What is motivation? Where does it come from? Why do we do what we do?
I wrote this similarly about goals:
Goal: the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result (Google)
1) Are goals "real" in that they are a natural phenomena that are a part of certain animal biological/psychological make-up, or a nominal label for a very pervasive social convention/habit?
2) Do the origins of goal-directed behavior come from evolutionary forces of biology/psychology or are they social conventions that ride on top of some more basic component? Related, If animals have goals are they different than human-directed goals?
3) If goals are more on the nominal side of the spectrum, what does that mean in terms of ethical implications? If ethics aims at goals, and goals are nominal, does this invalidate certain ethical standards that are goal-directed?
4) Are some goals better than others? If so, how do justify a weighting to the goals such that one takes priority over the other? Are goals related to survival self-evident, for example? If goals of survival are superior than other goals, does this have implications for ethics? For example, can one say that since there is a de facto goal of not being hungry, humans must do X action to accomplish not going hungry?
schopenhauer1:1) Are goals "real" in that they are a natural phenomena that are a part of certain animal biological/psychological make-up, or a nominal label for a very pervasive social convention/habit?
Inasmuch as "goal" is synonymous with "intention", it is a psychological expression of a subjective experience which can be observed by others, hence; a natural phenomenon. And inasmuch as people discuss "goals", "goal" is a nominal label.
schopenhauer1:2) Do the origins of goal-directed behavior come from evolutionary forces of biology/psychology or are they social conventions that ride on top of some more basic component? Related, If animals have goals are they different than human-directed goals?
Human behaviour is a product of human nature (the genetically predisposed capacity to develop and exercise human functions). That animals have goals is evident based on criteria of goal-directed behaviour. If the criteria for goal-directed behaviour are different for animals than they are for humans, their goals are different.
schopenhauer1:3) If goals are more on the nominal side of the spectrum, what does that mean in terms of ethical implications? If ethics aims at goals, and goals are nominal, does this invalidate certain ethical standards that are goal-directed?
It is because goals are "real" phenomena, with "real" effects, that we name them and decide that they are relevant to a theory of ethics.
schopenhauer1:4) Are some goals better than others? If so, how do justify a weighting to the goals such that one takes priority over the other? Are goals related to survival self-evident, for example? If goals of survival are superior than other goals, does this have implications for ethics? For example, can one say that since there is a de facto goal of not being hungry, humans must do X action to accomplish not going hungry?
Great questions, but off-topic. I would certainly enjoy discussing them in another thread.
I think motivation is another wayof saying that either one desires a change in circumstances expedient of what one experiences or a persistence to a given state of affairs. Whether or not one thinks they are responsible for either case is debatable.
What is motivation? Where does it come from? Why do we do what we do?
Motivation is what I don't feel first thing in the morning. :P
But really, I think it is the will of a person. It comes from the mind, for the most part. Some chemicals are likely released based on the impulses of the brain for short term motivation. Long term motivation would have to be something that one truly felt passionate about, allowing those chemicals to release often.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 18, 2017 at 21:51#983670 likes
I think it is necessary to distinguish between intentions, or goals, and motivation which is the ambition that aids in successfully achieving ones goals.
Inasmuch as "goal" is synonymous with "intention", it is a psychological expression of a subjective experience which can be observed by others, hence; a natural phenomenon. And inasmuch as people discuss "goals", "goal" is a nominal label.
I don't see how a goal, or intention, could be observed by another. We can discuss our goals with others using language, but this is to offer a representation of the goal, so it is not the case that the goal is observed. Also, we can observe the actions of others, and using some premises, we can make some logical conclusion concerning the person's goal, but again this is not the same as observing the goal. I think that we can only really observe our own goals, and this is an internal observation.
Metaphysician Undercover:I think it is necessary to distinguish between intentions, or goals, and motivation which is the ambition that aids in successfully achieving ones goals.
I agree.
Metaphysician Undercover:I don't see how a goal, or intention, could be observed by another...I think that we can only really observe our own goals, and this is an internal observation.
That is a logical dualist objection (i.e., the mind is hidden, accessible only to the person who owns it, etc.), and the subject of another current thread.
What is observed is goal behaviour, described by criteria, and constituting criterial evidence of another's goal experience.
A goal is not an entity, it is a psychological function of human beings. So, a person cannot even observe their own goal; they experience it.
Metaphysician Undercover:Also, we can observe the actions of others, and using some premises, we can make some logical conclusion concerning the person's goal, but again this is not the same as observing the goal.
I agree, but it is the same as observing that a person has a goal.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 19, 2017 at 10:49#984910 likes
A goal is not an entity, it is a psychological function of human beings. So, a person cannot even observe their own goal; they experience it.
OK, so all you have done here is distinguished between two types of objects, objects which are entities and objects which are goals. You claim that only entities can be observed, thus restricting the use and meaning of "observe". I do not agree with this restriction. I think that a person's own goals may be apprehended with one's own mind, and the person may observe and follow one's own goals.
Also. it appears like you want to restrict the use of "experience", such that one experiences one's goals, but does not experience entities. Unless you adopt some dualist premises, I do not believe that such restrictions can be justified.
What is observed is goal behaviour, described by criteria, and constituting criterial evidence of another's goal experience.
...I agree, but it is the same as observing that a person has a goal.
What is observed is goal behaviour. And if we associate this behaviour with a premise, we can deduce that the person has a goal. But making the logical conclusion that the person has a goal is not the same thing as observing that the person has a goal. The goal is not observed. According to your restrictions, observations are of entities, not of goals. So no matter how well you observe the goal behaviour, you are not observing the goal (which can only be experienced according to your restrictions). Nor have you observed that the person has a goal, you have deduced this.
unenlightenedAugust 19, 2017 at 16:32#985600 likes
A goal is an image projected into an imagined future, and identified with. Goals are imaginary until they are realised. If I am motivated to make a cup of tea, it is because there is no cup of tea ready, but I imagine a cup of tea would be pleasant. It would be odd to say that I experience the goal, if the goal is to experience a cup of tea, but reasonable to say I experience imagining experiencing a cup of tea. Then I make the tea, and my goal is realised.
It would be odd to say that I experience the goal, if the goal is to experience a cup of tea...
Then you can say that you experience intent which directs planning, informs volition, and results in action. Planning, volition and action being behaviour which is criterial evidence of intent.
Is there a contemporary theory about sublimation (Freud's idea) that works or is relevant to explaining motivation? Hunger, sexual or social desire, status seeking, and pain avoidance could all be very fundamental to what moves us to do anything.
We play games where the pathway of reward is intelligible (we know what folks expect from us in this setting). The dopaminergic reward system helps to habituate patterns of conduct that help us satisfy instinctual needs in a socially acceptable way.
The variable reward (ratio) schedule of the forum might explain why folks here are attracted to come back. There must be a dopaminergic reward in worthy types of positive feedback relative to the expectations or needs of the poster.
unenlightenedAugust 19, 2017 at 18:53#985800 likes
Yes. An intent is an imagined act, the act itself is behaviour. A plan is also an imagined act; as an architect plans an imaginary building, and the brickeys and plasterers behave it into existence. We hope they can read the architects intent.
As an engineer or architect, the preparation of design calculations and working drawings (i.e., planning acts) are concrete evidence of my intent (a psychological function/act) to build something.
unenlightenedAugust 19, 2017 at 20:22#985930 likes
Since the date is 2013, I imagine the plan has been realised. But a plan is an imagined building, and a building is a realised plan. I don't think this is controversial.
Motivation is the impulse (will) from the mind towards some action. Depending upon the action there may more or less will. For example the mind is more likely to create a significant impulse in order to breathe, maybe not so significant to make the bed.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 20, 2017 at 02:15#986590 likes
A goal is an image projected into an imagined future, and identified with. Goals are imaginary until they are realised.
I wonder if a goal is necessarily an image, or "imagined". I suppose it depends on what is meant by "imagined", but it seems to me that often a goal is just some sort of vague notion, not an image at all. I want to be satisfied, and happy, what kind of image is that? It appears to be easier to put words to a goal than it is to put an image to a goal. Why? These words don't produce any particular images, just vague notions.
Sure, the architect is capable of associating an image with the goal, but this is not an easy task, and it takes training. So I wonder why it is that we all seem to have goals, but to associate an image with that goal, which may be required in order to bring the goal into reality, doesn't seem to be something which we all have the capacity to do.
Reply to Gotterdammerung Motivation is a drive that results in behavior. You are sitting in a car. The car gets uncomfortably hot or cold (depending on where the car is). eventually it becomes so uncomfortable that you are driven to do something about the temperature (get out of the car to escape the heat, turn on the heater to escape the cold.
If you were in a building which seemed to be about to experience a Gotterdammerung you would be motivated to get the hell out before the building collapsed on top of you.
I wonder if a goal is necessarily an image, or "imagined". I suppose it depends on what is meant by "imagined", but it seems to me that often a goal is just some sort of vague notion, not an image at all. I want to be satisfied, and happy, what kind of image is that? It appears to be easier to put words to a goal than it is to put an image to a goal. Why? These words don't produce any particular images, just vague notions.
Yes, I don't suppose it has to be a visual image; a composer might have a very nebulous sense of his goal as a piece of music on this sort of scale, that conveys that sort of feeling. Something that can hardly be put into words or images. That is the nature of creativity, that one does not know the goal because it is something new that has never been, and that is true of architects too. In the end, all i mean by imagined is that it is something in one's head that is not in the world.
On the small scale, my goal is the cup of tea that I do not have, that does not exist because it hasn't been made, and the logic is that if it had been made I wouldn't possibly have it as a goal, I'd already have it, just as my goal was to write some kind of reply to you, but now it is written, it is a goal no longer.
In more traditional language, perhaps, my desire is always for something that is not, something lacking. What can we call something that is not? An image, a fiction, a notion? The source of such is the past, one's experience - it can only be the past since it is not present, and it is projected onto the future as a goal.
In the end, I think one can only intend something to the extent that it is known, so a creative act is necessarily the interplay of the intentional and the accidental, and that is what I alluded to above when I mentioned doodles. One can act without motive.
But not without desire, which is pleasurable or painful in some mixture (physical/ or imaginary) at some intensity, as necessary for all actions, including doodling.
unenlightenedAugust 20, 2017 at 14:50#987940 likes
Reply to Cavacava I think if you examine this dogma, it doesn't stand up. In the first instance, it is an experience that is painful or pleasurable in some degree, or petty much neutral perhaps.
So I desire a cup of tea. This implies that I take pleasure in tea and pain in thirst. But at the moment, there is no tea, and therefore no pleasure. The pleasure that has not yet happened cannot be the cause of its own production. It can only then be the pain of thirst. But the pain of thirst can be assuaged by tap water; no need to wait for the kettle to boil.
What motivates me to make tea is the imagined pleasure that will ensue. And the image of pleasure comes from memory of times I have taken pleasure in drinking tea in the past, and is projected - thrown forward in time, and that is what we call 'desire', the imagined repetition of past pleasure, or the imagined relief from present pain.
There is of course the desire for novelty, but this is again either the projected image of past novelties, or the imagined escape from the pain of repetition. Now it may seem that there is no escape from this world of images that direct every move, but it is not so. There is in the real, as distinct from the imaginary world, spontaneous movement.
What motivates me to make tea is the imagined pleasure that will ensue. And the image of pleasure comes from memory of times I have taken pleasure in drinking tea in the past, and is projected - thrown forward in time, and that is what we call 'desire', the imagined repetition of past pleasure, or the imagined relief from present pain.
Many times I find that I make my coffee in the AM without very much thought (6 AM or so), but the first cup is very pleasureful, even if the initial effort was habitual and not actively imagined, just something I do.
Metaphysician Undercover:OK, so all you have done here is distinguished between two types of objects, objects which are entities and objects which are goals. You claim that only entities can be observed, thus restricting the use and meaning of "observe".
Correct.
Metaphysician Undercover:Also. it appears like you want to restrict the use of "experience", such that one experiences one's goals, but does not experience entities. Unless you adopt some dualist premises, I do not believe that such restrictions can be justified.
Correct again. This is a misconception on my part.
Metaphysician Undercover:What is observed is goal behaviour. And if we associate this behaviour with a premise, we can deduce that the person has a goal. But making the logical conclusion that the person has a goal is not the same thing as observing that the person has a goal. The goal is not observed. According to your restrictions, observations are of entities, not of goals. So no matter how well you observe the goal behaviour, you are not observing the goal (which can only be experienced according to your restrictions). Nor have you observed that the person has a goal, you have deduced this.
Correct a third time. I have discovered my error: psychological functions are not experienced, they are performed.
Pursuant to the following two points:
1)
Metaphysician Undercover:I think that a person's own goals may be apprehended with one's own mind, and the person may observe and follow one's own goals.
2)
unenlightened: ...all i mean by imagined is that it is something in one's head that is not in the world.
Is a goal or imagination a phenomenon in one's mind or head which can be experienced and perceived? If so, by what is it experienced and perceived? What and where is one's mind (it's intuitively obvious that heads can be perceived, but can minds be perceived)?
Is a goal or imagination something concrete which can be located in one's mind or head (i.e., either as a part of brain anatomy or neurophysiology)? Do anatomical and neurophysiological correlations (inductive evidence) of intent or imagination establish their location in one's mind or head?
Or are intent and imagination psychological functions (i.e., events or processes) or conditions which brain anatomy and neurophysiology facilitate? If so, how are they perceived by others and known to ourselves?
I think that others perceive one's goal and imagination behaviour (criterial evidence of one's intent and imagination), and that our psychological functions or conditions are known to ourselves in terms of verbal expressions which are socially learned. We perform psychological functions; they require no evidence to be known to ourselves. We do not experience them, but we may experience their cause(s) and effect(s).
So, to revise my answer to schopenhauer1's first question:
schopenhauer1:Are goals "real" in that they are a natural phenomena that are a part of certain animal biological/psychological make-up, or a nominal label for a very pervasive social convention/habit?
Psychological functions and conditions are socially learned verbal constructs which explain types of natural and acculturated behaviour.
[quote=unenlightened]But at the moment, there is no tea, and therefore no pleasure. The pleasure that has not yet happened cannot be the cause of its own production. It can only then be the pain of thirst.[/quote]
Likely you're lacking a bit here. Dopamine peaks at a much higher level to get you to make tea than when you're actually drinking it. Desire/anticipation is pleasurable(?) or motivating. Apparently worn out amphetamine users get high before the drug enters their system by anticipation and a conditioned reward circuit.
Psychological functions and conditions are socially learned verbal constructs which explain types of natural and acculturated behaviour.
How would "natural" be included in the explanation when "socially learned verbal constructs" usually falls under social and not instinctual, unless "natural" is used in a different way than a synonym for strict biologically determined behavior. If goals then are social constructs, is essentially everything we hold dear as humans in terms of our "supposed" desires, wants, hopes, motivations, etc. just a socially taught mechanism that has simply been one useful way for our species to survive? Are there alternatives for humans, or does the social construct of goals go along with having a general processor brains that have lost goal-oriented behaviors (instincts) of other animals? In other words, is the social construct just an exaptation- something that just so happened to arise but was not the reason for our unique evolution, or was it actually an adaptation- something that was specifically selected for? I'm pretty sure @unenlightened's desire for tea, for example, was not selected for :D.
unenlightenedAugust 20, 2017 at 17:16#988200 likes
Reply to Nils LocOoh, yummy dopamine peaks, just what I always wanted. :D
If I desire tea because it is pleasant to desire tea, then what's the tea for, and why would I ruin the pleasure of desire by fulfilling it?
It may well be that real tea cannot live up to the standard of imaginary tea - which can very easily be 'just like the best tea you ever tasted, only even better'. But I don't think this requires a radical reworking
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 20, 2017 at 18:47#988460 likes
In the end, all i mean by imagined is that it is something in one's head that is not in the world.
I figured this was probably what you meant, but I like to distinguish between the act of imagining (imagination), and the image, or other imaginary thing (thing in one's head). So as things in one's head, we have all sorts images, memories, words, beliefs, ideas, and of course goals and intentions. But as well as this, we have the act of imagination, and this act may establish relationships, associations between different images, memories, words, goals etc.. This act, as a creative act, will create new memories, goals, etc.. But in this description I assume that there is already content, images memories etc., from which new things in one's head are produced.
Isn't that description inaccurate then? The act of imagination is said to be what produces things in one's head, but it is presumed that there are already things within one's head for the act of imagination to work with. This is a vicious circle. The imagination can only create something if something already exists, but that something could have only been created by the imagination.
