Shaw- Hume's Theory of Motivation

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Humes Theory of MotivationDaniel ShawHume Studies Volume XV Number 1 (April 1989) 163-183.

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163HUME'S THEORY OF MOTIVATION

In this paper I shall defend a Humean' theoryof motivation. But first I should like to examine someof the standard criticisms of this theory and somealternative views that are currently in favour.

Both in the Treatise and the Enauirv Humemaintains that reason alone never motivates action butalways requires the cooperation of some separate, andseparately identifiable desire-factor in order to bringabout action. What are Hume's grounds for this view?In the Treatise, Hume writes:

'Tis obvious, that when we have theprospect of pain or pleasure from anyobject, we feel a consequent emotionof aversion or propensity, and arecarry'd to avoid or embrace what willgive us this uneasiness or satis-faction.. .. 'Tis from the prospect ofpleasure or pain that the aversion orpropensity arises towards anyobject....2This passage suggests that the way we (and

Hume) know about the presence of the separate desirefactor which he claims is always needed to motivateour every purposive action is by being directly awareof some desire-feeling, by introspection, each andevery time we act. There is however a familiar objec-tion to this argument: no doubt we sometimes are awareof a feeling of desire when we act, e.g., in caseswhere we are motivated by strong emotions. But muchof the time when we act calmly or casually, afterhaving deliberated 'in a cool hour', or when perform-ing routine and trivial acts, we are not directlyaware of any desire-feeling at the time of action.


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164Hume is not unaware of this objection -- in

reply to it he invokes his notorious doctrine of thecalm passions. He writes:

'Tis natural for one, that does notexamine objects with a strict philo-sophic eye, to imagine, that thoseactions of the mind are entirely thesame, which produce not a differentsensation, and are not imnediatelydistinguishable to the feeling andperception. Reason, for instance,exerts itself without producing anysensible emotion; and except in themore sublime disquisitions of philo-sophy, or in the frivolous subtilitiesof the schools, scarce ever conveysany pleasure or uneasiness. Hence itproceeds, that every action of themind, which operates with the samecalmness and tranquillity, is con-founded with reason by all those, whojudge of things from the first viewand appearance. Now 'tis certain,there are certain calm desires andtendencies, which, tho' they be realpassions, produce little emotion inthe mind, and are more known by theireffects than by the immediate feelingor sensation. These desires are oftwo kinds; either certain instinctsoriginally implanted in our natures,such as benevolence and resentment,the love of life, and kindness tochildren; or the general appetite togood, and aversion to evil, consider'dmerely as such. When any of thesepassions are calm, and cause no dis-order in the soul, they are veryreadily taken for the determination ofreason, and are suppos'd to proceedfrom the same faculty, with that,which judges of truth and falshood.Their nature and principles have beensuppos 'd the same, because theirsensations are not evidently differ-ent. (T 417)The most obvious application of this argument

would be to cases of cool, seemingly passionless


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165deliberation: e.g., in the course of planning thefamily budget I set aside funds for the children'seducation. A cursory inspection (or recollection) ofthe contents of my conscious mind at the time ofacting would reveal to me some purely rationalconsiderations that I had in mind at the time. I hadsome thoughts at the time whose contents are (roughly)expressible in such words as "If I don't put aside somuch per month over so many years we will never beable to see them all through university." Butcursory introspection or recollection would not detectany separately identifiable desire-factor present tomy conscious mind at the time. Considered philo-sophical examination, Hume assures us, will revealone, a 'calm' one - - in this case calm 'kindness tochildren'.

Less obviously, the calm-passions argument,most naturally applicable to cases of deliberation,can be extended also to cover cases of routine habit-action: e.g., when standing impatiently at a busystreet corner, i t is as a matter of habit that I waitfor the lights to turn green before crossing.Arguably, my grasp of my situation as I stand thereincludes certain rational considerations, i.e.,thoughts, more or less in the background3 of conscious-ness, thoughts whose contents are (roughly) expres-sible' in such words as "It really would be dangerousto bolt across on the red just now." But again,causal introspection might well overlook the calmpassion that must in Hume's view accompany suchthoughts, in this case my calm 'love of life'.

