Chapter 11: Motivation: A Philosophical and Psychological Synthesis

Reflecting on what a satisfactory conceptual account of motivation amounts to is an important ingredient in the practical task of motivating someone to act. In this chapter, we specifically examine the role of agency, goals, and reasoned persuasion and will argue that these components are central to both our commonsense ideas about, and a range of theoretical perspectives on motivation. More specifically, we clarify the conceptual frameworks governing ordinary descriptions of motivation. In our description, persons are seen both in causal, physical, and extensional terms as agents of change; and in semantic and intensional terms as goal setters, believers, and reasoners who are open to being reasoned with. We resolve some apparent tensions between these frameworks, maintaining that an integrated account of motivation involves the activity of reasoned persuasion with those we seek to motivate, notably students, about their own causal powers. In this account, the concept of goals is crucial, but the precise nature and point of goals require clarification, since the intuitive notion that goals function as causes of behavior is seen to be incoherent. We also clarify the dualities of cognition/affect and motivating reason/normative (justifying) reason in accounting for agency and motivation. In doing so we confront the familiar difficulty that arises when the key ingredients for motivated behavior appear to be in place, yet the agents in question are not moved to act.