanatory maxim we must accept that facts or states of affairs can either be or not be. Motivating reasons are things believed, what is believed may either be the case or not be the case, but motivating reasons are also facts. So facts may either be the case or not the case: there can be non-factive facts. And this sounds counter-intuitive to say the least – indeed, verging on the mysterious.21 Now turn to Alvarez’s view. She accepts the normative constraint (see e.g. 2010, p. 36), but appears to reject the explanatory maxim: although one and the same reason can be both normative and motivating (= the normative constraint), we will, on her view, only count as being motivated ‘I see an ontological gulf between things capable of being the case (i.e. states of affairs) and things capable of being true (either propositions or sentences)’ (2000, p. 117). Like Dancy, I assume that propositions are truth-bearers in this paper. 20
Dancy also considers White’s (1972) account of non-obtaining (but not non-existing) content, but concedes that he is unclear whether this account ‘allows us to be realist enough about the content of a belief when the belief is true’ (2000, p. 148). 21
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by reasons (= ‘facts’) in success cases; in error cases the agent isn’t motivated by a fact but instead ‘acts for what is merely an apparent reason’ (2010, p. 144, emphasis in original). On this view, just as a fake Vermeer is not a Vermeer, but only appears such, so too there aren’t false motivating reasons, but only apparent motivating reasons, which are obviously not facts. Contra the explanatory maxim, it seems, sources of motivation can be different in form depending on whether the agent possesses true or false beliefs. Should we accept the explanatory maxim? The maxim, in this context at least,22 surely does have intuitive force. For it is hard to see how whether or not the agent has a correct understanding of the situation could affect the status of the entity she is motivated by in the forward-facing sense. No doubt in success cases we shall say she is motivated to do something that actually matches the way things are. But suppose she got there by accident or by a fluke? To say that, nonetheless, since she is motivated to do something that happens to correspond to what she has normative reason to do, she must be motivated by a different kind of entity, would seem highly odd and to cry out for explanation. However, although Alvarez appears to reject the explanatory maxim, this isn’t, I think, her underlying view. It is only an ambiguity in the way ‘fact’ can be employed that creates this impression. Facts can be taken to be truth-makers, the things owing to which true propositions are true. We can, for example, say that the fact that Liverpool are 4-0 up at half-time makes it true to assert that they are if someone asks us. Facts, in this usage, would often be equated with states of affairs.23 But facts can also be taken to be true truth-bearers rather than truth-makers. If someone states, truly, that Liverpool are 4-0 up she can be said to assert a fact, where the fact is a successful truth-bearer, not a truth-maker. Facts, in this usage, would often be equated with true propositions.24 As I noted earlier, Alvarez typically uses ‘facts’ to pick out true propo‘This context’ being one in which we are considering sources of motivation in the forward-facing sense. Alvarez explicitly resists the principle for explanatory reasons. With them, in success cases we simply state the reason, whereas in error cases we cite the agent’s belief (‘My reason for giving him the money was that he needed it’ becomes ‘My reason for giving him the money was that I believed he needed it’). If this is right, it clearly doesn’t undermine the soundness of the maxim in the motivational context. Bittner (2001, p. 112f) also rejects the explanatory maxim, but space prevents discussion of his view. 22
For some issues with thinking of facts as obtaining states of affairs, see e.g. Textor (2012, §3.2). 23
24
See esp. Frege 1967 [1918], p.35: ‘A fact is a thought that is true’.