'Notorious' is the word for Hume's calm-passions argument, for it is commonly regarded as atext-book case of an ad hoc supposition introduced to


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a166save a false theory. A recent example of this sort ofcriticism is to be found in Barry Stroud's book, m.'Stroud claims that the calm-passions argument is bothunsound in itself and also inconsistent with one ofHume's most fundamental views about the mind - - theincorrigibility thesis -- the belief that we cannot bemistaken about the contents of our own minds at anygiven moment.

In support of his claim that Hume's argumentis unsound, Stroud writes:

He says that the calm passions are"more known by their effects than bytheir immediate feeling or sensation",but what are the effects by which suchpassions are known to exist? The onlycandidates would seem to be theactions or inclinations which the calmpassions actually cause. But if thecalm passions are known to exist fromthe fact that certain actions orinclinations occur, and the fact thatthose passions are the causes of thoseactions or inclinations, then theremust be some independent way todiscover that calm passions are thecauses of those actions and inclina-tions. If we knew that passions werealways involved in the production ofevery action we could infer from theoccurrence of an action that a passionexisted, even if it was not "violent"enough to be felt. This is in effectwhat Hume does. But he still hasgiven no such independent justifi-cation. The question of whether aseparate passion is in fact involvedin the causality of every action isprecisely what is at issue. (pp. 1 6 4 -165)Regarding the charge of inconsistency Stroud

writes :Hume agrees that direct inspection orintrospection does not always yield apassion as the cause of action. Hethinks that although i t often seems to


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167us as i f there is no passion oremotion involved, nevertheless in suchcases we are wrong. There is apassion there, although it is entirelynatural that we shoulc! miss it.. . . Wedo not simply feel calm passions";their existence and efficacy is notdiscovered by direct inspection. ButHume says "'tis certain" that thereare such passions and desires; theyfeel to us just like "determinationsof reason" but he claims to know theyare not. This does not cohere verywell with his fundamental principlethat we cannot be wrong about thecontents of our own minds at a givenmoment.Apparently we are often mistaken aboutwhether or not a certain calm passionis before the mind. On the basis ofthe feeling or sensation alone weoften think that only a "determinationof reason'' is leading us to act, butin fact, unknown to us, it is a calmpassion. Hume is willing to forgetone of the foundations of the theoryof ideas in order to support hisaccount of the role of reason inaction, although as we shall see, histheory of action takes its shapeprimarily from the theory of ideas.(pp. 163-164)Having criticized the 'calm-passions' argument

on these two grounds Stroud then attacks the heart ofHume's theory of motivation -- Hume's belief in theindispensible desire-factor without which no motivatedaction is ever performed. Hume is right, Stroudargues, to maintain that in some sense or other of'desire', a desire must always be present every timewe perform a motivated action. According to Stroudwhere Hume goes wrong is to suppose that the desire inquestion must always be a separately identifiablefactor, identifiable by the agent in his consciousexperience by introspection as something extra, some-


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168thing over and above his purely rational considera-tions for action. As an alternative to this Humeantheory of desire Stroud sketches a non-experientialnon-introspectionist account of desire. (Morepositively Stroud's proposal could be described as afunctionalist theory of desire, though Stroud himselfdoes not use this term.) Stroud writes:

It might well be that to have a desirefor or propensity towards E is simplyto be in a state such that when youcome to believe that a certain actionwill lead to E you are moved toperform that action.. ..And being in some such dispositionalstate might be all that having acertain desire or propensity consistsin. I t need not be an additionalmental item that its I f produces theDesire on this account is defined not in terms

of any intrinsic property knowable in experience but,neutrally, in terms of its function in leading alongwith belief to action.