Wouldn't it be more precise to say that the act of imagination creates things from nothing? This is not nothing in an absolute sense, but it is the potential for things. So the act of imagination creates things within one's head, not by working with things which are already there, existing content, establishing associations and relationships with these existing things, it creates things from nothing, where there was just the potential for things.
On the small scale, my goal is the cup of tea that I do not have, that does not exist because it hasn't been made, and the logic is that if it had been made I wouldn't possibly have it as a goal, I'd already have it, just as my goal was to write some kind of reply to you, but now it is written, it is a goal no longer.
In more traditional language, perhaps, my desire is always for something that is not, something lacking. What can we call something that is not? An image, a fiction, a notion? The source of such is the past, one's experience - it can only be the past since it is not present, and it is projected onto the future as a goal.
Let's say that you mind creates the goal of a cup of tea. For the sake of argument, let's assume that it creates that from nothing. There is the potential for a seemingly infinite number of different goals, but your mind produces the goal of a cup of tea without consulting past memories, ideas, or any such thing, the goal just pops into your head, from the vast potential. Now your mind must validate, or justify this goal. Is it reasonable, is it obtainable, should it be sought etc.? At this point your mind consults already existing things in your head, drawing associations and relationships, to determine whether it is a good goal or not.
In the end, I think one can only intend something to the extent that it is known, so a creative act is necessarily the interplay of the intentional and the accidental, and that is what I alluded to above when I mentioned doodles. One can act without motive.
So in the end, I do agree that we can act without motive, if you allow that the act of imagination is such an act. The act of imagination will produce goals without any motivation, if we allow that these goals just pop into your head. But before we proceed to act on the goal, we will assess it, judge it, and I think that it is only following this judgement that one becomes motivated. This produces the distinction between two types of acts, the unmotivated "act of imagination", and the motivate act to fulfill a goal, with the medium of judging what is produced by the imagination, lying between these two. Therefore motivation must be related to judgement.
Is a goal or imagination a phenomenon in one's mind or head which can be experienced and perceived? If so, by what is it experienced and perceived? What and where is one's mind (it's intuitively obvious that heads can be perceived, but can minds be perceived)?
I believe you have met a logical roadblock here. I don't think that a mind can be perceived, this is logically impossible, unless one mind could directly perceive another mind. The mind is active in the act of perception, so the mind is the thing which is perceiving. It cannot be the thing perceived or else there would be a nonsensical circle of time, because an act requires the passage of time. By the time the act of perception occurs, the thing perceived no longer exists, so it is impossible that the act of perception is what is being perceived or else time would be circular. It is logically possible that one mind could directly perceive another, but since the mind is not sensed, and things external to a person are sensed, the nature of the sense world renders this physically impossible.
Is a goal or imagination something concrete which can be located in one's mind or head (i.e., either as a part of brain anatomy or neurophysiology)?
I believe that a goal, as an object is just as real as any physical object. So depending on what you mean by "concrete", a goal may be concrete (real). A goal may be identified, it may be analyzed, properties may be attributed to it, etc., just like any physical object. The difference is that the goal is an object understood to exist only in the mind, while a physical object is understood to exist outside the mind.
Dopamine peaks at a much higher level to get you to make tea than when you're actually drinking it.
OK is this like the difference between a wink and a blink? It is difficult to tell them apart at times. Winks are intentional (I imagine having a nice cup of Jasmine tea, can almost see its golden strands and smell its elegant fragrance), isn't this the thick explanation, and the thin explanation (thin, because it is simply true or false) the physiological explanation about dopamine levels.
unenlightenedAugust 21, 2017 at 05:44#989340 likes
Isn't that description inaccurate then? The act of imagination is said to be what produces things in one's head, but it is presumed that there are already things within one's head for the act of imagination to work with. This is a vicious circle. The imagination can only create something if something already exists, but that something could have only been created by the imagination.
I don't think so. Imagine that terrible time before there was trade with China. The unenlightened of those days would never imagine liking tea in those days because 'tea' was a disgusting concoction of chamomile or blackcurrant leaves that was forced on you whenever you complained of quinsy or the King's evil. That poor unenlightened would have suffered, but never known what it was that was lacking in hie life, to even desire it. So there is no vicious circle that I can see. Like Tigger, one bounces through life bumping into hay-corns and thistles and not liking them much until one bumps into Roo's strengthening medicine, which is A A Milne's metaphor for tea. One learns from experience what one can desire, and the bouncing and bumping is the spontaneous movement of life.
What this view counters, or undoes, is the tyranny of desire. It stops being this slave driver, forcing you out of bed every morning, and take its rightful place as a mere thought that can refine one's bouncing so as to avoid some of the thistles.
Galuchat:Is a goal or imagination a phenomenon in one's mind or head which can be experienced and perceived? If so, by what is it experienced and perceived? What and where is one's mind (it's intuitively obvious that heads can be perceived, but can minds be perceived)?
Metaphysician Undercover:I believe you have met a logical roadblock here. I don't think that a mind can be perceived...
Maybe you presuppose that I am looking for answers to these questions, when my actual intent is to elicit your opinions. I agree that a mind cannot be perceived, but because: like psychological functions, mind is not an entity which can be observed. It is a convenient term (schopenhauer1's "nominal label") for the set of psychological functions which a being is capable of exercising (a socially learned verbal construct). Therefore, attributing psychological predicates to a mind is nonsense, and attributing them to a brain (or anything "in one's head") is mereological confusion.
Metaphysician Undercover:A goal may be identified, it may be analyzed, properties may be attributed to it, etc., just like any physical object. The difference is that the goal is an object understood to exist only in the mind, while a physical object is understood to exist outside the mind.
I agree that a particular goal (intention) may be identified, analysed, assigned attributes, etc., but only: by others when it is expressed to them (as in the first sentence of my previous paragraph), and by one's self when it is conceived of, or thought about. Inasmuch as it may exist in physical form when it is expressed, it does not "exist only in the mind". In fact, it never exists in a mind, because mind only exists as a verbal construct.
schopenhauer1:How would "natural" be included in the explanation when "socially learned verbal constructs" usually falls under social and not instinctual, unless "natural" is used in a different way than a synonym for strict biologically determined behavior.
In my current conception:
1) The domain of Cognitive Psychology explains natural behaviour.
2) The domain of Social Psychology explains acculturated behaviour.
Both domains are socially learned verbal constructs (i.e., models).
schopenhauer1:If goals then are social constructs, is essentially everything we hold dear as humans in terms of our "supposed" desires, wants, hopes, motivations, etc. just a socially taught mechanism that has simply been one useful way for our species to survive?...
In other words, is the social construct just an exaptation- something that just so happened to arise but was not the reason for our unique evolution, or was it actually an adaptation- something that was specifically selected for?
Thanks for pointing out how ridiculous my revised answer to your first question is (obviously, I am testing developing concepts). Let me try a third time:
Psychological functions and conditions produce natural and acculturated behaviour which is described in terms of socially learned verbal constructs. In other words, I suspect that these functions are adaptations rather than exaptations.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 21, 2017 at 10:49#989610 likes
don't think so. Imagine that terrible time before there was trade with China. The unenlightened of those days would never imagine liking tea in those days because 'tea' was a disgusting concoction of chamomile or blackcurrant leaves that was forced on you whenever you complained of quinsy or the King's evil. That poor unenlightened would have suffered, but never known what it was that was lacking in hie life, to even desire it. So there is no vicious circle that I can see. Like Tigger, one bounces through life bumping into hay-corns and thistles and not liking them much until one bumps into Roo's strengthening medicine, which is A A Milne's metaphor for tea. One learns from experience what one can desire, and the bouncing and bumping is the spontaneous movement of life.
OK, I admit that it is possible, that all goals are produced from prior experience like this. But how do we account for innovation and creativity then? With creativity It must be the case that the act of imagination creates something new and that new thing created must be something in the mind. Suppose we assume that the imagination always uses old parts when creating something new, then there is necessarily some things within the mind which were not created by the imagination.
What are these things, and where do they come from? We cannot class these things as imaginary now, because we've denied that they are created by the imagination. We've defeated your definition which states that all things in the mind are imaginary because we've found some fundamental things within the mind which cannot be imaginary.
Furthermore, for me this casts doubt on the assumption that there are unmotivated actions. I appealed to the idea of the imagination creating something out of nothing, as an example of an unmotivated action. But if the imagination always draws from something already existing when it creates, then aren't those things, which cause it to create what it does, motivating things? How can we get beyond the idea that these things are causes, in the creative act, to assume an unmotivated action?
unenlightenedAugust 21, 2017 at 14:33#989810 likes
OK, I admit that it is possible, that all goals are produced from prior experience like this. But how do we account for innovation and creativity then? With creativity It must be the case that the act of imagination creates something new and that new thing created must be something in the mind. Suppose we assume that the imagination always uses old parts when creating something new, then there is necessarily some things within the mind which were not created by the imagination.
If you spend some time with very small persons, you'll notice that everything goes in their mouth; chocolate, lego bricks, electric cable, carpet fluff, thumbs, clothes pegs, guitars, everything. Presumably, there is no 'desire for carpet fluff' required or even 'imagining carpet fluff', this is just exploration of whatever is around.
I learned about carpet fluff a long time ago, and I don't even like smoking it. Indeed there is no possible motive for eating carpet fluff, and in the same way, there is no possible motive for drinking concoction X, which might be delicious, revolting or poisonous. 'Suck it and see' is not really a motive so much as an attitude to the unknown, that infants necessarily adopt by instinct, and adults learn by bitter experience to renounce in favour of 'sticking with what works'.
So I would say that imagination can suggest trying some sugar (I know I like sugar) in the tea (I know I like tea), but cannot go beyond experience and rearrangements of experience. "How about baked beans in tea - I know I like baked beans?" but not, "How about concoction X in tea - What the fuck is concoction X ?"
But if you are young at heart, and there happens to be concoction X, you might try it, and you might like it, and then you have had a new experience, and a motive to use concoction X in all your old recipes.
So creativity can be exploring new arrangements of the same old paints and brushes, or exploring new materials, but the aspect that is intended is always the known aspect, and to be creative there must also be an aspect of 'suck it and see', which I previously called 'spontaneous action'.
I think it is necessary to distinguish between intentions, or goals, and motivation which is the ambition that aids in successfully achieving ones goals.
Think of intentions/goals as the predicted outcome of some action. Our goals are like simulations of how we'd like it to be. The difference between how we'd like it to be and how it is is what motivates us. We aren't motivated when things are how we'd like it to be. We are content.
Harry Hindu:We aren't motivated when things are how we'd like it to be. We are content.
I agree. Generally, the cause of motivation is dissatisfaction. Specifically, dissatisfaction due to:
1) Negative affect produced by unpleasant sensations and/or feelings.
2) Unfulfilled human needs (i.e., requisites for good mental and corporeal health which facilitate human well-being).
3) Unfulfilled propositional attitudes (i.e., desires, hopes, opinions, beliefs, convictions).
schopenhauer1August 21, 2017 at 15:57#990010 likes
Generally, the cause of motivation is dissatisfaction. Specifically, dissatisfaction due to:
1) Negative affect produced by unpleasant sensations and/or feelings.
2) Unfulfilled human needs (i.e., requisites for good mental and corporeal health which facilitate human well-being).
3) Unfulfilled propositional attitudes (i.e., desires, hopes, opinions, beliefs, convictions).
This is the core of Schopenhauer's theory of Will.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 21, 2017 at 23:56#990930 likes
Inasmuch as it may exist in physical form when it is expressed, it does not "exist only in the mind". In fact, it never exists in a mind, because mind only exists as a verbal construct.
I don't understand what you mean when you say mind is only a verbal construct. Isn't the opposite of this what is really the case, minds create words? A goal can't really exist in a physical form, the words are a representation of the goal. The actual goal always exists in the mind.
'Suck it and see' is not really a motive so much as an attitude to the unknown, that infants necessarily adopt by instinct, and adults learn by bitter experience to renounce in favour of 'sticking with what works'.
This attitude toward the unknown is the philosophical mindset, wonder, the desire to know. Wouldn't you consider that wonder is a motive?
there is no possible motive for drinking concoction X,
So I can't say that I agree with this statement. Do you not think that there is motive behind trial and error? The thing tried in the process of trial and error, must be tried for some reason or purpose, or else there could be no determination of "error". Concoction X is tried for some reason, so there must be motive, but the reason is not evident, and maybe not even to the one who is trying it. Youngsters try all kinds of drugs and their motives aren't clear, but that doesn't mean there aren't motives.
Suppose the child is popping things into its mouth completely randomly, without any determination of "error", and therefore with no motive. Isn't this just the same things as saying that the idea, the goal to put the thing in its mouth, just pops into the child's head from nowhere? So now we're back to the same position I stated earlier. The act of imagination produces this idea from nothing, it just pops into the child's head, what you call "spontaneous action". And this is what creativity is. The difference between what you're saying and what I said, appears to be that you do not want to call this spontaneous action an act of imagination.
The difference between how we'd like it to be and how it is is what motivates us. We aren't motivated when things are how we'd like it to be. We are content.
I don't think so. Even when we feel content, we are still motivated to act. Moving is a physiological thing, and we are naturally inclined to move. You might argue that we move because we are not content to sit still, but then there are no goals, or "how we'd like it to be" which is motivating us, we are just motivated to move because we are discontent with being how we are.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 22, 2017 at 00:08#991040 likes
This is the core of Schopenhauer's theory of Will.
This is the motivation of discontent. If one is inclined to move due to dissatisfaction, we can't really say that it is a goal or intention which motivates that person, it is just a general inclination toward change.
Reply to Gotterdammerung To answer your questions, I will first break it down into three parts:
1. why do we do what we do?
2. what is inspiration?
3. what is motivation?
1. Humans base their decisions and actions to fulfill their highest values or what is most important to them. Our biggest "perceived" voids create our biggest "perceived" values. For example, like @Bitter Crank mentioned, if a car becomes too hot or cold, you have a perceived void of a more pleasant temperature. This also works on a larger scale. For example, a lot of people that become wealthy have relatively poorer upbringings which can create a void/ value on building wealth. On the other hand, if you have an upper-middle class upbringing, you may not have as high of a value on money and may simply follow in your parents footsteps to a similar upper-middle class life. 2. Inspiration arises when we are fulfilling what is truly meaningful to us. Think of the Statue of David, The Mona Lisa, The Geodesic Dome, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water etc. These great masterpieces came from people that were doing what was truly meaningful to them. On the other hand, if an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright was instructed to become a make up artist, he would have very low inspiration and wouldn't perform nearly as well and be considered a "failure". In this case, a boss may try to "motivate" the employee. 3. Motivation is an external force required to do something that is not really that important to you. A boss may try to motivate you with money. You may try and motivate yourself to workout with a motivational video or motivate yourself to study for a degree your parents told you to do etc. Sometimes motivation can be helpful, but if you are not mainly doing what is important to you, you will live an unfulfilling life.
Ultimately, the goal is to live an inspired life, fulfilling what is most meaningful to you. If you need motivation to do something, it is not that important to you or you haven't chunked down what you are trying to achieve into manageable bites.
schopenhauer1August 22, 2017 at 03:54#991400 likes
This is the motivation of discontent. If one is inclined to move due to dissatisfaction, we can't really say that it is a goal or intention which motivates that person, it is just a general inclination toward change.
How so? The underlying condition is discontent. This wells up in our linguistic brains as some sort of goal to move away from discontent in goal-directed action (get the date, get the ice cream, get the better job, build that career, etc. etc.) which according to Schopenhauer, never ceases to get rid of the underlying dissatisfaction which will always well up into more goals to be directed towards in our linguistic brains.
unenlightenedAugust 22, 2017 at 10:10#992080 likes
Suppose the child is popping things into its mouth completely randomly, without any determination of "error", and therefore with no motive. Isn't this just the same things as saying that the idea, the goal to put the thing in its mouth, just pops into the child's head from nowhere? So now we're back to the same position I stated earlier. The act of imagination produces this idea from nothing, it just pops into the child's head, what you call "spontaneous action". And this is what creativity is. The difference between what you're saying and what I said, appears to be that you do not want to call this spontaneous action an act of imagination.
Yes, that is the difference. But I think it is a real and crucial difference. I say that we do things, without motive, without idea and without a goal. I could call it 'play'. It has the effect of trial and error, but is not motivated by that idea, which the child is not yet capable of forming. What this formulation does, which I think makes it more true, is it establishes the primacy of being over thought. One is in the world, one experiences, one moves; and ideas, judgements, plans, understandings, come from that, and not - emphatically not - the other way round.