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sitions (2010, pp. 41-42, 151-154)25, not, as Dancy does, states of affairs (hence if we employ Dancy’s notion of facts as states of affairs, she would not hold that agents are motivated by facts). Given this, she presumably thinks that in error cases agents are motivated by propositions that happen to be false. But if this is Alvarez’s view, it would seem that she ought to accept the explanatory maxim since, on her view, in both error and success cases agents are motivated by propositions. Nonetheless, there is still a significant disagreement between Alvarez and myself. As noted, she also accepts the normative constraint. This entails that motivating and normative reasons can be the very same sort of thing and, given the explanatory maxim, that they must be so in both success and error cases. Given, then, that Alvarez thinks motivating reasons are propositions (true ones), normative reasons must also be propositions. This, I think, we should reject. As I see it, Dancy must be right to think that normative reasons are facts as states of affairs (i.e. truth-makers), not true propositions (true truth-bearers). It is facts as states of affairs, not propositions, that actually favour or disfavour certain actions. Given what I am and all the various properties I have, the fact that a glass of water is laced with arsenic is a reason for me not to drink it. Given Mike’s make-up, the fact that the pub is serving pints of Pitchfork and offering Bacon Banjos and Sausage Sizzlers is a reason for him to walk there in the rain. Mike will not be happy if he turns up at the pub and Tim tries to offer him a proposition to eat or drink: he wants a pint and Sausage Sizzler. Propositions can, of course, pick out and refer to the normative reasons we possess, but the normative reasons themselves must be what actually favour or disfavour the acts in question, that is, facts as states of affairs. It is perhaps worth adding that the fact that normative reasons can be characterised with that-clauses should not make us think they are propositions. As Dancy notes: Of course we do, or at least can, say such things as ‘That she is in distress is what made this action callous, and that she is in distress is a proposition’. But this should not persuade us that the very thing that made his action callous is a proposition. We also say things like ‘That the cliff was unstable was a consequence of the heavy rain, and that the cliff was unstable is a proposition’, but we would surely be unwise to conclude from this that a proposition was a consequence of heavy rain. (2000, pp. 115-116)
Although she does on occasion gloss ‘facts’ with ‘states of affairs’ (2010: 157). But evidently facts can’t be both truth-bearers and truth-makers. Since, if she adopts the view that facts are states of affairs, her account would collapse into Dancy’s, I shall take her more regular assertion that facts are true propositions to be authoritative. 25
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(It may also be worth noting that the view that normative reasons are facts as states of affairs isn’t in tension with the ‘Humean’ view that normative reasons are grounded in agents’ desires (as per e.g. Williams 1981); for, it could be that the facts in question are in part constituted by agents’ desires and that therefore the facts that pick our normative reasons are grounded in desires. Hence neither does the simple notion that normative reasons are facts support an ‘anti-Humean’ account of normative reasons, such as Dancy’s (2000, Chs. 2-3) - until we specify what can constitute the ‘facts’ in question, the notion that normative reasons are facts is neutral on this matter.) If, then, we accept that normative reasons are facts, and we embrace the explanatory maxim, we appear to be left with two options. We either follow Dancy and maintain that motivating reasons are not propositions (and thereby embrace and attempt to explain the difficulties for his view), or else we reject the normative constraint, which both Alvarez and Dancy endorse. Since the notion that motivating reasons (sources of motivation) are propositions seems eminently plausible to me (see §I), it is the latter option I favour. Hence we must finally consider the normative constraint. iv. Given that Dancy takes rejection of the normative constraint - the notion that ‘motivating reasons should be the right sort of thing to be normative reasons’ (2000, p. 103, my emphasis) - to be ‘so paradoxical as to be close to ridiculous’ (1996, p. 172), one might think that anyone who wishes to resist this principle is going to have to reject a trivial truth. But in fact this is all Dancy says in favour of the principle: Why should it be true that ‘if there are [normative] reasons for action, it must be that people sometimes act for those reasons, and if they do, their reasons must figure in some correct explanation of their action’? The best I can do is to resort to rhetoric. How could there be this complex structure of reasons favouring and disfavouring actions, if