The Humean Theory of Motivation

If the IR in one form or another is true, we still need to find out what moves people to act. This is where the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM) enters the picture. On the HTM the following three claims are taken to be true. First, in order for an agent to be motivated a desire and a suitable instrumental belief must always be present: these two mental states are necessary for the occurrence of motivation. Let us call this the Existence Criterion (EC). Second, the agent’s motivation always consists in the co-presence of a desire and an instrumental belief: these two mental states constitute the agent’s motivation. We can christen this the Motivational Criterion (MC). Finally, third, desire and belief are distinct existences: they are distinct mental states in the sense that they are independently intelligible from each other. Let us call this the Independence Criterion (IC). The HTM needs all three theses. It is not enough if desires are omnipresent in

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human action since it could still be the case that what motivates is not a desire but some cognitive state (which shows that the MC involves the EC). And even if what motivates involves a desire, it could still happen that as a mental state the desire cannot be prone apart from some cognitive state with which it together comprises the agent’s motivating reason (which shows that the IC is distinct from both the EC and the MC).

Although the HTM pictures the agent’s motivating reason as consisting of two distinct elements, it holds that the desire component has a dominant role: it is the one that provides the motivational push necessary for action. Desires are essentially motivating: they always provide some motivation to act whenever they are present and do so in their own right. Beliefs, on the other hand, can be present without motivating and even when they do motivate they don’t do so in their own right: they only channel the motivational force arising from the desire to the action that satisfies the desire. This asymmetry can be accounted for in two ways. On the causal reading beliefs are passive, causally inert states of mind, hence it is difficult to see how they could cause anything into being. But this is certainly too strong. Although the asymmetry follows the Humean picture in which belief/reason can only find the means for desire/passion but cannot oppose it, this only implies that belief cannot cause action but says nothing about its causal powers in producing mental states. Or at least this seems to be the position of modern-day Humeans as well as anti-Humeans (Cohon 1988, 103, 105-6; Smith 1994, 73, 160, 179-181, 193, 213-4; Hubin 1996, 43; Parfit 1997, 101-3, 117; Dancy 1993, 8-9, 12; 2000b, 79; Shaver 2006, 5-6; though cf.

Cuneo 2002), though it may or may not be an accurate position of Hume’s own views about the subject.⁸⁰ I will say more about the former issue later in the text; here, however, this much should suffice.

80 Opinions differ. Dancy says that Hume himself appears to attribute some causal power to belief when he pictures it as a lively idea and contrasts it with imagination, whereas others think that such an admission would be incompatible

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That we don’t need the causal reading is also underlined by the other account of the asymmetry, which is compatible with attributing causal power to belief. (Smith 1987; 1988ab;

1994, Chapter 4) It is based on premises we are mostly familiar with. The first is the dispositional or functionalist account of belief and desire: one who has a belief that p is disposed to loose that belief in the presence of a perception with the content that not p (downward/mind-to-world/thetic direction of fit), whereas one who has a desire that p is disposed to bring about that p in the presence of the same perception (upward/world-to-mind/telic direction of fit). The second is the teleological view of action: to act intentionally is to be in a goal-directed state. And the third is the claim that to have a goal is to be in a state with which the world must fit: it is to be disposed to bring about some result in the world. These three ideas are then taken to entail that, first, desire and belief are distinct existences (hence the IC), that, second, intentional action must be accompanied by a desire (hence the EC), and that, third, desire must be the active part of the agent’s motivating reason (hence the MC). We can call this, following Jay Wallace, the teleological argument. (Wallace 1990, 359)

All three elements of the teleological argument are controversial. We know this from previous discussion; only the third premise can be unfamiliar for us. Not everyone is happy with the dispositional account of desire, some reject it (Copp and Sobel 2001; Schroeder 2004, Chapter 1; Platts 1979, Chapter 10), others, we saw in Chapter I, only suggest refinements of it (Velleman 2000a; Humberstone 1992). The teleological account of action is also not universally accepted (e.g. Stocker 1981; though cf. Smith 2004a, 161-163), even though the teleological argument only needs it in its weak form. It only says that every intentional action has a purpose, not that every event that has a purpose is an action: having a purpose is a necessary but not

with Hume’s anti-rationalist argument. See Dancy (2000b), pp. 79; Stroud (1977), pp. 157; Parfit (1997), pp. 105-6 and Radcliffe (1999), pp. 101-3 for the opposite view. There is no need for us to decide this issue here.

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sufficient requirement for an event to qualify as intentional action. Finally, the idea that to have a goal is to be in a state with which the world must fit, though perhaps the least controversial, also has its opponents. (Humberstone 1992, 63; Bittner 2001, 13-4) In this chapter, however, I am not going to question these premises. I do this partly out of charity to advocates of the HTM, partly because in the end I will offer a theory of motivation that does not require any such move, but mostly because discussion of any of these issues would take us too far, often beyond the theory of motivation.