And this is the escape from the prison of discontented will - that it is merely an idea one has formed about oneself, and it is a mistaken idea. Why go on living? Why have children? No reason, no motive, no plan! Motives are thought excrescences on life that divert it from its course, which is just fine a lot of the time, but thought is the servant of life, not the master.
Is it not clear that before motive can get off the ground, life must have already been busy forming itself into the being that can be motivated?
The difference between how we'd like it to be and how it is is what motivates us. We aren't motivated when things are how we'd like it to be. We are content. — Harry Hindu
I don't think so. Even when we feel content, we are still motivated to act. Moving is a physiological thing, and we are naturally inclined to move. You might argue that we move because we are not content to sit still, but then there are no goals, or "how we'd like it to be" which is motivating us, we are just motivated to move because we are discontent with being how we are.
I don't see where you're disagreeing with what I said. The goal would be to move. The difference between wanting to move and currently sitting still motivates us to move. The question we should ask is what comes first - the motivation or the goal? It seems that the motivation comes first as we notice the difference between our current state and the state we want. We then establish the goal and act. But then it also seems that both the motivation and goal are established together and may actually be one and the same. Can you have a goal without motivation, or vice versa?
Metaphysician Undercover:I don't understand what you mean when you say mind is only a verbal construct.
"Mind" is the name of a verbal concept which can be described as: the set of faculties exercised by a psychophysical being which produce natural and acculturated behaviour. When considered in relation to other verbal concepts (e.g., particular faculties), it becomes a verbal construct (i.e., mental model).
The set of faculties described in this conception of mind are real (i.e., they exist). However, "mind" (conceived of as an entity having these faculties) does not exist. So, use of the word "mind" only makes sense as a convenient way of referring to these faculties collectively, rather than by enumeration.
Inductive evidence in the form of physiological correlates, and criterial evidence in the form of observed behaviour, establish the existence of psychological functions and conditions.
If an experiment can be devised which resolves the question: "does the mind (as an entity) exist?", it is an empirical question, and the fact of its existence or non-existence can be established. For example, once it has been decided what constitutes the entity "mind", an experiment using PET, fMRI, MEG, or NIRS technology can determine whether or not it has neural correlates.
If there is no way to experimentally test the hypothesis, "the mind (as an entity) exists", then whether or not it exists is a conceptual question requiring logical investigation. For example, does it make sense to conceive of beings as composed of two parts (body and mind) or as an integrated whole?
If beings are composed of a body and mind, questions of interaction and mind location need to be resolved. Modern neuroscientists (and some philosophers) think this dualist problem is resolved by replacing mind with brain. But, this only transfers the attribution of psychological functions and conditions from mind to brain, when logically they are attributes of a being (a psychophysical unity).
Also, coherent concepts of psychological functions and conditions do not only take into consideration brain anatomy and physiology, but the anatomy and physiology of all the organic systems of a living being.
N.B. The foregoing is distilled from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker (2003).
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 22, 2017 at 23:15#993800 likes
How so? The underlying condition is discontent. This wells up in our linguistic brains as some sort of goal to move away from discontent in goal-directed action (get the date, get the ice cream, get the better job, build that career, etc. etc.) which according to Schopenhauer, never ceases to get rid of the underlying dissatisfaction which will always well up into more goals to be directed towards in our linguistic brains.
What I'm saying is that the discontent motivates the brain to produce goals and consequently goal-directed action. So I place motivation between discontent and goals, as a cause of goals. The brain in action needs not focus on goals, it may focus on intelligible ideas, logic, or other problems. This is contemplation, but an individual needs to be motivated to focus on these logical problems rather than focusing on goal-directed action as a means of release from dissatisfaction.
Contemplation is an activity, which requires motivation to carry it out. This is the perspective which allows Aristotle to say that contemplation is of the highest virtue. To be virtuous, it must be an activity, and as an activity it requires motivation. So the act of contemplation, which brings about good ideas, and good goals, is only brought about by the motivated individual, just like any other virtuous act.
Yes, that is the difference. But I think it is a real and crucial difference. I say that we do things, without motive, without idea and without a goal.
You are associating "motive" with "idea" and "goal", as if they are equivalent, or as if motive doesn't exist without a determinate goal. But "motive" refers solely to the source, or cause of motion, and there need not be a particular goal in mind which leads to the activity. So I think we have to assign motivation to lower animals, and even plants, which move without having any particular goal in mind.
I think you are misrepresenting what "motive" actually means. You are providing an understanding of the term which limits its use to a particular type of motive, how "motive" would be used in a law court or something like that, "the person's motive", meaning the person's intent. When in common usage, "motivate" has a much more general meaning, more closely associated with "impetus". In this way you seek to restrict the use of "motive", so that an idea or goal provides motivation, but it cannot be motivation which is responsible for the creation of ideas, they are spontaneous or random occurrences. In actuality though, "motive" refers to the factors which induce one to act. And thinking, which creates ideas and goals, is an act.
And this is the escape from the prison of discontented will - that it is merely an idea one has formed about oneself, and it is a mistaken idea. Why go on living? Why have children? No reason, no motive, no plan! Motives are thought excrescences on life that divert it from its course, which is just fine a lot of the time, but thought is the servant of life, not the master.
I agree that we can escape discontent through acting in the world, having a family, becoming socially active, etc.. But this is not necessary, as we can also escape discontent just through thinking, contemplation and imagination. To escape discontent, we do not need to form specific goals, and act in the world to bring these goals to fruition, we need only to think, theorize, and bring about ideas. You might call this living in a fantasy world, but that's what a theorist does and it's effective for escaping discontent. Sure the theory needs to be tested empirically to be proven, but this is not necessarily important to the theorist.
Mind" is the name of a verbal concept which can be described as: the set of faculties exercised by a psychophysical being which produce natural and acculturated behaviour. When considered in relation to other verbal concepts (e.g., particular faculties), it becomes a verbal construct (i.e., mental model).
"Mind" refers to a bunch of faculties of a being, each of which produces a particular type of behaviour.
The set of faculties described in this conception of mind are real (i.e., they exist). However, "mind" (conceived of as an entity having these faculties) does not exist. So use of the word "mind" is only intelligible as a convenient way of referring to these faculties collectively, rather than by enumeration.
Now you lose me. Why do you say that the faculties exist, but "mind" does not exist? Let's say "human being" refers to a set of physical parts which perform certain activities. Why would you say that the parts performing the activities exist, but the whole, the human being does not exist? This appears to be what you are doing with "mind". You are assigning existence to each individual faculty, but denying existence from the whole. Just because we can break a thing into parts, this does not mean that the parts exist but the whole does not. How many of these faculties could exist on their own, without being a part of the mind?
If an experiment can be devised which resolves the question: "does the mind exist?", it is an empirical question, and the fact of its existence or non-existence can be established. For example, once it has been decided what constitutes the entity "mind", an experiment using PET, fMRI, MEG, or NIRS technology can determine whether or not it has neural correlates.
If we extend my analogy, you'd be asking what constitutes the entity called "human being", and looking at the parts of the human being, to see which of these parts could be the "human being". Do you see the flaw in this technique, examining the different parts to determine which of the parts "constitutes" the whole. You have defined "mind" as the whole "set" of these faculties, so that's what mind is, just like "human being" is the whole of the living being. So it is pointless to examine the parts to see which of them constitutes the whole, because the determination that the mind is "the whole" has already excluded this.
One might ask, "does the human being exist?", but if you've already decided that the human being is just a collection of different parts engaged in different functions, and that the collection as a whole has no special significance over any individual part, then what point is such a question?
I don't see where you're disagreeing with what I said. The goal would be to move. The difference between wanting to move and currently sitting still motivates us to move. The question we should ask is what comes first - the motivation or the goal? It seems that the motivation comes first as we notice the difference between our current state and the state we want. We then establish the goal and act.
My point is that we often move without having the goal to move. We need motivation to move but we do not need a goal to move. But I think we agree by and large anyway, because we both say that motivation is prior to the goal. I believe that a goal comes about from thinking, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation.
schopenhauer1August 23, 2017 at 03:28#994720 likes
The brain in action needs not focus on goals, it may focus on intelligible ideas, logic, or other problems. This is contemplation, but an individual needs to be motivated to focus on these logical problems rather than focusing on goal-directed action as a means of release from dissatisfaction.
I never understood what the big deal with the intelligible ideas, logic, and "other problems" were. I mean, sometimes I get a sort of buzz when I think of the world in a certain way, but what makes studying logic and math and intelligible ideas (whatever this really means) so special? If you ask a Buddhist, it is Nirvana/Enlightenment, if you ask a Hindu it's Moksha, if you asked one of the Abrahamic faiths, it's probably some sort of communion with the divine. In other words, there are a lot of variations on this concept of special states of experience. How is one to prove that these are "real" experiences, or just reified concepts with a ton of secondary literature built on a sandcastle of nonsense?
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 23, 2017 at 10:31#995340 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1
It's just a matter of studying, and learning different things. Some people like to take numbers and logical principles and apply them to the physical world. Some people just want to direct their attention toward these logical principles directly, and study their existence. It's a different interest, we are motivated in different ways.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover If you're genuinely interested, read the referenced book carefully. I don't have time to explain the same thing 10 different ways. Good luck!
I don't see where you're disagreeing with what I said. The goal would be to move. The difference between wanting to move and currently sitting still motivates us to move. The question we should ask is what comes first - the motivation or the goal? It seems that the motivation comes first as we notice the difference between our current state and the state we want. We then establish the goal and act. — Harry Hindu
My point is that we often move without having the goal to move. We need motivation to move but we do not need a goal to move. But I think we agree by and large anyway, because we both say that motivation is prior to the goal. I believe that a goal comes about from thinking, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation.
How and when do we often move without having the goal to move - when we have a nervous twitch or something? When I move, I often have the goal to move. How can you be motivated without a goal?
You also cherry-picked my post. The last part you left out began to question the distinction between motivations and goals. It seems that both the goal and the motivation are the same thing. The goal is what motivates you to act. I asked, can you be motivated without a goal and vice versa? Was the question to difficult or something?
unenlightenedAugust 23, 2017 at 11:52#995510 likes
When in common usage, "motivate" has a much more general meaning, more closely associated with "impetus". In this way you seek to restrict the use of "motive", so that an idea or goal provides motivation, but it cannot be motivation which is responsible for the creation of ideas, they are spontaneous or random occurrences. In actuality though, "motive" refers to the factors which induce one to act. And thinking, which creates ideas and goals, is an act.
That's right. And if we are just arguing about the meaning of words, there is no real problem or disagreement.
You might call this living in a fantasy world, but that's what a theorist does and it's effective for escaping discontent. Sure the theory needs to be tested empirically to be proven, but this is not necessarily important to the theorist.
Yes, that is what a theorist does, and that is what I call the world of ideas or fantasy to distinguish it from the empirical world, which is what you have done there also.
So the question I need to ask, I suppose, is what are these 'factors that induce one to act', that are not ideas projected as goals and that you think of as motives and I do not? And since you include plants, you seem to be saying that plants have motives in this sense, which I find rather a misleading locution. But never mind, as long as we are clear that it is not ideas, or indeed any thought based factor, but something in the physical nature of a plant that it grows towards the light, or makes seeds or responds to the environment in all sorts of ways that we can make sense of in terms of evolutionary function, but the plant itself cannot consider at all.
A plant's genes encode a repertoire of automatic responses to environmental stresses, that have the effect of making it adaptive to the environment in ways that aid survival. If you want to call these responses motivated, well I sort of understand. And humans have similarly 'built in' responses, that in my language, I tend to use terms such as 'instinct' and 'reflex' for. Propensities to act that one can be aware of and think about, but which originate in the body without thought. Thus hunger is a physical condition that provokes suckling, or crying; curiosity provokes exploration and learning. Drought provokes spinach to run to seed. I call these responses spontaneous because they are unthought.
So per my earlier example, but in your language, thirst motivates drinking, but thought motivates the modification of behaviour from drinking some water to making tea, based on remembered previous experience. And one might say that biology, or evolution is motivated to provoke thought as a means to increase the diversity of responses through just such modification by learning. But in humans, thought reaches such a level that it can become wholly antagonistic to the motives of life that give rise to it, and this is the sad condition in which we find ourselves; that the thought that modifies the instinct to run to seed, to delay it rather than accelerate it perhaps, becomes anti-natalism, and wholly opposed to life.
schopenhauer1August 23, 2017 at 13:19#995530 likes
So per my earlier example, but in your language, thirst motivates drinking, but thought motivates the modification of behaviour from drinking some water to making tea, based on remembered previous experience. And one might say that biology, or evolution is motivated to provoke thought as a means to increase the diversity of responses through just such modification by learning. But in humans, thought reaches such a level that it can become wholly antagonistic to the motives of life that give rise to it, and this is the sad condition in which we find ourselves; that the thought that modifies the instinct to run to seed, to delay it rather than accelerate it perhaps, becomes anti-natalism, and wholly opposed to life.
The concept of antinatalism is a logical response to the self-reflection on the repetitious (instrumental) nature of existence, the unrelenting desires that motivate us (that you just described), the polar boundaries of survival and angst, and the myriad of contingent/circumstantial harms that befall us. It is simply a self-reflecting creature making the logical conclusion from such circumstances that we face when coming into existence. Perhaps Peter Zapffe was correct, our own self-awareness, makes us too aware of our situation- an exaptation from the simple evolutionary trajectory for better learning. However, what you cannot do is put the cat back in the bag. We have this ability, we can come to this conclusion. We can use techniques to ignore it, but the logic is there and apparent. X leads to Y, so prevent X. X = birth and Y= all the contingent and structural harms for a new person. What is the collateral damage? People sad that they don't have kids and that they cannot project some future person that does this or that. Is there a pre-existing person that is deprived? No.
unenlightenedAugust 23, 2017 at 16:11#995670 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 You put it very clearly. Logos against Eros; it's all very Freudian. You speak for logos, and I speak for Eros. This gives you the advantage, as I have to fight with your weapons in the virtual world, but if we met in the empirical world I would destroy you with a caress.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 24, 2017 at 01:11#997000 likes
So the question I need to ask, I suppose, is what are these 'factors that induce one to act', that are not ideas projected as goals and that you think of as motives and I do not?
This is not a question which is easily answered. The reason I suggested differentiating between the goals and the motivation, near the beginning of the thread, is because I see motivation as that which inspires one to achieve one's goals. And this is different from the goal itself. Motivation is associated with things like "ambition", "spirit", and "passion". You may be correct in saying that when we speak of "motives", as particular things, we refer to the particular goals which appear to motivate us, but when we speak of motivation we refer to the courage or ambition required in overcoming obstacles in the effort to achieve the goals. So I don't think it's really the goals which motivate us, but the passion which we feel for the goals. This is conviction, or determination, the strength with which we adhere to our principles. That I believe is the true motivator, rather than what we refer to as "the motive", or goal itself.
But never mind, as long as we are clear that it is not ideas, or indeed any thought based factor, but something in the physical nature of a plant that it grows towards the light, or makes seeds or responds to the environment in all sorts of ways that we can make sense of in terms of evolutionary function, but the plant itself cannot consider at all.
Is it correct to refer to this spirit as something in the physical nature of the living being? If we reference the Platonic tripartite person, spirit or passion takes an intermediate position between the material body, and the immaterial mind.
A plant's genes encode a repertoire of automatic responses to environmental stresses, that have the effect of making it adaptive to the environment in ways that aid survival. If you want to call these responses motivated, well I sort of understand. And humans have similarly 'built in' responses, that in my language, I tend to use terms such as 'instinct' and 'reflex' for. Propensities to act that one can be aware of and think about, but which originate in the body without thought. Thus hunger is a physical condition that provokes suckling, or crying; curiosity provokes exploration and learning. Drought provokes spinach to run to seed. I call these responses spontaneous because they are unthought.
Yes, I think this is where we get our ambition from, we are born with it, it is instinctual. We do not learn how to be ambitious or passionate about things, either we have that spirit, or we do not. And I think we see this in other animals and plants as well, some are more spirited (motivated) than others. Would you really believe that this ambition is an automatic response encoded by the genes? What if one identical twin is more motivated than the other?
So per my earlier example, but in your language, thirst motivates drinking, but thought motivates the modification of behaviour from drinking some water to making tea, based on remembered previous experience. And one might say that biology, or evolution is motivated to provoke thought as a means to increase the diversity of responses through just such modification by learning. But in humans, thought reaches such a level that it can become wholly antagonistic to the motives of life that give rise to it, and this is the sad condition in which we find ourselves; that the thought that modifies the instinct to run to seed, to delay it rather than accelerate it perhaps, becomes anti-natalism, and wholly opposed to life.