humans were incapable of registering the fact? And how could it be possible in general for people to recognise the fact and not to take it into account in practical deliberation? Is there any difference here between practical and theoretical deliberation? Suppose that there are reasons for and against different beliefs, as there are for and against different actions. Again it seems inconceivable that there should be this structure on the theoretical side unless humans were capable of recognising it, at least to some extent. And surely it is inconceivable that we should do other than take the things we recognise to be relevant to the question what to believe. In my view, then, we have to accept that justifying [= normative] reasons are capable of explaining actions. (1995, p. 11-12)
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Dancy’s point is indeed rhetorical. It is not in fact difficult to imagine that there could be a complex set of favouring or disfavouring reasons that we are somehow unable to grasp. Perhaps we are inherently cognitively deficient and unable to grasp the true nature of things? And if we can’t grasp such reasons, clearly we wouldn’t be able to take them into account in our practical reasoning. (Of course we would then want to know why we should nonetheless think those reasons exist, but that would be another matter.) Similarly with theoretical reasons. Suppose there is a ‘thing-in-itself’ that humans are in principle incapable of grasping, but which reflects the true nature of reality. Then human beings would be unable to recognise it or take it into account in their beliefs (except perhaps in the way Kant attempts to do). Far from being ‘inconceivable’, as Dancy repeatedly asserts, these possibilities seem manifestly conceivable, even if we may doubt their plausibility. I point this out not because I wish to argue that there are normative reasons we are incapable of registering, but simply to emphasise, as Dancy appears to concede, that the considerations he supplies in favour of the normative constraint are very weak indeed. In fact, I am perfectly happy to accept the following: (1) Normative reasons are facts (in the truth-making sense, i.e. states of affairs); (2) Normative reasons are capable of favouring or disfavouring certain actions; (3) We are capable of registering such reasons; (4) Having registered such reasons, we are capable of taking them into account in our practical deliberation. Nonetheless, accepting (1)-(4) does not, as I see it, commit us to accepting the normative constraint. If this is right, it just goes to show that Dancy’s considerations above were not only weak, but in fact fail to support the claim he seeks to advance. We can do justice to (1)-(4) in a different way. If, with Dancy, we accept (1) - that normative reasons are facts (as truth-makers, i.e. states of affairs) - this readily accounts for (2): as noted in the last section, facts (as states of affairs) seem just the sort of thing that can actually favour or disfavour certain actions. But then also suppose, contra Dancy, that motivating reasons are propositions, the contents of cognitive states. Would it follow, as Dancy appears to think, that humans are ‘incapable of registering’ normative reasons? No, it would not. Agents could grasp that a certain fact or state of affairs counts in favour of some action without it being the case that the state of affairs itself serves as
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their motivating reason. Instead, they could grasp a proposition that picks out the state of affairs and be motivated by that proposition. They would then register the normative reason in question and be able to take it into account in practical deliberation, but their motivating reason would remain a proposition, not a state of affairs. All of the considerations that are buried in Dancy’s rhetoric can be accounted for without accepting the normative constraint. Dancy claimed that if his motivating reason for going to Georgetown is that a conference is to be held there, and he is right about that, then something that is the case is his reason for making the trip (2003, p. 480). He insists that this shows that ‘a matter of fact can be someone’s [motivating] reason for action’. Instead, I say that Dancy’s motivating reason would be characterised as (something like) the following true proposition: that it is desirable to attend the conference in Georgetown, and his normative reason as (something like) the following fact: Dancy’s position being such as it is, the conference being held in Georgetown makes it good for him to make the trip there. Motivating reasons are (true) propositions, normative reasons are facts or states of affairs. Dancy might demand a bit more from us about what it means to act for a good reason, on our view, since we can’t strictly speaking say that if his motivating reason for going to Georgetown is that a conference is to be held there, and he is right about that, a state of affairs is his motivating reason for making the trip.26 But we can say that a state of