Stroud does not attempt to develop this out-line of a non-experiential account of motivatingdesire, but such an account has been recently defendedat greater length in Thomas Aagel's book The P o s s i -bility of Altruisq.' I do not myself think that thissort of non-Humean non-experiential account of moti-vating desires is on the right track. Rather Ibelieve that it is possible to give a plausible inter-pretation of Hume's own experiential account ofdesire, including the doctrines of incorrigibility andthe calm passions, which comes much nearer the truth.This is what I will now attempt to do. I shall takeNagel's account as my starting point.

action. (pp. 167-168)


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169Bagel claims that contrary to Hume there do

exist at least some cases in which reason alone --i.e., the agent's grasp of certain purely rationalconsiderations -- is all that motivates the action.In the context of these purely rationally motivatedactions, Nagel argues, our talk of desire does notrefer to any additional inclination towards, orpreferences for, or sentiment about some goal that wehave, but is either just another way of saying thatthe act is motivated, i.e., that we are in statewhich disposes us to do whatever we think will lead toa certain result, or else indicates some structuralfeature of the reasoning behind our behaviour, e.g.,indicates the fact that, in view of purely rationalconsiderations which confront us, it would beirrational of us not to perform the act in question.

In stark opposition to this rationalist beliefin the motivational power of pure reason alone' standsthe Humean view that necessarily desire is always adistinct motivational factor, e feeling, alwaysoperating at the time of action in addition to anypurely rational beliefs the agent may hold, and in theabsence of which no motivated action conccivabl couldbe performed. Let me say what I think is wrong aboutthe rationalist view of motivating desires. This isbest done by considering some 'hard cases' for them e a n view which Nagel discusses in The Possibilityof Altruism. Nagel begins by considering actionsmativated by prudence -- i.e., by a person's sonsider-ation of his own future interests. Consider, forexample, the action of someone who buys groceries whenhe is not hungry because he knows he is going to beh m q r y later. Setting aside the sease of 'desire'which just means 'motive' O K which points to some


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170purely rational principle (prudence in this case),Nagel wants to deny that the shopper has distinctdesire relevant to his motive at the time of acting:for after all the shopper is not hungry at that timeand has no desire to eat at that time. According toNagel, the shopper's knowledge that he will be hungrylater, is sufficient by itself to motivate his action,and this piece of knowledge is not itself a presentdesire of any kind but rather a purely rational con-sideration concerning one of his future desires.Nagel points out that Humean could try to deal withsuch cases by postulating a present desire on the partof the agent to satisfy all his future desires. Buthe thinks that this move is vacuous. For what otherreason have we for attributing such a present desireto the agent at the time of acting other than the factthat he is at present acting to provide for hisfuture? To speak of such a present desire to satisfyhis future desires is just another way of saying thathe is performing a motivated action which is motivatedby the purely rational consideration of prudence; itis not a way of identifying some additional sentimentor preference over and above thia consideration ofpure reason.

It seems to me that lapel's argument suffersfrom a certain blind-spot. In cases of the kind whichNagel discusses, the agent's present desire istypically present in the form of a disDosition, not inthe form of a distinct psychological occurrence (e.g.,such as a hunger pang). I do not of course mean abehavioural disposition. To say that would be to makethe vacuous move which Nagel rightly rejects. I f talkof present dispositional desires merely refers to thefact that when the opportunity to go shopping arises


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171the agent does perform that activity, then indeed'present desire' means no more than 'motive' and isentirely compatible with rationalism. What 1 d o meanby speaking of the shopper's present dispbsitionaldesire is a disposition he has not just to behave incertain ways but to have certain desire-experiencesuhich may not actually be occurring at the time ofacting but which at that time must be present indisDositiona1 forq, and therefore must be accessibleto the agent at that time, even if he does not seekaccess to them just then. Anyone who, at a time whenhe is not hungry, goes shopping for food for later,dves have this specific experiential disposition atthe time of acting: at the time of acting were he nowto consider the prospect o having food when h e needsit later, he would now be aware of preferrinqprospect to the prospect of an empty cupboard whenhungry later.

Since the shopper is not hungry at the time ofacting, the disposition he now has consciously toprefer food later is obviously not a disposition tofeel hunary now if he now thinks of food. But poten-tial hunger pangs are not the only kind of desire thatsuch a person can have, and the fact that theshopper's present desire-disposition is not of thiskind does not imply that it is wholly reducible inrationalist fashion to a purely intellectual consider-ation. We can see that this cannot be so by consider-in9 a fictitious case in which 'reason alone' reallyis the only factor. Let us suppose that s o m e m e whois not at all hungry is standing in his kitchenexamining his dwindling food supply. Let us grant himthe full measure of rational understanding: he knowsfull well that if he does not go shapping today, he