I quite agree with this passage. Could we say that thought mitigates ambition and motivation? So instead of running to get some water as soon as you are thirsty, because you are a highly motivated person, you take the time to make tea instead. But if we follow Plato, he'll let us know that ambition works the other way as well. If you have an idea which you strongly believe in, this will strengthen your ambition and determination. If you believe you are dehydrated you probably wouldn't take the time to make tea. So thought will sometimes soften your motivation, but other times strengthen it. If a person cannot decide when to mitigate, or when to strengthen, one's ambition, or makes the wrong decisions concerning this, it is a sad condition.
How and when do we often move without having the goal to move - when we have a nervous twitch or something?
Any time we do something habitual we move without having the goal to make that movement. When I'm walking I'm moving my legs without having the goal to move the legs. My goal might be to get somewhere, or just to wander, but each time I take a step when I'm walking, I do not form the goal of taking that step.
I asked, can you be motivated without a goal and vice versa?
I thought the answer to this question is obvious from what I've been arguing. I've been arguing that you need to be motivated to create a goal, but motivation may produce things other than goals.
What is motivation? Where does it come from? Why do we do what we do?
I think these are two separate questions. 'Motivation' is a word we use for reasons we ascribe for our behaviour. 'Why we do what we do' is best answered scientifically, or with a shrug, but a well-informed shrug - one, say, by shoulders whose resident person has read plenty of good novels.
How and when do we often move without having the goal to move - when we have a nervous twitch or something? — Harry Hindu
Any time we do something habitual we move without having the goal to make that movement. When I'm walking I'm moving my legs without having the goal to move the legs. My goal might be to get somewhere, or just to wander, but each time I take a step when I'm walking, I do not form the goal of taking that step.
But walking is one of those things that, as adults that have been walking since we can remember, we take for granted. As infants we did have to make deliberate motions to move our legs in specific ways to accomplish walking. This is what happens when we learn new things - it takes practice and concentration. Once we master it, we don't really need to focus on it. We do seem to have that goal of taking the first step. In order to get somewhere, you do initially have the goal of moving your feet from a resting position, just like having the goal to throw a ball, you need to send the signal to the arm to move in a particular way. It seems to me that you can't walk or throw a ball without that initial goal of moving your body to accomplish the primary goal.
I asked, can you be motivated without a goal and vice versa? — Harry Hindu
I thought the answer to this question is obvious from what I've been arguing. I've been arguing that you need to be motivated to create a goal, but motivation may produce things other than goals.
How is one motivated to create a goal? Is it your discontent about the way things are currently that motivates one to create a goal? Once you create the goal, it is the goal driving you forward and no longer the discontent because the actions you take are directed towards that specific goal that you wouldn't take if the goal were different. There are many ways to alleviate discontent (different goals one could work towards in alleviating discontent) and each one needs a different order of actions to accomplish it.
unenlightenedAugust 24, 2017 at 11:46#999000 likes
Any time we do something habitual we move without having the goal to make that movement. When I'm walking I'm moving my legs without having the goal to move the legs. My goal might be to get somewhere, or just to wander, but each time I take a step when I'm walking, I do not form the goal of taking that step.
This is interesting; we haven't talked much about habit. Making tea has become a habit for me, to the extent that it bypasses both the motive of thirst and the goal of drinking tea; it's as automatic as walking. And it illustrates again the inadequacy of the 'every action is the result of desire' thesis. Habits are learned, and once learned become 'autonomous' - that's not quite the right word - unintentional?
One doesn't generally intend to fall over, but when walking one does not intentionally not fall over either. Most of the time it just happens without thought, but if the ground is very rough, one has to become aware of each step and take care. I don't know what we should say - that the motive of not falling is always there, but not conscious, or that it is only there when it is needed. Perhaps it doesn't matter much.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 25, 2017 at 00:18#1000380 likes
We do seem to have that goal of taking the first step. In order to get somewhere, you do initially have the goal of moving your feet from a resting position, just like having the goal to throw a ball, you need to send the signal to the arm to move in a particular way.
Imagine that I am out of milk, and I need milk for my tea, so I decide to walk to the corner store. Off I go. I never develop the goal of moving my feet. The goal is what I want, to get milk. I have choices of how to achieve that goal, so I decide to walk to the store. Walking to the store is the means to the end. Once I've made up my mind, the habit kicks in, but the movements required for walking never enter my mind as part of the goal.
So let's take your example of throwing the ball. Suppose you're a quarterback, and the throw must be precisely timed. You hold the goal, to throw, and you hold the ball, to throw. At the exact right moment, you must pull back and release the ball. The motivating factor for the release is not the goal, because despite having the goal of throwing you continue to hold the ball, perhaps even to the point of getting sacked. The motivating factor appears to be the judgement "now", at which time the habit takes over and the throw is made.
I wouldn't say that it is the "initial goal of moving your body" which is the motivating factor, because you can hold that goal of moving your body, without ever moving. These people who have goals without acting on them, we call unmotivated. It is the impetus of "act now!", which we refer to as motivation. And this is separate from the goal, because it may be applied to any goal. That is why ambitious, motivated people may be motivated toward all sorts of different goals. What makes the person motivated is not the goal itself, it's the person's attitude toward the goal.
How is one motivated to create a goal? Is it your discontent about the way things are currently that motivates one to create a goal? Once you create the goal, it is the goal driving you forward and no longer the discontent because the actions you take are directed towards that specific goal that you wouldn't take if the goal were different. There are many ways to alleviate discontent (different goals one could work towards in alleviating discontent) and each one needs a different order of actions to accomplish it.
A goal is a mental object, like any conception or idea. It must be conceived. To produce a goal requires thought, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation. I think it is a mistake to represent the goal as driving you forward, because the goal does not drive you forward, it may just sit there in your mind. It is your dedication to achieving the goal, and the will to act, which drives you forward, not the goal itself. The goal itself is a passive thing with no causal power.
I think it is a mistake to represent the goal as driving you forward, because the goal does not drive you forward, it may just sit there in your mind. It is your dedication to achieving the goal, and the will to act, which drives you forward, not the goal itself. The goal itself is a passive thing with no causal power.
Goals are not passive things. They are active states of constraint. So they may not be efficient causes, but they are final causes. They shape the intentional space in which consequent decision making unfolds. If we have an image of the final destination, then that is how we can start filling in all the necessary step actions to get us there.
So let's take your example of throwing the ball. Suppose you're a quarterback, and the throw must be precisely timed. You hold the goal, to throw, and you hold the ball, to throw. At the exact right moment, you must pull back and release the ball. The motivating factor for the release is not the goal, because despite having the goal of throwing you continue to hold the ball, perhaps even to the point of getting sacked. The motivating factor appears to be the judgement "now", at which time the habit takes over and the throw is made.
When playing fast sport, the decision-making has to be all pretty much habitual or automatic. Habitual responses are learnt behaviour - reactions ready to go - so can be executed in around a fifth of a second. Attention-level deliberation takes half a second at least. So it is much too slow to actually be in control while playing football.
The proper role of attentional-level goal forming is in the breaks in play. The "wait and get ready with a plan" moments. That is where the quarterback delays to become clear on his general intention during the next play. He has to start with a state of broad focus which shuts out everything he can expect to be able to ignore - like the cheerleaders prancing on the sidelines - so that his trained habits will be able to pick out all the rapid subtleties, like last instant reshuffles in the opposition defensive line.
Then the play starts to unfold and all his trained instincts can slot in according to a general intent. He is itching to pull the trigger on the throw. A conjunction of observed motions on the field hit the point where the habits themselves provide the timing information. The "go now" command is issued by the mid-brain basal ganglia in concert with the brainstem's cerebellum. The conscious brain can discover how it worked out a half second later as attentional-level processing catches up to provide a newly integrated state of experience. The quarterback can start thinking oh shit, or hot damn.
So the mistake is to try to assign thought, cause, motivation or intention to just one level of mental operation. And yet also, the general desire - neurobiologically speaking - is for a strong dichotomy to emerge.
Attention wants to do the least it can get away with. Everything that can be handed down the chain to learnt automatism will be handed down. But then that also leaves attention responsible for the very stuff that is the most critical or difficult or novel when it comes to "thought, cause, motivation or intention".
So a kid learning to play really does have to focus on the mechanics of simply timing a throw. There is no remaining capacity for thinking about the patterns of play likely to be unfolding on the field. But as a skilled player, even reading the game is something that doesn't need specific attention. Most of the effort has to go to just not getting distracted by cheerleaders, or whatever.
Motivation is thus dichotomous. It has both its generality and its particularity - the two levels complementing each other. You have to be governed by the constraint of some generalised intent. And then within that, you will be able to see all the particular steps needed to get you to that destination.
Action is not about summoning up the energy to do the bidding of reason. That is a mechanical metaphor - the psychology inspired by the industrial age when hot steam was needed to make the wheels turn.
Instead, a biological organism is always some host of spastic potential, itching and twitching, restless to be doing. Just watch a newborn squirming randomly. What it then needs is the focus so all that potential gets a clear direction that is useful. And over time, that intentionality has to become transformed into stable, reliable, habit. The ultimate goal is an economy of motion - achieving the most by doing the least.
Rather than motivation being about feeding the machine with more energy to get it to go harder, it is about learning how to reduce the informational load on acting so that doing what you need to do feels like an easy downhill ride - the flow experience of the truly skilled individual.
Who needs motivation to climb stairs or drive a car? Once the habits have been learnt, these dangerous and complex actions could not feel easier. We just get on and do them without having to break down any informational barriers.
Of course then there is real life where as soon as we have mastered the basic skills, higher level decision making gets piled on top. We even seek greater demands as unthinking and repetitive action gets boring. There are always new horizons to automate and assimilate to habit.
So when people complain about a lack of motivation to study, exercise, tidy their bedroom, whatever, it is because they face informational barriers - conflicted intentions - that make going in that direction too hard. They are really faced with the choice of either actually learning the appropriate life routines, or dealing with the possibility that its not actually something they believe in as a globally constraining life goal.
Imagine that I am out of milk, and I need milk for my tea, so I decide to walk to the corner store. Off I go. I never develop the goal of moving my feet. The goal is what I want, to get milk. I have choices of how to achieve that goal, so I decide to walk to the store. Walking to the store is the means to the end. Once I've made up my mind, the habit kicks in, but the movements required for walking never enter my mind as part of the goal.
Actually, isn't your primary goal, to have tea, not to get milk? Isn't getting milk and walking to the store SUB-goals of the primary goal? Isn't that what the goal of moving your feet would be too?
The whole first half of your post ignores what I said about learning how to walk. When you are in the process of learn something, then each step has to be focused on to complete the primary goal of walking. The same for throwing a football. I coach youth flag football and in teaching a kid how to throw a football requires all these other steps of positioning your feet, fingers, hand and arm, and the motion of your arm, fingers and hand, and even your body, as you throw the ball. A kid learning this often forgets each step and it takes practice to get it all. Once they've done it many times it becomes automatic. I don't think Tom Brady focuses much about how to plant his feet and positioning his fingers on the laces of the ball. All that information is in his subconscious. So the goal and process of moving your legs and arms are still there - it's just that you can focus on other tasks, not tasks you have performed over and over again. The brain is capable of multitasking by leaving he goals and means of achieving them to the subconscious while the conscious part focuses it's attention (which seems to be the special thing about consciousness as opposed to the subconscious and unconscious. It has attention) on other things.
I wouldn't say that it is the "initial goal of moving your body" which is the motivating factor, because you can hold that goal of moving your body, without ever moving. These people who have goals without acting on them, we call unmotivated. It is the impetus of "act now!", which we refer to as motivation. And this is separate from the goal, because it may be applied to any goal. That is why ambitious, motivated people may be motivated toward all sorts of different goals. What makes the person motivated is not the goal itself, it's the person's attitude toward the goal.
Of course the goal has causal power. How else do you explain your current state of walking to the store, if the goal of having tea doesn't have causal power? If your goal was to watch your favorite TV show, then you wouldn't be walking to the store. The goal itself dictates the actions you are taking now, or else you could never say why you are doing this particular thing now (walking to the store) as opposed to something else (looking for the remote control).
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 26, 2017 at 01:06#1002710 likes
Goals are not passive things. They are active states of constraint. So they may not be efficient causes, but they are final causes. They shape the intentional space in which consequent decision making unfolds. If we have an image of the final destination, then that is how we can start filling in all the necessary step actions to get us there.
I disagree with this, A goal is a describable object, it is a state, and as such it is static. The mind iswhat is active in forming goals. If a goal were to change, it can no longer be called "the same goal". This is necessary in order to be consistent with the laws of logic. Goals cannot change,one goal is replaced with another. So it is quite true that one's formal intention is active and changing, just like the form of any object, but when a person's formal intention changes the person can no longer be said to have the same goal. This is despite the fact that we may say that a physical object is the same object despite some changes to the form of the object. To assume this would make the goal unintelligible (contrary to the laws of logic), assuming that it could be the same goal after changing, which would contradict the fundamental nature of the goal, as an intelligible object.
When playing fast sport, the decision-making has to be all pretty much habitual or automatic.
This I disagree with as well. In fast sports, every situation is different, and it is the rapid thinking mind, the ability to foresee the rapidly changing future, the ability to adjust quickly with changes, which is on display in these sports. Hockey is a fine example. Yes, good habits are essential and all professional hockey players must develop these, but when we judge their "star" level we are judging their ability to think outside the box, be creative, and basically, their rapid decision making. The very nature of the habit is to constrain, so it is the difficult task of a fine hockey coach, to maintain a delicate balance between habit and creativity within the high-spirited, highly motivated hockey players.
Then the play starts to unfold and all his trained instincts can slot in according to a general intent. He is itching to pull the trigger on the throw. A conjunction of observed motions on the field hit the point where the habits themselves provide the timing information. The "go now" command is issued by the mid-brain basal ganglia in concert with the brainstem's cerebellum. The conscious brain can discover how it worked out a half second later as attentional-level processing catches up to provide a newly integrated state of experience. The quarterback can start thinking oh shit, or hot damn.
What? Come on now, are you saying that the "go now" command is not produced by the conscious mind? The quarterback doesn't consciously decide when to throw? The hockey player doesn't consciously decide when to shoot the puck? I find that counter-intuitive, and hard to believe, but I'm ready to allow this proposition, if only just for the sake of argument. After all, I'm arguing a separation between the goal, and the motivation which gives the "go now". So if the goal is attributed to the conscious mind, and the "go now" is not, this provides the separation I need.
However, I have difficulty with the logic of this claim, and I'll explain to you my difficulty. Perhaps you can give me an explanation which will help me to get beyond this problem. Suppose that the goal is to throw the ball and this is within the conscious mind. The QB must resist going through with the throw, until the moment is right. So the QB uses will power to stay in this zone of being about to throw, but not yet throwing. I believe that this will power involves a conscious effort. When the throw is made, there must be a release of this will power, a release from this conscious effort not to throw. But this "release" can only be a conscious decision, or else the conscious effort not to throw would be totally ineffective. If the non-conscious could overcome the conscious effort of will power at any moment, then the conscious effort to restrain would have no power to actually do that.
That's the problem I invite you to help me resolve. It appears to be impossible that the conscious effort to refrain from acting could have any power of self-restraint, if the motivation to "go now" was derived from the non-conscious. The non-conscious motivation to "go now" could just arise at any time, overpowering the conscious effort of restraint. In reality, the conscious effort actually restrains the "go now" motivation or else there would be no conscious restraint. How could the release be non-conscious without upending the whole thing?
Actually, isn't your primary goal, to have tea, not to get milk? Isn't getting milk and walking to the store SUB-goals of the primary goal? Isn't that what the goal of moving your feet would be too?
I agree with this designation of primary goals and sub-goals. But the problem is that moving my feet never becomes a goal at all, it just happens automatically, like my breathing isn't a goal, it just happens automatically. I decide to walk to the store, and I stand up and go. I do not decide to move my feet. There's many different muscles in my legs, ankles, and feet. I do not decide which ones to move, and how to move them, yet they still move properly when I decide to walk to the store. How would you draw a line? Which movements are described by the goal, and which just come about automatically because the person is motivated to achieve the goal?
The whole first half of your post ignores what I said about learning how to walk.
I didn't address this because it isn't relevant. I'm not talking about learning how to walk, I'm talking about walking as a habit. When we know well how to walk, we do so without setting goals of where and when to move our feet, this just happens naturally without the goal. When an individual who knows how to walk is motivated to walk, that person does so without setting goals of where and when to move one's feet. Whether or not one had to proceed with such goals when learning how to walk is irrelevant because I was talking about habitual actions, not learning such things.
So the goal and process of moving your legs and arms are still there - it's just that you can focus on other tasks, not tasks you have performed over and over again.