affairs is his normative reason for making the trip. And although, on my view, motivating reasons are not states of affairs, our motivating reasons, as the propositions in light of which we act, will be true if the state of affairs obtains. Indeed, in such scenarios, the proposition that picks out the motivating reason is true precisely because the normative reason in question obtains or is the case. Equally, insofar as we can be motivated by our awareness of a normative fact, we can be motivated by a proposition which itself reflects our grasping what we have normative reason to do. In such a scenario, our motivating propositions will then pick out the normative facts precisely because we are aware of them. And if, in some such way, the agent has formed the motivating reason judicially, this can provide a case in which the motivating reason counts as a good motivating reason. But it is a good reason not because it now suddenly becomes a different sort of entity (a state of affairs), but because it accurately picks out that normative reason (as a state of affairs), and has been formed appropriately. Contra Dancy, being able to recognise and take normative reasons into account doesn’t require that motivating reasons can be normative reasons. What follows is my reply to Dancy’s objection to a view that shares some features with mine, in his 2000, p. 119. 26
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All it requires is our grasping propositions that pick out these reasons. I submit this account should give us, and Dancy, everything we want – bar, of course, the normative constraint. But our account also has a huge advantage over Dancy’s when we consider what to say when we fail to grasp what we have normative reason to do. Instead of having to maintain that we are motivated by non-factive facts (whatever they are), we can still say that we are motivated by propositions, it is just that the propositions fail to map onto what we in fact have normative reason to do. We can, for example, be motivated by the proposition: that drinking another beer would be a good thing to do, without it being the case that it would in fact be a good thing. Or, to revert to Dancy’s example, suppose the conference was actually in Georgedale, not Georgetown. We could then say that Dancy has no reason to do what he takes himself to have reason to do, that is, that his source of motivation - the proposition that it is desirable to attend the conference in Georgetown - fails to map onto his normative reason – the fact that since the conference is being held in Georgedale, he should make the trip there. My account also obviously satisfies the explanatory maxim, since in both success and non-success cases the agent is motivated by propositions; it is just that in the former, the propositions are true and pick out normative facts, whereas in the latter, they are false and fail to pick out normative facts. In my view, Dancy was right to accept the explanatory maxim, but he identified the wrong explanans. We don’t insist that facts explain motivation, and then invent a type of fact that isn’t factive; rather, in both factual and error cases, the source of motivation is a proposition, it is just that in success cases the proposition picks out a normative reason, whereas in error cases it doesn’t. My account obviously also has the further advantage that is doesn’t require, as Dancy put it, an ‘outlandish’ philosophy of mind, since the account has maintained throughout that the contents of beliefs are propositions. It was, I submit, Dancy’s unsupported normative constraint that caused all the mischief. If we give this up, the motivation for his view evaporates and the troubles disappear. Finally, consider what we should say about the relation between motivating reasons and sources of motivation. If we agree with Alvarez that motivating reasons (propositions for her) must actually be reasons (true propositions) for doing something (see §II), it will turn out that motivating reasons are only a subset of sources of motivation in the sense I have been investigating. Motivating reasons will pick out sources of motivation to do what we in fact have normative reason to do. If that best reflects the way we employ ‘motivating reason’, we should just accept this. But it would, it seems to me, make my notion of ‘sources of motivation’ a more
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useful concept, since we seek to explain motivation not just in success cases but in error cases too. Alternatively, we could say that agents are motivated by apparent reasons (propositions whether true or false) and allow that some of those apparent reasons will correspond to normative reasons whereas others will not. This will permit us to identify sources of motivation (or at least belief-based sources of motivation; see the end of §I) with apparent reasons. But, either way, sources of motivation will not sensibly be characterised as facts. I conclude, then, that sources of motivation are the contents of cognitive states. I suspect that many would hear this as having a strong antiHumean implication for our accounts of motivation (Scanlon certainly does). I don’t think this follows but must reserve discussion of that matter for another occasion. Department of Philosophy University of Bristol Cotham House Bristol BS6 6JL giles.pearson@bristol.ac.uk