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172will have no food to eat when he wants it tomorrow.But let us further suppose that if he now thinks ofthe prospect of having food when he wants it later, hehas not the least tendency to favour that state ofaffairs, and if he thinks of the prospect of wantingfood later when the cupboard is bare, he is not at allaverse to that idea. How could this be? Well, per-haps he is an ascetic who thinks that frustrating hisbodily desires will benefit his soul, or maybe he isso tired of living that he would not mind starving todeath. In any case, whatever the explanation, let ussuppose that in terms of the person's subjectiveexperience at the time, both actual and dispositionalin form, the desire to have food on hand when he getshungry later simply does not exist. Now this is thehard case for the rationalist. For suppose weintroduce into the midst of this absolute emotionalvacuum, the purely rational thought "the cupboard willbe bare tomorrow when I get hungry" and let us supposethat this bare idea, without arousing the least actualor potential introspectible aversion to that prospect,or any introspectible preference for its opposite,somehow impels this ascetic or suicidal person out ofthe kitchen, through the door, to and through thestore and back again with baskets full of food. Wellmight he say "1 don't know what hit me. I didn't doit voluntarily, I didn't want to provide for myfuture desires. All I know is that the moment afterthis thought occurred to me it drove me into 'action'.I didn't purposely go shopping, it happened to me.This obsessional thought drove me through an extendedstretch of compulsive shopping-behaviour -- behaviourwhich was neither what I wanted to do nor what Ibelieved might lead to anything that I wanted.''


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173This is the kind of 'action' we are left with

when we drain the last drop of experiential contentfrom the motive of desire. While pure rationalist'action' is not loaically impossible, it never i n facthappens, and when we seriously consider what it reallywould be like if it did happen, we find it would notcount as voluntary PurDosive action in the fullestsense.

Nagel of course claims that purely rationalconsiderations, e.g., considerations about one'sfuture welfare, sometimes motivate people to act ,lo notmerely impel or drive people into 'action', as in theabove counter-example. But that claim of Nagel's doesnot in itself provide an adequate reply t o thecounter-example, the point of which is to question thepossibility of distinguishing, in xmrelv rationalistterms," prudential reasons motivating action fromthoughts about one's future welfare causing 'action'.

To argue that since Nagelian reasons canmotivate, they can motivate the shopper, does notrefute the counter-example but merely begs thequestion that it raises.In the above discussion I have suggested a wayof resisting the attempt to reduce certain cases ofmotivating desire to the operation of purely rationalconsiderations alone. I have argued that in thosecases although desire is not present in the f o rm of anadditional psychological occurrence it is present inthe form of an additional though unactualized disposi-tion to have desire-experiences. On this account " A _desires, at time L, some state of affairs &'' meansroughly " I f , at L, A were to think about or seriouslycontemplate the realization of g as opposed to therealization of not he would then experience an


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17introspectible pro-attitude towards the formerprospect and/or an introspectible aversion to thelatter prospect (i.e., he would then be aware offavouring the former prospect and/or disfavouring thelatter) * r12 This dispositional fact about the agent,though in certain cases not a fact about a psycho-logical occurrence is nevertheless an additional factabout him and about his introspectible experience andit is something over and above any facts concerningpurely rational considerations.

Two further comments about the proposedanalysis: Firstly, as it stands it does not cover thecase of pathologically unconscious (i.e., repressed)desires. In this case even if the desirer thinksabout or even seriously contemplates the object of hisunconscious desire he is typically unaware of havingany pro-attitude towards it. Frequently the attitudeof which he is aware is one of aversion.

A natural way of extending the analysis tocover unconscious desires would be to include amongthe conditions needed to actualize the desire inawareness the removal of whatever resistance, defencemechanism, etc., is keeping it repressed. On thisanalysis "A has an unconscious desire or x" meansroughly ''A has some repression such that were itremoved and were he then to seriously contemplate X hewould then be aware of an introspectible pro-attitudetowards the realization of X."I believe this analysis is borne out both bythe way the concept of unconscious desire is used intheories of the unconscious and by therapeuticpractice.