No, the goal is not still there, and that's the point. To be "there" it must be in the conscious mind. I have no idea what goals I had in my mind when I was learning to walk, so whatever those goals were, they are definitely not still there. I now walk without having in my mind the goals which assisted me in learning how to walk in the first place. And the walking activity is "automatic". It occurs without those goals.
The brain is capable of multitasking by leaving he goals and means of achieving them to the subconscious while the conscious part focuses it's attention (which seems to be the special thing about consciousness as opposed to the subconscious and unconscious. It has attention) on other things.
How do you suppose that the subconscious has goals? I don't see how this is possible. I can understand that a subconscious activity is carried out for a purpose, but this does not mean that the goal itself is within the subconscious.
Of course the goal has causal power. How else do you explain your current state of walking to the store, if the goal of having tea doesn't have causal power?
As I explained, it is not the goal of walking to the store, or having tea, which causes me to walk to the store. It is the decision to "act now" which causes me to go. I could be sitting on the couch for a very long time, maintaining the goal of walking to the store, without actually doing it, if I am unmotivated. So clearly it is not the goal which has causal power. I must be motivated to act on the goal or else nothing becomes of the goal.
The goal itself dictates the actions you are taking now, or else you could never say why you are doing this particular thing now (walking to the store) as opposed to something else (looking for the remote control).
The reason why of a particular thing, is not the same as a cause of action.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover The quarterback must release with millisecond accuracy and yet it takes at least a tenth of a second for any "go now" command to form as connections in the brain and messages travelling down the arms and body. So forget about even longer attentional, voluntary, deliberative, reportable consciousness being in control.
Even habit level execution takes a tenth of a second to make the simplest decision, like hear the pistol shot that starts the race. And to react to something more complex, like a bad bounce of a cricket ball, takes a fifth of a second.
This is all very well studied in sports psychology labs. It is even written into the laws of the games, as in the thresholds set for false starts in sprint races.
It should be obvious really. The more complicated the processing, the longer it is going to take. So habit is learnt skill that makes the least demand. Attention is a whole brain analysis that just has to take more time.
Yes, skilled competitors are good at throwing in unpredictability. And coping with unpredictably. That is what happens when you put in enough practice of the right kind. Tricky things can be handled "instinctively".
Again, we are talking about organisms and not machines. Simple is not dumb. Simple is proof of having learnt. Simple is the mastery of efficient achievement of goals.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 26, 2017 at 02:48#1002790 likes
The quarterback must release with millisecond accuracy and yet it takes at least a tenth of a second for any "go now" command to form as connections in the brain and messages travelling down the arms and body. So forget about even longer attentional, voluntary, deliberative, reportable consciousness being in control.
I don't think that this is a good argument. The precise time, the "millisecond accuracy" can be predicted in advance, so all the extra time require for the voluntary act can be accounted for in the QB's prediction of when to throw. If something suddenly appeared in front of the QB, and he had to respond within a millisecond, I agree that this would be impossible. But nothing is moving that fast, and this is not the case. The QB is simply waiting for the appropriate time to throw. So all the time is factored into the decision, the time the ball is in the air, the time the arm is moving, and the time that the brain messages are travelling. You have no argument here, that the decision to release is not voluntary.
Even habit level execution takes a tenth of a second to make the simplest decision, like hear the pistol shot that starts the race. And to react to something more complex, like a bad bounce of a cricket ball, takes a fifth of a second.
See, here you are talking about reaction time, but reaction time is not what the example is all about. What is the case in the example, is that the QB is holding the ball, with the goal of throwing, but waiting for the precise "right" moment to release it. This is how I am separating having a goal, from the motivation to act on that goal, as two distinct things. We can hold a goal, and decide to act on it at a later time. So having goals and being motivated to act, are two distinct things. .
schopenhauer1August 26, 2017 at 06:32#1002880 likes
A goal is a mental object, like any conception or idea. It must be conceived. To produce a goal requires thought, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation. I think it is a mistake to represent the goal as driving you forward, because the goal does not drive you forward, it may just sit there in your mind. It is your dedication to achieving the goal, and the will to act, which drives you forward, not the goal itself. The goal itself is a passive thing with no causal power.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover The logic remains. Nerve signals take time. Habits short circuit action decisions and have an integration time of a tenth to a fifth of a second. Attentive level thought takes a third to three-quarters of a second to arrive at an integrated state. So in sport or any skilled activity, decisions on how to complete an intent - as in thinking "go" with a throw - have to be left to a trained habit level of execution.
And on anticipation, of course anticipation is absolutely necessary. The brain is a prediction engine. But the same story applies. We learn how to predict at an slow attentive level. Then we get good and familiar with this predicting such that is can be executed as rapid habit. Both levels of processing are anticipatory. But one has to start out and form a general intent ahead of time - prime for the decision by setting up some notion of the constraining goal. Then the other can kick in and supply the particular action commands right up to the last split instant - which is still a good tenth of a second behind the world, and so also is by necessity anticipatory.
schopenhauer1August 26, 2017 at 08:25#1002950 likes
What is motivation? Where does it come from? Why do we do what we do?
Generally, we are motivated by three basic things (two of which are deeper- one of which is immediate).The deeper motivations are survival and boredom. The immediate motivation is dissatisfaction. Goals-directed behavior has become the primary tool to put the underlying drives into some form of activity. Why do we participate in the economy, etc, is because of survival. Why do we do this or that non-survival related thing? Because of boredom. Why did we turn on the air conditioner? Because of dissatisfaction. No matter how complex a behavior, it comes down to that. Even these three can just be distilled into dissatisfaction, as survival and boredom are forms of not having something fulfilled. So, the quarterback learns his routines and habits because he either needs to make money or is bored or both. Something is "fulfilling" when dissatisfaction seems to be at its least. Culture and personal inclination direct where the Will directs its relentless effort regarding survival and boredom.. A causal chain of watching an Iron Man competition, and hearing about a friend who is into it, makes someone (who may already be inclined) to get going on practicing for triathlons. The idea of being tough and completing the challenge becomes the immanent reasons. However, the whole time, it was driven by the underlying boredom. His cultural and causal setting simply gave him the content to relieve this boredom. It may not even be apparent to the person regarding the underlying cause. If we were completely content, no one would be motivated, as there is no impetus to action. We would be purely being without needing to become.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 26, 2017 at 12:12#1003110 likes
The logic remains. Nerve signals take time. Habits short circuit action decisions and have an integration time of a tenth to a fifth of a second. Attentive level thought takes a third to three-quarters of a second to arrive at an integrated state.
I agree that habits short circuit conscious decisions, that's consistent with the point I was making to Harry Hindu. But what I'm looking for is the bridge between conscious decisions and habitual actions, because this is what I believe "motivation" refers to.
So in sport or any skilled activity, decisions on how to complete an intent - as in thinking "go" with a throw - have to be left to a trained habit level of execution.
This is not the way that such activities are actually carried out though. The skilled hockey player must master a vast variety of habits, and continually choose, and change choice of which habit to rely on at any particular time. So the skill which the star hockey player has, involves the rapid changing from one habit to another. This is the execution of the changing from one habit level skill to another, with out loosing stride. It is not a case of relying on rapid habit execution, what is relied on is the capacity to rapidly change from one habit to another. And any occupation which requires alert attention, relies on this capacity of having a vast skill set of habits which one can choose from, and switch one to the other at a moments notice.
And on anticipation, of course anticipation is absolutely necessary. The brain is a prediction engine. But the same story applies. We learn how to predict at an slow attentive level. Then we get good and familiar with this predicting such that is can be executed as rapid habit. Both levels of processing are anticipatory. But one has to start out and form a general intent ahead of time - prime for the decision by setting up some notion of the constraining goal. Then the other can kick in and supply the particular action commands right up to the last split instant - which is still a good tenth of a second behind the world, and so also is by necessity anticipatory.
Yes, I believe anticipation is the critical thing here. This may be what bridges the gap between conscious intent and habitual performance, forming the basis for motivation. The intent must be left as general, in order that it adapts to the rapidly changing environment, while maintaining the very same goal. The individual is motivated toward a general intent (winning the game), allowing that there is a massive number of possible means to this end. As the situation unfolds, the appropriate means to this end (habits) are constantly being decided upon. These decisions are based on anticipation and the desire to avoid negative results in favor of the positive.
Yes, I believe anticipation is the critical thing here. This may be what bridges the gap between conscious intent and habitual performance, forming the basis for motivation. The intent must be left as general, in order that it adapts to the rapidly changing environment, while maintaining the very same goal. The individual is motivated toward a general intent (winning the game), allowing that there is a massive number of possible means to this end. As the situation unfolds, the appropriate means to this end (habits) are constantly being decided upon. These decisions are based on anticipation and the desire to avoid negative results in favor of the positive.
So attention forms an intent as a general constraint? It doesn't matter how that intent is satisfied in terms of particular connecting actions?
Isn't that what I said over the course of many threads?
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 26, 2017 at 17:17#1003350 likes
So attention forms an intent as a general constraint?
No, attention hasn't really entered the model yet. We've been discussing the role of motivation in relation to intent, and habit. Attention enters as the result of motivation, like any other habit. But you do not seem to recognize attention as a habit. It is a mental habit. That's where I was headed toward in our last discussion, but you were not listening.
Because of dissatisfaction. No matter how complex a behavior, it comes down to that.
Alternatively, action can be motivated by either a desire to move away from something or a desire to move towards something.
In operant conditioning, this is shown by the fact that removing a negative reinforcer can strengthen a behaviour, and providing a positive reinforcer can also strengthen a behaviour.
So the complexity of behaviour would in fact be reduced to the dichotomy of pleasure and pain. Everything is not merely an escape anymore that one would argue everything was an approach. The positive and the negative are both motivators.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 27, 2017 at 05:09#1004170 likes
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Sure. You mean like Pragmatist philosophy of mind? Or do you mean to reference some other philosophical position? Give me a link so I can get an idea of what philosophy you have been studying.
In the meantime...
Although James plays down attention's role in complex perceptual phenomena, he does assign attention to an important explanatory role in the production of behaviour. He claims, for example, that ‘Volition is nothing but attention’ (424).....
James's somewhat deflationary approach to attention's explanatory remit means that, when it comes to giving an account of the ‘intimate nature of the attention process’, James can identify two fairly simple processes which, he claims, ‘probably coexist in all our concrete attentive acts’. and which ‘possibly form in combination a complete reply’ to the question of attention's ‘intimate nature’ (1890, 411).
The processes that James identifies are:
The accommodation or adjustment of the sensory organs, and
The anticipatory preparation from within of the ideational centres concerned with the object to which attention is paid. (411)....
Here, as in his more frequently discussed treatment of emotion, it is distinctive of James's approach that he tries to account for a large-scale personal-level psychological phenomenon in a realist but somewhat revisionary way, so as to be able to give his account using relatively simple and unmysterious explanatory resources. An alternative deflationary approach—one which James explicitly contrasted with his own—is the approach taken in 1886 by F.H. Bradley.....
So the goal and process of moving your legs and arms are still there - it's just that you can focus on other tasks, not tasks you have performed over and over again. — Harry Hindu
No, the goal is not still there, and that's the point. To be "there" it must be in the conscious mind. I have no idea what goals I had in my mind when I was learning to walk, so whatever those goals were, they are definitely not still there. I now walk without having in my mind the goals which assisted me in learning how to walk in the first place. And the walking activity is "automatic". It occurs without those goals.
How to walk isn't a goal, it is a set of instructions. If you didn't have the set of instructions for walking, talking, or things that we learned before and now do habitually, then how do you explain you knowing how to do it? Walking isn't "automatic". It's just that you don't have to pay much attention to it because you've done it so often that you your conscious mind doesn't need to focus on it. Notice how consciousness is only needed for the things you don't know how to do and are learning how to do it. When you learn well how to do it the task gets relegated to the subconscious.
Also notice that you can have a goal of changing your breathing - even holding your breath, and that happens when you focus on your conscious attention on your breathing. You breath without paying attention to it and it is only when you want to change your rate of breathing that it becomes part of consciousness. Consciousness seems to be all about one's attention.
The brain is capable of multitasking by leaving he goals and means of achieving them to the subconscious while the conscious part focuses it's attention (which seems to be the special thing about consciousness as opposed to the subconscious and unconscious. It has attention) on other things. — Harry Hindu
How do you suppose that the subconscious has goals? I don't see how this is possible. I can understand that a subconscious activity is carried out for a purpose, but this does not mean that the goal itself is within the subconscious.
What is the difference between a goal and a purpose? What is the difference between intention and goal? What is the difference between motivation and goal? They all seem to be the same thing to me.
Of course the goal has causal power. How else do you explain your current state of walking to the store, if the goal of having tea doesn't have causal power? — Harry Hindu
As I explained, it is not the goal of walking to the store, or having tea, which causes me to walk to the store. It is the decision to "act now" which causes me to go. I could be sitting on the couch for a very long time, maintaining the goal of walking to the store, without actually doing it, if I am unmotivated. So clearly it is not the goal which has causal power. I must be motivated to act on the goal or else nothing becomes of the goal.
The goal itself dictates the actions you are taking now, or else you could never say why you are doing this particular thing now (walking to the store) as opposed to something else (looking for the remote control). — Harry Hindu
The reason why of a particular thing, is not the same as a cause of action.
If you say you have the goal of going to the store but not the motivation because you are still sitting on the couch, then what you are really saying is that you have conflicting goals. We often have conflicting goals and it is where we reach a state of indecision - of not being able to establish a clear goal over another. It seems to me that, because you are still sitting on the couch, your goal to sit on the couch is winning over the goal of going to the store, or else you wouldn't still be sitting on the couch.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 27, 2017 at 16:30#1005230 likes
Or do you mean to reference some other philosophical position? Give me a link so I can get an idea of what philosophy you have been studying.
The concept of "habit" was first formally defined by Aristotle in his work on logic. The word is derived from the same word as "have", and refers to a property which a living being has. This property is the propensity to behave in a particular way. In his work on biology "De Anima" (On the Soul), it is noted that a habit is a potential which the living being has. The different powers (potencies) of the living are necessarily understood as potentials of the living creature, because they are not at all times active. So we say that the creature has the power of self-nourishment, the power of self-movement, sensation, or intellection, and by referring to these as potential, it is noted that the described activity is not being carried out by the living being at all times, but it has the capacity to carry out this act.
Thomas Aquinas carried out a much more in depth analysis of what a habit itself, is. Since "habit" refers to the propensity for a particular activity, and not the activity itself, he concluded that the habit, as a property of the living being, must be a property of the potential for the act, and not a property of the act itself. In this way, we can say that a potential, which has no particular necessary actualization, has properties which are described as the inclination toward a particular actualization.
If you are familiar with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, you will find in his 1809 book "Zoological Philosophy", a very in depth study of the relationship between the habits of an animal, and it's physical constitution.
So, according to my understanding of what a habit is, from these and other philosophers, I don't see how "attention" as per your reference to William James, above, or any common notion of the activity referred to by "attention", is anything other than the activity of a habit. Care to explain how you see things differently?
How to walk isn't a goal, it is a set of instructions. If you didn't have the set of instructions for walking, talking, or things that we learned before and now do habitually, then how do you explain you knowing how to do it? Walking isn't "automatic". It's just that you don't have to pay much attention to it because you've done it so often that you your conscious mind doesn't need to focus on it. Notice how consciousness is only needed for the things you don't know how to do and are learning how to do it. When you learn well how to do it the task gets relegated to the subconscious.
I'd say that walking is a habit. My body has numerous different capacities for movement, and some have an inclination to actualize in a particular way, and this activity is called walking.
What is the difference between a goal and a purpose? What is the difference between intention and goal? What is the difference between motivation and goal? They all seem to be the same thing to me.
I don't think that these are all the same thing, and that's why they are different words. For instance, the word "goal" implies something consciously aimed for. Non-conscious things can have a purpose, but they do not have a goal. All the components in my computer each has its own purpose with respect to the functioning of the computer, but I cannot say that these parts each has a goal. There is one goal here, the functioning of the computer, but that goal was in the minds of the people who built the computer. The purpose of each part is within the computer itself, within the relationship between the part and the whole, while the goal is in the minds of the people who built the computer.
The difference between motivation and goal is what we've been discussing in this thread.
If you say you have the goal of going to the store but not the motivation because you are still sitting on the couch, then what you are really saying is that you have conflicting goals. We often have conflicting goals and it is where we reach a state of indecision - of not being able to establish a clear goal over another. It seems to me that, because you are still sitting on the couch, your goal to sit on the couch is winning over the goal of going to the store, or else you wouldn't still be sitting on the couch.
