The Concept of Motive (Motivation) for Action

Abstract

The concept of motivation plays a key role both in our thinking about human behaviour and in our evaluation of it. When trying to explain some incomprehensible behaviour of others or finding oneself being surprised by his/her own reactions, when assessing the (i)rationality of others' or one's own course of action, when trying to figure out whether a praise or a blame to someone for having done something is more appropriate, in all these and numerous other contexts we ascribe certain motivations to ourselves and/or to others. Contrary to the expectations, however, the concept of motivation is far from being undisputed or clearly defined. Still more, disagreements about the real nature of motivation and its place in a complete picture of a human psychology (at the very intersection between the mental and the physical) seem to lie at heart of a whole range of stubborn philosophical problems. The paper is an attempt at finding out whether and to what extent a thorough, scientifically informed analysis of the concept of motivation can contribute to blowing the mist that surrounds the use of this notion, making it thereby easier to think in a clear way about the various phenomena of human mind in their relation to human agency.