In attributing an unconscious desire to apatient an analyst commits himself to the existence of


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1 7 5resistances and defence mechanisms which are at leastin principle removable and whose removal would resultin the patient's becoming conscious of his desire ora~ersi0n.l~ Moreover in therapeutic practice suchconscious acknowledgement of the desire by the patientis regarded as an indispensable part of the completeconfirmation of any such hypothesis about his uncon-scious desires. '

A second comment about the suggested analysis:It is clear that a desire which is, at a given moment,unactualieed in a person's conscious feelings may atthat very time be operative in his behaviour. Indeedthis is the very case which prompted Hume to introducethe doctrine of the calm passions. For this is thecase which looks suspiciously like an example ofreason alone motivating behaviour. Nevertheleas on myaccount, as on Hume's, even in this case there is adistinct desire-factor present and operative inmotivating behaviour. It is easily overlooked becauseit is 'calm'. On the standard interpretation, a calmpassion for Hume is a very 'faint' feeling, i.e., afeeling of low intensity; this seems implausible forthe reason that many people do not recall having hadsuch faint feelings on all such occasions. My inter-pretation (or development) of the doctrine of the calmpassions allows that such desires may not merely be'faint' but may be wholly unactualieed in the agent'sfeelings at the very time when they are motivating hisaction. Now it might be thought that this conceptionof the calm passions is even less plausible than thestandard one. At least on the standard view thereactually is somethina there at the time of action,some event, the occurrence of a feeling, albeit a veryfaint one, capable of acting as part of the cause of


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176the action. On my view of the calm passions it may bethat all that is 'there' is an unactualized disposi-tion, the non-occurrent fact, reported by the hypo-thetical "If the agent were to think, etc. then hewould find, etc." How, it may be wondered, can suchan unactualized disposition act as a causal factor atthe time of action?

The answer in brief is that it probably can't.At least not on its own, not without some occurrentbasis, e.g., some brain-state underlying it, whichaccounts both for the feeling disposition, and foractions motivated by that disposition at times whenthat disposition is unactualized in awareness.Whether reference to such an occurrent basis should beincluded in the very analysis of desire is not clearto me. I am inclined to think that there is nocontradiction in attributing an operative thoughunactualized disposition to someone at a given time,while leaving it open whether or not there exists someunderlying occurrent basis for it at that time." I tmight then be regarded as a further empirical questionwhether or not such unactualized dispositions are evercausally operative in the absence of some underlyingoccurrent basis.

I f it were thought loqicallv impossible for anunactualized disposition to act as a cause, or if itwere thought inconsistent with the concept of amotivating desire, a neutral" reference to an under-lying occurrent state could be incorporated into myanalysis of desire in a manner parallel to Stroud'sfunctional scheme. To have a desire for s would thenbe to be in some state such that if one seriouslycontemplates, etc., then one would experience, etc.


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177What I now want to argue is that not only is

this non-reductionist account acceptable as a Humeanaccount of motivating desires but that it alsoprovides a natural and defensible interpretation ofHume's own remarks concerning the calm passions, aninterpretation which overcomes the objections thatStroud raises against theory of the calm passions.

At the end of Book I 1 Section I11 of theTreatise Hume says that the calm passions are of twokinds : ' I . . either certain instincts originallyimplanted in our natures, such as benevolence andresentment, the love of life, and kindness tochildren; or the general appetite to good, and aver-sion to evil, consider'd merely as such" (T 417). Andhe continues, "When any of these passions are calm,and cause no disorder in the soul they are veryreadily taken for determinations of reason. . ." (T417). Now what I suggest is that we interpret Hume'swords "when any of these passions are calm" as imply-ing that the very same long-term desire (e.g., thedesire for self-preservation), that is to say, thevery same disposition to feel certain urges andaversions, sometimes is calm and sometimes is notcalm: i.e., calm when it is unactualized, when, thatis, we are not actually contemplating the object ofthe desire, but not calm when it is actualized, i.e.,when we are seriously contemplating the object of thedesire. This interpretation is supported by a remarkthat immediately follows. H u m e writes "When I receiveany injury from another, [i.e., on the proposed inter-pretation, when the object of my long-term desire toretaliate against personal injury is brought forciblyto my attention - - when, in other words, I a m madeseriously to contemplate that object] I often feel a