Are you saying that having no motivation is the very same thing as having conflicting goals? If so, I disagree. A motivated person will proceed with the mental activity of attempting to solve such conflicts. The activity here is the act of thinking, and the motivated person is engaged in this act of thinking, while having conflicting goals at the same time. So the person is motivated, and engaged in activity, yet has conflicting goals at the same time. Therefore it is impossible that having no motivation is the same thing as having conflicting goals.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 27, 2017 at 21:27#1005760 likes
Reply to apokrisis
You seem to have very little understanding of habit. A habit is acquired, but it is not necessarily learnt. If attention is required to learn, this does not exclude the possibility of attention itself being an unlearned habit. That's the way that habits are structured, they build on each other, supporting each other.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Attention is a habit acquired in an evolutionary sense. The brain evolved that propensity in that it is baked into the inherited neural architecture of higher animals.
But also, that evolved brain architecture favoured the division of labour that I've mentioned - attentional level processing for dealing with novelty, habit level processing for dealing with the routine. So what was acquired as large brains developed through evolutionary learning was a strong dichotomisation of what we would call habits and attention. The taking of habits also evolved.
So sure, we can step back and take the really long-term perspective, and this is what we see. The cerebellum and basal ganglia are also particularly large in humans.
Thus if we are talking about the functional architecture of brains as it is actually divided, you are talking out your hat as usual. You are thinking like a reductionist in wanting to reduce two things to one thing. But an organicist can see that a division into two things is how you can arrive at the functional harmony or synthesis of an effective division of labour. Study brain science and you will discover that it is all about this principle of complementary logic.
I'll throw in another reference for you - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/complementary-nature
GotterdammerungAugust 27, 2017 at 22:49#1006070 likes
Generally, we are motivated by three basic things (two of which are deeper- one of which is immediate).The deeper motivations are survival and boredom. The immediate motivation is dissatisfaction
This sounds about right. I think im right in saying that the motivation to surrvive can be called the Schopenhauerian will to life. Is it at all possible to loose the motivation to survive? one might argure that a suicidal person has lost the will to life, but im not sure, hence why im asking. It seems to me that death is inevitable so unless we stive for something greater than life, our actions are futile, that is those caused by the will to life.
Additionaly can it be said that all humans, if possible will act to alleviate dissatisfaction or are there cases when people rather suffer. If so why?
P.s. Im self taught so im not entirely sure if my interpretation of schopehauer is right.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 28, 2017 at 01:43#1006490 likes
Attention is a habit acquired in an evolutionary sense. The brain evolved that propensity in that it is baked into the inherited neural architecture of higher animals.
OK, now that we're clear on this, we can approach the issue of motivation with some level of agreement in principle.
Thus if we are talking about the functional architecture of brains as it is actually divided, you are talking out your hat as usual. You are thinking like a reductionist in wanting to reduce two things to one thing. But an organicist can see that a division into two things is how you can arrive at the functional harmony or synthesis of an effective division of labour. Study brain science and you will discover that it is all about this principle of complementary logic.
It's fine to have your "division of labour", if it helps you to understand the workings of the brain, but I don't see that it is of any advantage in this issue. What we are looking for here is the motivation to get something done, and this is prior to any such a division. So whether the motivating factor at one time motivates a habit level activity, or an attentional level activity (which is really just another level of habit anyway) is irrelevant to our inquiry into the motivating factor itself.
What would be relevant, would be to find the motivating factor motivating something which is not a habitual activity whatsoever. Then we could see the motivating factor in action without the distraction of the habit. Furthermore, since the nature of each habit is that of a potential to act, the motivating factor must be prior to all habits in order that every habit has the potential to act. Thus we will get to the motivating factor where there is activity without habit.
So I'll return to the question I posed already. Since the conscious will power gives us the power to refrain from all activity, how could the motivating factor be anything other than the conscious decision? I think you would agree with me that there are many internal activities of the human body which the will does not have the power to suspend. So the motivating factor is to be found within these internal parts, rather than within the conscious mind. But to motivate the will power, is the closest thing we have to motivation without activating habits, because the will power to refrain from action is to deny the action of habits as far as possible. So it is the motivation behind will power, what motivates willpower, which is the motivation to resist activity, that we will find the purest form of the motivating factor.
Is it at all possible to loose the motivation to survive? one might argure that a suicidal person has lost the will to life, but im not sure, hence why im asking.
Survival is just one manifestation of the Will as mediated in the world of phenomena (space/time/causality/subject/object). At root, I think it is more akin to a dissatisfaction. Suicide would simply be the will trying to will itself to no longer exist. It's still will, but turned against itself. There is a dissatisfaction with life itself, and the person thinks that this will resolve the dissatisfaction.
Additionaly can it be said that all humans, if possible will act to alleviate dissatisfaction or are there cases when people rather suffer. If so why?
Ultimately there might be an underlying dissatisfaction which is alleviated by choosing to suffer. If the person is alive, the persons decisions are probably still mediated from the desire to survive in some fashion, or alleviate the boredom in some fashion. Otherwise, there is the dissatisfactions of the immediate.
What we are looking for here is the motivation to get something done, and this is prior to any such a division.
You are forgetting that my approach is quite different from yours on this. Again, you want to boil things down to the effective causes of behaviour. And that leaves out the complementary role played by the final causes.
So should "motivation" be entirely a question of "what local thing triggered this action"? Or is motivation a big enough concept that it includes "what global goal gave form to action itself"?
So the motivating factor is to be found within these internal parts, rather than within the conscious mind. But to motivate the will power, is the closest thing we have to motivation without activating habits, because the will power to refrain from action is to deny the action of habits as far as possible. So it is the motivation behind will power, what motivates willpower, which is the motivation to resist activity, that we will find the purest form of the motivating factor.
Isn't this another way of saying that attentional level processes can constrain our habits in fruitful fashion? I will respond out of learnt habit unless I take time to watch what I am doing and impose some kind of working memory/prefrontal plan on things?
Again we are back to a division of labour. I want to be able to do as much as possible without having to think about it. But I also want to be able to stop and think about anything that needs a non-habitual response.
So back to the power of a functional dichotomy. Two styles of processing are better than one. I want to be in control when it matters. I also like an easy life where I can let routine stuff take care of itself. Most of the time, this itself feels like a seamless and automatic habit. The two ways of processing the world are so smoothly integrated that I don't need to pay attention to any join.
But in high pressure, fast moving, situations - like playing sport - the fact that the processes are quite different in things like temporal scale can really show.
There is not enough time to consciously plan the throwing of a pass. There often isn't even the time to do the quicker thing of simply halting a subconsciously unfolding action plan. Free won't is faster than freewill. Yet even then, we find ourselves often thinking oh shit, shouldn't have done that, as the body is already launching into action.
So you are stuck on the usual reductionist regress of trying to find "the self" that wills the body to act. If I flex my little finger voluntarily, it seems that I must of commanded it, because it just happened. And yet I can't actually find any thought or effort that "I" delivered at that precise moment to make the finger move. It just as much felt as if it moved by itself. Because it suddenly felt like it.
As long as you are focused on finding a trail of effective causes, an organ like the brain is going to be a mystery. But ahead of time I can decide - at an attentional level - to form a state of constraint that regulates my little finger. I can say the general goal is to flex in the next few moments. Go as soon as you like and I won't stop you. I have a clear mental expectation of what should happen, and what should not happen - like I don't want the little finger of my other hand to do the flexing. So I have restricted my habits of finger moving in a very specific and attentional fashion. Pretty much the only thing the habit level brain can do is move in the way expected. So for all its varied propensity, the probability approaches 1 that it will emit the response that has been attentionally anticipated.
It is a different way of making things happen. Organic rather mechanistic.
The body's habits are a whole collection of potential routines or degrees of freedom. I could break into a moonwalk at any instant. It is just one of umpteen learn possibilities. Then attention does the other thing of restraining the space of possible actions until only the one desired action becomes the probable outcome. I form the goal of moonwalking and the whole of the brain becomes motivated in that behavioural direction as every other option has been momentarily suppressed.
Napoleon BonaparteAugust 28, 2017 at 04:18#1006650 likes
What is motivation? Where does it come from? Why do we do what we do?
That is a good question. I think there is no such thing as motivation. To quote the great philosopher, psychologist, neurologist, psychiatrist and scholar Sigmund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939), “If you can't do it, give up!” The point of this is to say that we should nIt be motivated if something is impossible and should give up rather than pursuing a Quoting schopenhauer1
Goal
which is meaningless and cannot be achieved by any humanly possible means available.
Anyway, thanks Götterdämmerung for that question. It leaves an interesting conversation that I am sure many people are interested in. I could write an entire essay on this subject.
GotterdammerungAugust 28, 2017 at 04:36#1006660 likes
what this quote also Demontrates is that if it is indeed possible for an action to be done, unless we have other reasons for inaction (no motivation), there is nothing stoping us from achieving our goals.
Given that actions occur, and that we act, it is thefore necessary to discover the reason behind why we act. If as you claim there are no motifs, I would be interested in your explanation for why we do what we do. Even if this takes the form of a long essay
What is the difference between a goal and a purpose? What is the difference between intention and goal? What is the difference between motivation and goal? They all seem to be the same thing to me. — Harry Hindu
I don't think that these are all the same thing, and that's why they are different words. For instance, the word "goal" implies something consciously aimed for. Non-conscious things can have a purpose, but they do not have a goal. All the components in my computer each has its own purpose with respect to the functioning of the computer, but I cannot say that these parts each has a goal. There is one goal here, the functioning of the computer, but that goal was in the minds of the people who built the computer. The purpose of each part is within the computer itself, within the relationship between the part and the whole, while the goal is in the minds of the people who built the computer.
So what if they are different words? The English language has many different words that mean the same thing. We have a tendency to complicate things. The fact is that we use these words interchangeably. We often talk about "purpose" in our doing things. Saying that someone did something on "purpose" is the same as saying that they did it "intentionally", or that was their "end-goal".
Merriam-Webster
Purpose: something set up as an object or end to be attained: Intention
Intent: the act or fact of intending : Purpose
goal: the end toward which effort is directed
Per the Synonym Guide on Merriam Webster's dictionary:
goal Synonyms
aim, ambition, aspiration, bourne (also bourn), design, dream, end, idea, ideal, intent, intention, mark, meaning, object, objective, plan, point, pretension, purpose, target, thing, name of the game
Synonym Discussion of goal
intention, intent, purpose, design, aim, end, object, objective, goal mean what one intends to accomplish or attain. intention implies little more than what one has in mind to do or bring about. ?announced his intention to marry? intent suggests clearer formulation or greater deliberateness. ?the clear intent of the statute? purpose suggests a more settled determination. ?being successful was her purpose in life? design implies a more carefully calculated plan. ?the order of events came by accident, not design? aim adds to these implications of effort directed toward attaining or accomplishing. ?her aim was to raise film to an art form? end stresses the intended effect of action often in distinction or contrast to the action or means as such. ?willing to use any means to achieve his end? object may equal end but more often applies to a more individually determined wish or need. ?his constant object was the achievement of pleasure? objective implies something tangible and immediately attainable. ?their objective is to seize the oil fields? goal suggests something attained only by prolonged effort and hardship. ?worked years to reach her goals?
It seems clear to me and Merriam-Webster that they mean the same thing, or are at least more closely related than you seem to think. The fact that I can use any of these terms to get the same message across indicates that they refer to the same thing - the idea in your head that motivates you to act.
As for "motivation""
motivation: a motivating force, stimulus, or influence
Here I have to ask what is it that is the motivating force, stimulus, or influence that gets you off the couch and walking to the store - specifically? If it isn't the realization of your goal/purpose/intent, then what is it?
If you say you have the goal of going to the store but not the motivation because you are still sitting on the couch, then what you are really saying is that you have conflicting goals. We often have conflicting goals and it is where we reach a state of indecision - of not being able to establish a clear goal over another. It seems to me that, because you are still sitting on the couch, your goal to sit on the couch is winning over the goal of going to the store, or else you wouldn't still be sitting on the couch. — Harry Hindu
Are you saying that having no motivation is the very same thing as having conflicting goals? If so, I disagree. A motivated person will proceed with the mental activity of attempting to solve such conflicts. The activity here is the act of thinking, and the motivated person is engaged in this act of thinking, while having conflicting goals at the same time. So the person is motivated, and engaged in activity, yet has conflicting goals at the same time. Therefore it is impossible that having no motivation is the same thing as having conflicting goals.
No. I'm saying that they are all the same thing. In other words, I'm saying that where you have conflicting goals, you have conflicting motivations.
Reply to Napoleon Bonaparte copying and pasting does not help the growth of this philosophical forum, many members have been here for a long time and it shows a lack of knowledge to quote without s purpose. quod erat demonstrandum
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 29, 2017 at 01:38#1008020 likes
You are forgetting that my approach is quite different from yours on this. Again, you want to boil things down to the effective causes of behaviour. And that leaves out the complementary role played by the final causes.
I'm not leaving out final causes, I want to bridge the gap between final and efficient cause. Do you agree that conscious goals are final causes, but the cause of an habitual action is an efficient cause?
If this is the case, then how do we show how a conscious goal "acts" as a final cause to produce a chain of efficient causes (habitual action)?
So should "motivation" be entirely a question of "what local thing triggered this action"? Or is motivation a big enough concept that it includes "what global goal gave form to action itself"?
I of course defend the latter.
What you write though, does not defend the role of final causation. When we discussed the activity in sports, you spoke as if the activity was necessarily all habitual, as if that were the only way that the athlete could keep up to speed with the world, through the rapidity of reflex reactions. The athlete's goals cannot enter into the activity as final causes, because there is no time for that. I was arguing the role of rapid decision making.
Then we found a principle which we had a certain degree of agreement on, and this was anticipation. It appears like anticipation might be completely associated with consciousness, because it predicts, or foresees the future, and it appears like this can only be done through conscious imagination. If anticipation is only a property of consciousness, then it could be associated with goals, and final causation, so the bridge between final cause and efficient cause would be found in the relationship between anticipation and habit.
Do you think that it is possible that an anticipatory action can be habitual, or is there a necessary separation between these two such that all anticipatory reactions require conscious decision? For instance, something is suddenly flying rapidly at your head. You duck to the right, or to the left, or straight down, in anticipation. Does this require a conscious decision, a goal (final cause), or is it strictly a reflexive habit, (efficient cause)?
Can I return to your example of the runners waiting for the starting gun, because I don't think you've paid proper respect to anticipation here? You describe the event completely in terms of habitual reaction, when in reality anticipation plays a large role in the speed of one's start. The runners are given warning, "on your mark, get set", and the gun shot is anticipated. If the anticipation runs too high, a runner might jump the gun. So clearly the rapid start of the race, for the runner, is more complex than just a habitual reaction to the sound of the shot. Anticipation of the shot, which produces preparedness, is just as important as habit, if not more so.
There is not enough time to consciously plan the throwing of a pass. There often isn't even the time to do the quicker thing of simply halting a subconsciously unfolding action plan. Free won't is faster than freewill. Yet even then, we find ourselves often thinking oh shit, shouldn't have done that, as the body is already launching into action.
I disagree with this, in sports there is always enough time to plan one's actions. Something would have to come out of nowhere, and whack you on the head in a fraction of a second for you not to have time to think about your actions. I've been in more than one car accident, driving, where the scene unfolds very quickly, but I've always maintained conscious control over how I operated the controls of the vehicle until the end.
It would be a mistake to think "oh shit, shouldn't have done that", because things are moving so rapidly that there is time only to think about what is impending. This is where the habit of attention is of the greatest importance, to keep us focused on what is impending when things are occurring very rapidly, allowing us the greater power of anticipation. If you are one who is distracted by "oh shit shouldn't have done that", in the middle of a rapidly occurring situation, you are one who has not developed a good habit of attention. This leads us to another aspect related to anticipation, which is confidence. The two work together to enable the habit of attention.
As long as you are focused on finding a trail of effective causes, an organ like the brain is going to be a mystery. But ahead of time I can decide - at an attentional level - to form a state of constraint that regulates my little finger. I can say the general goal is to flex in the next few moments. Go as soon as you like and I won't stop you. I have a clear mental expectation of what should happen, and what should not happen - like I don't want the little finger of my other hand to do the flexing. So I have restricted my habits of finger moving in a very specific and attentional fashion. Pretty much the only thing the habit level brain can do is move in the way expected. So for all its varied propensity, the probability approaches 1 that it will emit the response that has been attentionally anticipated.