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references Alvarez, Maria 2010: Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957: Intention, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Audi, Robert 1993: ‘Acting for Reasons’. In his Action, Intention, and Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Barry, Melissa 2010: ‘Humean Theories of Motivation’. In Oxford Studies in Metaethics 5, pp. 195-223. Blackburn, Simon 1998: Ruling Passions. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bittner, Rüdiger 2001: Doing Things for Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, Arthur W. 1987: The Nature of Mental Things. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Crane, Tim 2009: ‘Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?’ Philosophical Quarterly 59: 236, pp. 452-469. Dancy, Jonathan 1993: Moral Reasons. Oxford: Blackwell. ------- 1995: ‘Why there really is no such thing as a theory of motivation’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95, pp. 1-18. ------- 1996: ‘Real Values in a Humean Context’. Ratio 9: 2, pp. 171-83 ------- 2000: Practical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ------- 2003: ‘Replies’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67: 2, pp. 468-490. Davidson, Donald 1980: ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’. In his Actions and Events, pp. 3-19. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, Wayne A. 2003: ‘Psychologism and Humeanism’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67: 2, pp. 452-459. Frege, Gottlob 1967 [1918]: ‘The Thought: A Logical Inquiry’. In P. F. Strawson (ed.) Philosophical Logic, pp. 17-38, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alvin I. 1970: A Theory of Human Action, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc.
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Hyman, John 1999: ‘How Knowledge Works’. Philosophical Quarterly 49, pp. 433-51. Korsgaard, Christine 1996: ‘Skepticism about practical reason’. In her Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lenman, James 1996: ‘Belief, Desire and Motivation: An Essay in QuasiHydraulics’. American Philosophical Quarterly. 33: 3, pp. 291301. Locke, Don 1982: ‘Beliefs, Desires and Reasons for Action’. American Philosophical Quarterly 19:3, pp. 241-249. McDowell, John 1978: ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 52, 1329. Mele, Alfred R. 2003: Motivation and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montague, Michelle 2007: ‘Against Propositionalism’. Nous, 41: 3, pp. 503-518. Nagel, Thomas 1970: The Possibility of Altruism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parfit, Derek 2011: On What Matters Volume One. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pearson, Giles 2011: ‘Aristotle and Scanlon on desire and motivation’. In M. Pakaluk and G. Pearson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle, pp. 95-117. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Platts, Mark 1979: Ways of Meaning: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Language. London: Routledge. Quinn, Warren 1993: ‘Putting rationality in its place’. In his Morality and Action, pp. 228-255. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Raz, Joseph 1999: ‘Agency, Reason and the Good’. In his Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Roojen, Mark 2002: ‘Should Motivational Humeans be Humeans About Rationality?’ Topoi 21: pp. 209-215. Scanlon, T. M. 1998: What We Owe To Each Other. Cambridge Mass.:
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Harvard University Press. Shafer-Landau, Russ 2003: Moral Realism: A Defence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sinhababu, Neil 2009: ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended’. Philosophical Review 118: 4, pp. 465-500. Smith, Michael 1994, The Moral Problem, Oxford: Blackwell. -------- 2003, ‘Humeanism, Psychologism, and the Normative Story’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67: 2, pp. 460-467. Stocker, Michael 1979: ‘Desiring the Bad: An Essay in Moral Psychology’, The Journal of Philosophy, 76 (12):738-753. Textor, Mark 2012: ‘States of Affairs’, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/states-of-affairs/ Wallace, R. Jay 1990: ‘How to Argue about Practical Reason’. Mind 99, pp. 355-385. ------- 2003: ‘Explanation, Deliberation, and Reasons’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67 (2), pp. 429-435. White, Alan 1970: ‘What we Believe’. In N. Rescher (ed.) Studies in the Philosophy of Mind, pp. 69-84. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, Bernard 1981: ‘Internal and External Reasons’. In his Moral Luck, pp. 101-113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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