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178violent passion which makes me desire his evil andpunishment.. ." (T 418). Now against the proposeddispositional interpretation of these remarks it mightbe objected that Hume is not saying here that contem-plating an injury to myself actualizes my pre-existingdesire to retaliate against all injuries to myself butrather that it first gives rise to that sort of desireon the occasion of being injured. But, first of all,this objection is not supported by Hume's claim thatdesires such as resentment -- the desire to punishpeople who injure one -- are, as he puts it, origin-ally implanted into our natures; that implies theirpre-existence. And secondly, and more importantly,this objection is not supported by the passages whichimmediately follow the above-quoted remark, and inwhich Hume goes on to say: "When I am immediatelythreaten'd with any grievous ill, my fears, appre-hensions, and aversions rise to a great height, andproduce a sensible emotion" (T 418). It is plainlylogically impossible for 'my desire for self-preservation to rise to a great height' if it were notpreviously existing at some lower level. Once againI would interpret Hume's remark as implying anexperiential-dispositional account of desire: When Iam not immediately threatened with injury and amtherefore not seriously contemplating the prospect ofbeing harmed, my desire for self-preservation remainspresent in me as an unactualized disposition of mine,but whenever I seriously think of being harmed mydesire-disposition becomes actualized and I feel anintrospectible aversion in connection with thatthought.

This experiential-dispositional interpretationof Hume's account of desires avoids Stroud's two


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179objections to the theory of the calm passions that 1mentioned ear i r .Stroud's first objection was that Hume has noindependent grounds or believing in the distinctexistence of the calm passions, i.e., no groundsindependent of their alleged effects upon behaviour.But the experiential-dispositional account of desiredoes provide an independent way of knowing of theexistence of a calm passion, namely by contemplatingthe object of the desire in question and discoveringby introspection one's favourable attitude towards itsobject, and/or one's aversion towards its opposite.

Stroud's second objection was that thedoctrine of the calm passions, which implies that wesometimes fail to recognise a calm passion for what itis, directly conflicts with Hume's incorrigibilitythesis, his claim that we can never be mistaken aboutthe contents of our conscious minds at any given time.

On the experiential -dispositional inter-pretation of Hume's account of desire it is quitepossible that in the case of conscious desires, theonly reason why we sometimes do not identify a calmpassion for what it is, is not that we have tried todo so and got it wrong; but rather that in these caseswe do not happen to think about or to seriouslycontemplate the object of the desire at the time ofacting; i.e.. at that particular moment we are notseriously asking ourselves whether we do or do notdesire it and therefore have not, at that particularmoment, actualized our feelings towards it. This kindof case is not uncommon. For example, if I hail ataxi because I am late for a dentist's appointment, Ido not necessarily think about the object of my moti-vating desire (e.g., the attainment of dental health)


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180at the moment of acting. At that moment I'm probablytoo busy hailing the taxi to think about that. It isopen to the Humean who adopts the proposed account ofdesire to claim that if at any particular time we dobother to introspect upon any of our consciousdesires, i.e., i f we do contemplate the object of outdesire and seriously consult our feelings towards it ,then it is impossible for us at that time to mis-identify our feeling of inclination, indifference, oraversion towards it, (though, of course, we may mis-remember it afterwards). This would seem to be asufficiently strong version of the incorrigibilitythesis to serve Humean purposes" while meetingStroud's second criticism.

Let me briefly sumnarize the advantages of myproposed interpretation of Hume's theory of motiva-tion:1) By retaining a distinct desire-factor as anindispensable ingredient in all motivated action itavoids the objection which I raised earlier againstStroud's and Nagel's rationalist accounts.2) By allowing that a c a l m passion may be anunactualized feeling disposition (or some state under-lying such a disposition) it avoids the implausiblestandard interpretation of them as very faint orimperceptible feelings.3) I t reconciles the doctrine of the calm passionswith a plausible version of the incorrigibilitythesis: the version that claims that if we introspectcarefully upon our conscious desires at any moment wecannot be mistaken about them, or at least, that weourselves are in a better position to know what weconsciously desire at any given moment, than anyoneelse is.