This is exactly the logical problem which I tried to bring to your attention already. If using will power to prevent the habit of moving your little finger involves telling it "go as soon as you like", then you have no will power, because you are not preventing your finger from moving, it moves whenever. If you are using will power to prevent your finger from moving, then it only moves when you release it from this will power, so the release, which allows the finger to move, like the will which prevents the movement is a conscious effort. If you know of a way to avoid this logical issue, I'd love to hear it.
The problem I see with what you have written here is that you are relying on your habit/attention dichotomy which I do not think properly represent the situation. Since attention is actually a habit, the better dichotomy would habit/anticipation. The problem with using "attention" as your principle is that we can only properly pay attention to what is occurring. And what is occurring, that which we are paying attention to, has already occurred by the time it is present to the conscious mind. So attention really only gives to our minds what has occurred, the past. Now we need a principle, such as anticipation, whereby the fact that something is about to occur, is present to the mind. The runner waits for the starting gun with anticipation. One's attention is focused on the anticipation. So the above paragraph referring to the moving of your little finger would be better written if you referred to your anticipation of your finger moving, and the attention which you give to this anticipation.
The English language has many different words that mean the same thing.
No that's not true some words can be used in place of another, so they have one sense which is similar to a sense of another word, but no two words have the same meaning. So I refuse to argue whether two words have the same meaning, as I think that is a pointless exercise.
so the bridge between final cause and efficient cause would be found in the relationship between anticipation and habit.
In broad way that is so. But habit is also final cause/constraint that has got baked in over a long period of learning. So the contrast is in an efficient division of labour in a time-pressured world. Habits represent finality that has been learnt to the point it is baked-in intentionality. Attention is then the finality we have to construct specifically to deal with the current moment in time.
It is confusing, I agree. But in terms of forming intentions, attention is much slower than habit because habit has already accumulated intentionality over a lifetime of learning. And attention is also much slower at executing in terms of efficient cause actions as again it is dealing with novelty and must spend time deliberating on the sequence of steps that might make some plan.
If I have to go to the bank and the shops, I can decide which to do first. But it might take a few seconds to work that out. Or if instead it is a learnt routine, I find my feet just making that choice for me. I am turning left rather than right before I've even had time to think at the road junction.
So both attention and habit are separable systems. And being systems, each requires the same structure - finality and efficient cause in interaction. Or constraints vs degrees of freedom.
Yet then in a broader sense, they are an integrated in themselves - each a specialisation of brain function in the two directions of economical habit vs effortful attention. One then seems to be all about the component actions, the other about the broad plan.
Anticipation of the shot, which produces preparedness, is just as important as habit, if not more so.
I thought I said that. Sprinters must really concentrate their attention so that nothing stands in the way of responding as fast as possible to the gun. They must suppress all possible distractions and maintain a vivid impression of the event that is expected. And it can be so vivid that you get false starts.
So attention creates states of focused sensory anticipation/motor intention. Everything that can be got ready is got ready - to lower the informational barrier and make the processing as fast as biologically possible.
I've been in more than one car accident, driving, where the scene unfolds very quickly, but I've always maintained conscious control over how I operated the controls of the vehicle until the end.
Alternatively time slows. The fact that attentional level processing doesn't have time to make sense of what is going on leaves us with the feeling of the moment being stretched out and lasting an eternity.
And then you say you were in conscious control. Yet sports science will say the best that could be the case was that you were in the usual zone of responding out of trained habit, then afterwards there was a reportable working memory as attention fixed a record of the blur of events.
So it is your belief against the scientific evidence here.
Since attention is actually a habit, the better dichotomy would habit/anticipation.
Sure, relabel the same things anyway you like. It makes no difference. I just go with the standard labelling that has emerged in psychology and neuroscience.
My only quibble is that "anticipation" is useful for signalling another paradigm difference - the switch from "consciousness" as the output of a representation, to seeing it as about predictive modelling. It is anticipation that comes first. And then that acts as a selective filter on awareness which allows us to in fact ignore as much of the world as possible.
So yes, if habit is then understood in this light as what we can manage to ignore (because it is already predicted), then it is just the relabelling of the same functional dichotomy.
So attention really only gives to our minds what has occurred, the past. Now we need a principle, such as anticipation, whereby the fact that something is about to occur, is present to the mind.
Again, I already said that "consciousness" involves both the half second before and the half second after. So the fact that attentional level processing is slow means that it is there in advance of the moment, and there afterwards mopping up. First it generates the prediction that allows most things to be ignored. Then it deals with what in turn couldn't be ignored. After that, we have a tidied up impression of the world that can be filed as reportable memory.
No that's not true some words can be used in place of another, so they have one sense which is similar to a sense of another word, but no two words have the same meaning. So I refuse to argue whether two words have the same meaning, as I think that is a pointless exercise
Actually, it is a pointless exercise to argue with someone who thinks that they are right and Merriam Webster is wrong.
The word "synonym" means two words that mean the same thing. So, we have a word for the thing that you say doesn't exist (words that mean the same thing).
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 30, 2017 at 03:20#1010350 likes
In broad way that is so. But habit is also final cause/constraint that has got baked in over a long period of learning. So the contrast is in an efficient division of labour in a time-pressured world. Habits represent finality that has been learnt to the point it is baked-in intentionality. Attention is then the finality we have to construct specifically to deal with the current moment in time.
I think that this is a misrepresentation of habits. Habits do not represent finality, or final cause because a habit develops as a means to an end, whereas final cause is the end itself. As the means, the habit may prove to be useful toward many different ends. if looked at in any particular instance of activity, the habit may be used toward an end which is quite unrelated to the end which it was originally developed toward. So a habit, being a formal constraint, is not a final cause, nor is it properly representative of a final cause, it is better referred to as a formal cause.
It would be difficult to identify final cause as constraint, because an agent is free to produce one's own goals. We cannot say that an agent is constrained by one's goals, when an agent is free to choose one's goals. What constrains the agent, thereby restricting one's goals, is existing forms, and so we should associate constraint with formal cause rather than with final cause. Habit, as well as the forms of physical reality which constrain a person are the two types of formal cause. Habit may sometimes be overcome by intention and final cause, when we break a habit.
So both attention and habit are separable systems. And being systems, each requires the same structure - finality and efficient cause in interaction. Or constraints vs degrees of freedom.
You are not properly distinguishing between existing forms, which constitute formal cause, and desired forms , goals, which are constitutive of final cause. Formal causes may be understood as existing constraints on the thinking being, whereas the being is free to determine goals. Therefore final cause which is derived from future possibilities is inherently free, and only constrained when formal cause is brought to bear upon the goal in judgement.
Alternatively time slows. The fact that attentional level processing doesn't have time to make sense of what is going on leaves us with the feeling of the moment being stretched out and lasting an eternity.
And then you say you were in conscious control. Yet sports science will say the best that could be the case was that you were in the usual zone of responding out of trained habit, then afterwards there was a reportable working memory as attention fixed a record of the blur of events.
So it is your belief against the scientific evidence here.
Sure, relabel the same things anyway you like. It makes no difference. I just go with the standard labelling that has emerged in psychology and neuroscience.
There is a large gap, a division opening wider and wider between neuroscience and modern phenomenology. Phenomenology starts with the premise of being, which is existing at the present. From here it proceeds to recognize the present as a division between past and future, and tries to understand living, in terms of this division, which is the most significant thing in our lives. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies heavily on principles derive from the Special Relativity theory which renders this distinction between past and future as unreal, or extremely vague if it's given a charitable interpretation.
The result is that neuroscience has no real principles for distinguishing between how the thinking mind is differentiating between things of the past and things of the future. The closest thing you have put forward is the concept of "attention", but you have no real way to distinguish between paying attention through your senses to things which have just happened, and paying attention through anticipation to things which are impending. Instead, you offer the blanket term "attention", which loses all such distinction in a vague "present".
The gap between phenomenology and neuroscience continues to widen, due to these failings of neuroscience.
My only quibble is that "anticipation" is useful for signalling another paradigm difference - the switch from "consciousness" as the output of a representation, to seeing it as about predictive modelling. It is anticipation that comes first. And then that acts as a selective filter on awareness which allows us to in fact ignore as much of the world as possible.
It is not a case of switching from consciousness as "the output of a representation", to consciousness as "predictive modelling", it is a matter of understanding consciousness as both. This requires distinguishing the two, and providing the proper dichotomy between these two. Because if the human mind mixes up, and confuses actual things of the past (oh shit I shouldn't have done that, I'm going to try to make it so that I didn't do it) with future possibilities (X is inevitable and there's nothing I can do about it), then that human mind has a real problem. Your concept of "attention" combines these two together, in this confused way.
Again, I already said that "consciousness" involves both the half second before and the half second after. So the fact that attentional level processing is slow means that it is there in advance of the moment, and there afterwards mopping up. First it generates the prediction that allows most things to be ignored. Then it deals with what in turn couldn't be ignored. After that, we have a tidied up impression of the world that can be filed as reportable memory.
This is exactly what I mean. You say "attentional level processing" "involves both the half second before and the half second after", as if there is no fundamental difference between these two. They are both grouped together under "attentional" as if the mind, at the most fundamental level does not differentiate between the before and after. But if the mind, at the most fundamental level really does distinguish between the before and the after (which it must in order to avoid having a real problem), then why group these two together as "attentional"? The only reason would be that you are overlooking this most fundamental distinction asan unimportant distinction.
It would be difficult to identify final cause as constraint, because an agent is free to produce one's own goals
Ah. Again the return of the agent, the mysterious witnessing and deciding self who is conscious. We are back to the ghost in the machine. Who needs neuroscience.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 30, 2017 at 10:41#1010730 likes
The word "synonym" means two words that mean the same thing. So, we have a word for the thing that you say doesn't exist (words that mean the same thing).
Of course we have words for things which do not exist, words like "nothing". We also have words like "impossible", and despite something being designated as impossible, some will say it's possible. What does this mean to you?
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 30, 2017 at 10:45#1010750 likes
Reply to apokrisis
If that's how you support your principles and defend neuroscience, it's a pathetic defense.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover So now you're arguing that synonyms don't exist. I don't see any point in continuing this or any other conversation with you. You are impossible.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 31, 2017 at 00:54#1012810 likes
Thjs is surprising coming from someone who supports the idea of "final causes". What do you think final cause is, if not a dualist principle?
In any activity, there is always an "agent". This is the thing which is acting, the agent produces an effect. The agent (thing which is acting) may be motivated (moved to act) through efficient causes or final causes. Inanimate agents we observe to be motivated by efficient causes, while we observe human agents to be motivated by final causes.
You claim to support the idea of final causes but then you describe human activities in your neuroscientific way, as if they are all efficient causes. Unless you can describe an interaction between efficient causes and final causes within one model, there is no basis to your claim that you both support the idea of final causes, and deny dualism.
Thjs is surprising coming from someone who supports the idea of "final causes". What do you think final cause is, if not a dualist principle?
I thought I've explained ad nauseum? It is a dialectical or dichotomistic principle. Final and formal cause are wrapped up in the systems notion of top-down acting constraints. They are matched in complimentary fashion by bottom-up acting degrees of freedom - a notion wrapping together material and efficient cause.
So Aristotle was the great systems thinker. This is what modern systems thinking looks like.
Quotemarks are good. The agent should vanish if the systems account is working. We end up with a system that has the property of agency exhibited hierarchically over all scales of its being.
This is the thing which is acting, the agent produces an effect.
But in the systems view, both the global constraints and the local degrees of freedom produce effects. Both the general context and the particular events are causal.
Unless you can describe an interaction between efficient causes and final causes within one model, there is no basis to your claim that you both support the idea of final causes, and deny dualism.
Yep. You really do never listen.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 31, 2017 at 01:44#1012850 likes
Final and formal cause are wrapped up in the systems notion of top-down acting constraints.
As I explained, "top-down constraint" is formal cause, but this is inconsistent with "final cause" which gives the thing acting (the agent) freedom to choose a goal.
They are matched in complimentary fashion by bottom-up acting degrees of freedom - a notion wrapping together material and efficient cause.
If you assign "freedom" to bottom-up actions, then to maintain consistency you must assign "final-cause" to bottom-up actions. The acorn becoming a tree, is a bottom-up action. The tree, which will come to be, from the acorn does not constrain the acorn, because it does not even exist when the acorn is acting.
Otherwise the human agent has no freedom to choose one's own goals, and this is inconsistent with observations of human behaviour. We freely choose our goals, they are not enforced through top-down constraint. Goals are freely chosen by the human mind, and goal-directed actions are bottom-up, starting from within the neurological system.
The agent should vanish if the systems account is working. We end up with a system that has the property of agency exhibited hierarchically over all scales of its being.
Agency cannot vanish unless there is nothing which is active. If nothing is active then there is no activity.
But in the systems view, both the global constraints and the local degrees of freedom produce effects. Both the general context and the particular events are causal.
Then what is the thing which is active? Global constraints and local degrees of freedom produce effects on what? Unless you have an agent, you have a system of constraints and freedoms without anything actually being affected by that system, and your claim that these constraints and freedoms produce effects is just smoke and mirrors because there is nothing there which is being affected.
As I explained, "top-down constraint" is formal cause, but this is inconsistent with "final cause" which gives the thing acting (the agent) freedom to choose a goal.
No, no. Top-down constraint is formal and final cause bound up. Although - following the logic of dichotomies - we would also follow Aristotle in dividing constraint into its generality and particularity. So goals are general imperatives. And forms are particular states of constraint that would serve those imperatives.
Take the Platonic solids. You can place the general constraint on geometric possibility of limiting volumes to regular-sided polygons. So the goal is maximised regularity. And then you have the five forms that meet the requirement. These forms in turn can be used as actual limits which shape lumps of matter that have efficient causes, like the property of whether they stack nicely, or not.
Hardly. The acorn packs a genome - the product of millennia of evolved intentionality. You couldn't pick a worse example. The acorn - as a small package of carbohydrate and basic metabolic machinery - has to grow. It must construct an oak by constraining material flows for 100 years. But the fact it will be an oak is already written into its destiny.
Otherwise the human agent has no freedom to choose one's own goals, and this is inconsistent with observations of human behaviour. We freely choose our goals, they are not enforced through top-down constraint.
And so you again ignore all the science that has shown that this kind of "ghost in the machine" freedom is a dualistic illusion.
That doesn't mean there is no "freedom of choice". It means that we are constrained by our biology and sociology to act intelligently and creatively. We have the capacity to negotiate the balance between our individual wants and our social demands. And we can do that well, or do that badly. Selection will weed out what works and what doesn't.
Then what is the thing which is active? Global constraints and local degrees of freedom produce effects on what?
You are locked into cause and effect thinking. A doer and a done-to. That is the mental habit you need to break. Aristotle ought to be a good start for any systems thinker. His four causes approach was the basis for self-organising entelechy. Material potential becomes actualised as it expresses its functionality.
Metaphysician UndercoverAugust 31, 2017 at 10:59#1013470 likes
Top-down constraint is formal and final cause bound up.
This is where the temporal problem lies. Formal cause relates to what exists, and final cause relates to a goal for the future. By binding up these two, you negate the division between past and future, also negating the need for dualism. But you no longer have a true "final cause".
Hardly. The acorn packs a genome - the product of millennia of evolved intentionality. You couldn't pick a worse example. The acorn - as a small package of carbohydrate and basic metabolic machinery - has to grow. It must construct an oak by constraining material flows for 100 years. But the fact it will be an oak is already written into its destiny.
I didn't pick the example, it's Aristotle's. If it appears to you like a bad example, it's because you misunderstand final cause. And in your explanation you conflate the particular and the general. If the acorn grows, it will construct an oak tree (in general), but not any particular oak tree, the intent is something general. Furthermore, there is no necessity for it to grow, it may not grow, and this is due to the nature of the material cause. So the acorn consists of material cause, potential, it consists of formal cause. what it is, or how that potential exists, and it consists of final cause which is the intent to become something. But the "something" in the intent is something more general than the specific "something" which is the acorn. And so there is a necessary separation between formal cause and final cause.
You are locked into cause and effect thinking. A doer and a done-to. That is the mental habit you need to break. Aristotle ought to be a good start for any systems thinker. His four causes approach was the basis for self-organising entelechy. Material potential becomes actualised as it expresses its functionality.
You still haven't explained how you have activity without something which is active. It's easy to say "let's just talk about the activity, and forget about the thing which is active", but it doesn't make a metaphysics because you have an ontology without any being. You think I should break the good mental habit of insisting that if there is activity, there is something which is active, to opt for the bad mental habit of describing the activity with total neglect for the thing which is active.