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181This I think is a reasonable view. From time

to time we may be willing to defer to the opinion ofothers, e.g., impartial observers, friends, psycho-analysts, etc., concerning the nature of our uncon-scious desires or even concerning the nature of ourconscious desires at times when we are not closelyattending to them. But do we ever seriously believethat someone else may be a better judge than we are ofour

1.

2 .

3 .

4.5 .6 .

own carefully considered conscious desires?Daniel ShawUniversity of Aberdeen

In calling my theory a Humean one I do not wishto defend everything that Hume says about motiva-tion. In particular I do not think that Hume'saccount does justice to the full variety of waysin which reason enters into motivation. Nor doI believe that Hume establishes that reasonalways is (or should be) subservient to desire.My view is Humean in that I do defend what I taketo be Hume's two main contentions about motiva-tion: 1) His anti-rationalist claim that reasonalone cannot motivate action and 2) his 'senti-mentalist' claim that feeling is alwaysessentially involved.David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A.Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., revised by P.H. Nidditch(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 414. Furtherreferences will be cited as 'T' followed by therelevant page number(s).In typical cases of habit-action more in thebackground than in cases of deliberation.Expressible in words though often not actuallyverbalized at the time of action.B. Stroud, H l i , Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.Stroud's reference to being 'moved' to performthat action raises the question what in his viewdoes being moved consist in over and above theacquisition of the relevant belief's producing


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182the overt (i. ., purely physical ) behaviour?Stroud might reply that in such cases that justis what being moved consists in - - i.e., rationalbelief leading to overt behaviour. Alter-natively, Stroud might give a further non-intro-spectionist account of intentional action,(perhaps a 'teleological' account such as thatproposed by Charles Taylor in The Explanation ofBehaviour, New York, Humanities Press, 1964). Ibelieve that all such accounts which deny anessential connection between motives and intro-spectible desire-experiences or pro-attitudinalexperiences are open to the sort of argument setout earlier in this paper. For further criticismof teleological theories of motivated action seeA.J. Ayer, "Man as a Subject for Science," pp.14-15, in PhilosoPhv. P litics and Societt, thirdseries, ed. by Peter taslett and W.G. Runciman,Basil Blackwell, 1967, and J. Shaffer, PhilosoPhvof Hind, Foundations of Philosophy Series,Prentice Ball.

7. T. Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, Oxford:Clarendon, 1970. Nagel's theory is not quite thesame as Stroud's. Whereas Nagel thinks there maybe some cases in which the motive is nothing overand above purely rational (e.g., prudential)beliefs operative in behaviour (which in virtueof their operativeness we call 'desire'), Stroudthinks that motives always involve some distinctdispositional state (though not necessarily afeeling or additional mental item of any kind) -- i.e., whatever state explains the differencebetween agents who have a set of beliefs and- act(e.g., prudently) and agents who have the samebeliefs and don't.As the following argument is directed against anyaccount of motivating desires which denies thenecessity of the experiential component it shouldapply equally to both Stroud's and Nagel's theor-ies.

8. In certain kinds of choice situations.9. This absence of relevant desire experience,actual or dispositional in form.10. See Nagel, OD. cit., p. 29.


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183Without any reference to actual or potentialintrospectible sentiments of aversion orpreference.In order to rule out cases in which A_ doe s notactually desire s at t ut is merely disposed at- to acquire a desire for a, the followingcondition must be added to the above account:"Either at t or at some time prior to t, & has(at least) once actually experienced an intro-spectible pro-attitude towards the prospect of-. "See, e.g., S. Freud, An Outline of Psycho-analysis, chapter VI, London, Hogarth Press,1949.-bid., pp. 43, 48.For a discussion of non-occurrent causal factorssee A.J. Ayer's ''Man as a Subject for Science,"pp. 17-18, in PhilosoDhv. Politics and Society,third series, ed. by Peter Laslett and W.G.Runciman, Basil Blackwell, 1967, as well asAyer's book Probability and Evidence, pp- 134-135.That is, neutral regarding the specific nature ofthe state.That is, to ensure that motivating desires areaccessible to introspection -- in the case ofconscious desire, accessible in practice; i n thecase of unconscious desire, accessible inprinciple.

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Shaw- Hume's Theory of Motivation