Your mode of thinking is to just combine formal and final cause, and forget about the material which separates these two. Matter is the potential for change. Formal cause relates to the form which the matter has, and final cause relates to an intended form. If you remove the relationship between form and matter then you no longer have this distinction between what is (necessitated as "the past"), and what may be (in the future).
Perhaps get someone to explain genes to you sometime.
What kind of reply is that? Genes play a part in determining the characteristics of the individual, but that's only a part. This is where we find final cause active, within the local aspect. Final cause acts from within and there is an inherent element of freedom as is evident from genetic mutations and evolution. But there is also the environment, global constraints. You seem to somehow twist these around.
schopenhauer1September 01, 2017 at 01:57#1015020 likes
schopenhauer1September 01, 2017 at 02:00#1015030 likes
[quote=Schopenhauer]That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom. This is a precise proof that existence in itself has no value, since boredom is merely the feeling of the emptiness of life. If, for instance, life, the longing for which constitutes our very being, had in itself any positive and real value, boredom could not exist; mere existence in itself would supply us with everything, and therefore satisfy us. But our existence would not be a joyous thing unless we were striving after something; distance and obstacles to be overcome then represent our aim as something that would satisfy us — an illusion which vanishes when our aim has been attained; or when we are engaged in something that is of a purely intellectual nature, when, in reality, we have retired from the world, so that we may observe it from the outside, like spectators at a theatre. Even sensual pleasure itself is nothing but a continual striving, which ceases directly its aim is attained. As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, misery.[/quote]
apokrisisSeptember 01, 2017 at 02:12#1015050 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 I already made the point this is a one-eyed view - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/100361
You always stress the escape from negativity and ignore the approach to positivity. But it takes two to tango.
So what we really have here is an inherent direction that points the way to progress. For things to be even meaningfully understood as bad, the logically corollary is that they could be good. Thus your pessimism collapses due to its own first premise.
apokrisisSeptember 01, 2017 at 02:24#1015060 likes
Genes play a part in determining the characteristics of the individual, but that's only a part.
In biology, they are the determining part. What happens during growth or development is then that this finality gets mixed with a lot of particular accidents.
So the acorn is a one-off genetic template - a particular form that can only deliver that one adult tree. Sexual reproduction ensures a shuffling of the genetic cards to create a unique hand.
But then the tree grows. The acorn happens to have fallen on a stony hillside. One year as a sapling there is a big drought, another year it is hit by a pest invasion, eventually it gets hit by lightning.
So the mighty oak ends up a bit mangled in ways that the acorn's genome couldn't envision. Constraints may be top-down determining, but also the development of actuality is subject to irreducible contingency. There are many particular accidents of fate that get woven into the final form of the genetic intention.
So roughly the original envisioned oak emerges. And if not too beaten up, it can produce its crop of new acorns. Its biological goal has been achieved on the whole, to the extent it matters.
Again, you have brought the discussion back to a reductionist way of thinking where constraints must be absolutely determining. But organically, constraints only have to regulate contingency to the degree it really matters. Doing more than that is pointless over-kill.
Once you get that naturalistic systems principle, it is pretty easy to apply that to the discussion of brains and habits we were having.
schopenhauer1September 01, 2017 at 02:31#1015070 likes
Reply to apokrisis If you needed something in the first place, something was missing.
apokrisisSeptember 01, 2017 at 05:04#1015210 likes
Reply to schopenhauer1 Yeah. And so already you are pointed in the direction of seeking that missing thing as a satisfaction.
If satisfaction is actually impossible, then it can't really be said to be missing. Motivation remains the direction you want to take because it is "leaving something definitely behind by definitely heading in the exact other direction".
schopenhauer1September 01, 2017 at 09:34#1015530 likes
If satisfaction is actually impossible, then it can't really be said to be missing. Motivation remains the direction you want to take because it is "leaving something definitely behind by definitely heading in the exact other direction".
Agreed.
Metaphysician UndercoverSeptember 01, 2017 at 21:42#1016380 likes
In biology, they are the determining part. What happens during growth or development is then that this finality gets mixed with a lot of particular accidents.
So the acorn is a one-off genetic template - a particular form that can only deliver that one adult tree. Sexual reproduction ensures a shuffling of the genetic cards to create a unique hand.
It is not true that biologists generally conceive of genetics in this way. There are many "accidents" which can occur right within the genetic system, different types of mutations which are responsible for variations, and they are necessary to evolutionary theory. If the genetics of the seed determined the particular plant which would grow, there would be no such thing as evolution. And not all genetic mutations are due to environmental factors. You are just stipulating this in an effort to support your metaphysical position instead of accepting that this position is untenable.
Furthermore, your own system of metaphysics claims local degrees of freedom. So you are producing inconsistency within your own system with this form of determinism, unless the activity explained by genetics is global rather than local. But if you look for an even smaller, microscopic level of activity, you will find final cause active even at this smaller level. No matter how microscopic you go, you will never separate the local degrees of freedom from the final cause.
Your move is to remove final cause from the local freedom, describing it as a global constraint, and this is all just an effort to remove the "ghost in the machine". Why? Do you have some deep seated fear of dualism? When all the evidence, and many rational arguments throughout history point in that direction, why are you insisting on inconsistent principles just to avoid a name, "dualism"? By pulling the ghost out of the machine, you are just left with a machine. But you now have an even bigger problem. Machines are artificial, created with intention. To maintain consistency with this evidence, that machines which act with purpose are created, you need to assume a creator of that machine. So either we follow the evidence, that final cause is immanent within the living being to the most fundamental particles of matter, or we look for an external creator, of which we can't find any evidence.
Again, you have brought the discussion back to a reductionist way of thinking where constraints must be absolutely determining. But organically, constraints only have to regulate contingency to the degree it really matters. Doing more than that is pointless over-kill.
OK, so if the genes, operating under the principle of final cause, within the acorn, cannot produce one specific oak tree, because there are degrees of contingency involved. Then we cannot say that the intent within the acorn is to produce that one particular tree. We have to say that the intent within those genes is vague and general. The genes will not produce this certain tree, they will produce an oak tree in general. So if we speak of final cause as a constraining or determining factor it is so in this general way, it is not a particular constraint, as formal cause is. And this makes an important difference between formal cause and final cause, one is a particular constraint and the other is a general constraint
apokrisisSeptember 01, 2017 at 21:47#1016390 likes
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Yep, machines need a creator. That is why organisms need explanation in terms of a logic of self organisation.
Metaphysician UndercoverSeptember 01, 2017 at 21:54#1016420 likes
Schopenhauer:That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom.
The need is never satisfied to the point of perfection so your conclusion of boredom is inappropriate. Whenever we anticipate a point of satisfaction, and that point comes, there are always elements of dissatisfaction remaining, even if related to a different need. Our needs are many and varied so boredom is unnecessary.
The self is the system as a whole. And it is a whole in that all four causes evolve via mutual interaction. They arise within the system itself. Top-down constraints shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And those bottom-up degrees of freedom in turn construct - or rather reconstruct - those prevailing global states of constraint.
Holism is pretty simple once you get your head around the fact it is not the usual unholy mx of reductionism and transcendentalism that folk try to apply to metaphysical questions. The machine and its ghost.
Metaphysician UndercoverSeptember 02, 2017 at 00:41#1016840 likes
The self is the system as a whole. And it is a whole in that all four causes evolve via mutual interaction. They arise within the system itself. Top-down constraints shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And those bottom-up degrees of freedom in turn construct - or rather reconstruct - those prevailing global states of constraint.
So the question, what creates the system, as a whole? A system cannot create itself, it requires an author.
René DescartesFebruary 06, 2018 at 09:55#1504880 likes
Metaphysician UndercoverFebruary 06, 2018 at 13:31#1505260 likes
Reply to René Descartes
I think this is the wrong place to ask that question. You have to direct it at the right people.
celebritydiscodaveFebruary 06, 2018 at 17:23#1505940 likes
Everybody already knows what motivation is, and they merely deploy different words to identify it, who cares, all that matters is that it should be considered from and beyond the point of being just adequate. Social philosophy, to be of any use at all directs, as with the philosophy which directs science, so single liner sentiments, the format which works, which apply equally specie wide, and direct come encourage in the direction of greater motivation is all that is of value here.
René DescartesFebruary 07, 2018 at 05:12#1508100 likes
celebritydiscodaveFebruary 07, 2018 at 09:05#1508520 likes
I`m banned from most other philosophy forums for having the last say on virtually every thread, so for coming up with what the world considered to be the definitive answer. That wont happen here, as I don`t exist, for it is not answers here that count for anything, instinct has long left this place, replaced by merely intellect, so therefore only the imperative for endless mental stimulus. This is what motivated you to this place, and this is your sole motivation here.
Comments (122)
A mental stimulus correlated with affect which leads to problem-solving, decision-making, intention, planning, volition, and action.
What's "A mental stimulus"
Check here:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/mental?s=t
And here:
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/stimulus?s=t
And combine them.
I wrote this similarly about goals:
Goal: the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result (Google)
1) Are goals "real" in that they are a natural phenomena that are a part of certain animal biological/psychological make-up, or a nominal label for a very pervasive social convention/habit?
2) Do the origins of goal-directed behavior come from evolutionary forces of biology/psychology or are they social conventions that ride on top of some more basic component? Related, If animals have goals are they different than human-directed goals?
3) If goals are more on the nominal side of the spectrum, what does that mean in terms of ethical implications? If ethics aims at goals, and goals are nominal, does this invalidate certain ethical standards that are goal-directed?
4) Are some goals better than others? If so, how do justify a weighting to the goals such that one takes priority over the other? Are goals related to survival self-evident, for example? If goals of survival are superior than other goals, does this have implications for ethics? For example, can one say that since there is a de facto goal of not being hungry, humans must do X action to accomplish not going hungry?
Inasmuch as "goal" is synonymous with "intention", it is a psychological expression of a subjective experience which can be observed by others, hence; a natural phenomenon. And inasmuch as people discuss "goals", "goal" is a nominal label.
Human behaviour is a product of human nature (the genetically predisposed capacity to develop and exercise human functions). That animals have goals is evident based on criteria of goal-directed behaviour. If the criteria for goal-directed behaviour are different for animals than they are for humans, their goals are different.
It is because goals are "real" phenomena, with "real" effects, that we name them and decide that they are relevant to a theory of ethics.
Great questions, but off-topic. I would certainly enjoy discussing them in another thread.
Motivation is what I don't feel first thing in the morning. :P
But really, I think it is the will of a person. It comes from the mind, for the most part. Some chemicals are likely released based on the impulses of the brain for short term motivation. Long term motivation would have to be something that one truly felt passionate about, allowing those chemicals to release often.
Quoting Galuchat
I don't see how a goal, or intention, could be observed by another. We can discuss our goals with others using language, but this is to offer a representation of the goal, so it is not the case that the goal is observed. Also, we can observe the actions of others, and using some premises, we can make some logical conclusion concerning the person's goal, but again this is not the same as observing the goal. I think that we can only really observe our own goals, and this is an internal observation.
I agree.
That is a logical dualist objection (i.e., the mind is hidden, accessible only to the person who owns it, etc.), and the subject of another current thread.
What is observed is goal behaviour, described by criteria, and constituting criterial evidence of another's goal experience.
A goal is not an entity, it is a psychological function of human beings. So, a person cannot even observe their own goal; they experience it.
I agree, but it is the same as observing that a person has a goal.
OK, so all you have done here is distinguished between two types of objects, objects which are entities and objects which are goals. You claim that only entities can be observed, thus restricting the use and meaning of "observe". I do not agree with this restriction. I think that a person's own goals may be apprehended with one's own mind, and the person may observe and follow one's own goals.
Also. it appears like you want to restrict the use of "experience", such that one experiences one's goals, but does not experience entities. Unless you adopt some dualist premises, I do not believe that such restrictions can be justified.
Quoting Galuchat
What is observed is goal behaviour. And if we associate this behaviour with a premise, we can deduce that the person has a goal. But making the logical conclusion that the person has a goal is not the same thing as observing that the person has a goal. The goal is not observed. According to your restrictions, observations are of entities, not of goals. So no matter how well you observe the goal behaviour, you are not observing the goal (which can only be experienced according to your restrictions). Nor have you observed that the person has a goal, you have deduced this.
Sometimes I doodle. For no reason.
A goal is an image projected into an imagined future, and identified with. Goals are imaginary until they are realised. If I am motivated to make a cup of tea, it is because there is no cup of tea ready, but I imagine a cup of tea would be pleasant. It would be odd to say that I experience the goal, if the goal is to experience a cup of tea, but reasonable to say I experience imagining experiencing a cup of tea. Then I make the tea, and my goal is realised.
What an exciting life I lead. ;)
Then you can say that you experience intent which directs planning, informs volition, and results in action. Planning, volition and action being behaviour which is criterial evidence of intent.
We play games where the pathway of reward is intelligible (we know what folks expect from us in this setting). The dopaminergic reward system helps to habituate patterns of conduct that help us satisfy instinctual needs in a socially acceptable way.
The variable reward (ratio) schedule of the forum might explain why folks here are attracted to come back. There must be a dopaminergic reward in worthy types of positive feedback relative to the expectations or needs of the poster.
Yes. An intent is an imagined act, the act itself is behaviour. A plan is also an imagined act; as an architect plans an imaginary building, and the brickeys and plasterers behave it into existence. We hope they can read the architects intent.
Review the RIBA Plan of Work 2013, and tell me that its required tasks are imaginary and not behaviour which can be observed. https://www.ribaplanofwork.com/PlanOfWork.aspx
As an engineer or architect, the preparation of design calculations and working drawings (i.e., planning acts) are concrete evidence of my intent (a psychological function/act) to build something.
I wonder if a goal is necessarily an image, or "imagined". I suppose it depends on what is meant by "imagined", but it seems to me that often a goal is just some sort of vague notion, not an image at all. I want to be satisfied, and happy, what kind of image is that? It appears to be easier to put words to a goal than it is to put an image to a goal. Why? These words don't produce any particular images, just vague notions.
Sure, the architect is capable of associating an image with the goal, but this is not an easy task, and it takes training. So I wonder why it is that we all seem to have goals, but to associate an image with that goal, which may be required in order to bring the goal into reality, doesn't seem to be something which we all have the capacity to do.
If you were in a building which seemed to be about to experience a Gotterdammerung you would be motivated to get the hell out before the building collapsed on top of you.
Affect produces moods and emotions; has dimensions of valence, arousal, and motivational intensity, and is correlated with motivational direction.
Yes, I don't suppose it has to be a visual image; a composer might have a very nebulous sense of his goal as a piece of music on this sort of scale, that conveys that sort of feeling. Something that can hardly be put into words or images. That is the nature of creativity, that one does not know the goal because it is something new that has never been, and that is true of architects too. In the end, all i mean by imagined is that it is something in one's head that is not in the world.
On the small scale, my goal is the cup of tea that I do not have, that does not exist because it hasn't been made, and the logic is that if it had been made I wouldn't possibly have it as a goal, I'd already have it, just as my goal was to write some kind of reply to you, but now it is written, it is a goal no longer.
In more traditional language, perhaps, my desire is always for something that is not, something lacking. What can we call something that is not? An image, a fiction, a notion? The source of such is the past, one's experience - it can only be the past since it is not present, and it is projected onto the future as a goal.
In the end, I think one can only intend something to the extent that it is known, so a creative act is necessarily the interplay of the intentional and the accidental, and that is what I alluded to above when I mentioned doodles. One can act without motive.
But not without desire, which is pleasurable or painful in some mixture (physical/ or imaginary) at some intensity, as necessary for all actions, including doodling.
So I desire a cup of tea. This implies that I take pleasure in tea and pain in thirst. But at the moment, there is no tea, and therefore no pleasure. The pleasure that has not yet happened cannot be the cause of its own production. It can only then be the pain of thirst. But the pain of thirst can be assuaged by tap water; no need to wait for the kettle to boil.
What motivates me to make tea is the imagined pleasure that will ensue. And the image of pleasure comes from memory of times I have taken pleasure in drinking tea in the past, and is projected - thrown forward in time, and that is what we call 'desire', the imagined repetition of past pleasure, or the imagined relief from present pain.
There is of course the desire for novelty, but this is again either the projected image of past novelties, or the imagined escape from the pain of repetition. Now it may seem that there is no escape from this world of images that direct every move, but it is not so. There is in the real, as distinct from the imaginary world, spontaneous movement.
I agree with what you said.
Many times I find that I make my coffee in the AM without very much thought (6 AM or so), but the first cup is very pleasureful, even if the initial effort was habitual and not actively imagined, just something I do.
Correct.
Correct again. This is a misconception on my part.
Correct a third time. I have discovered my error: psychological functions are not experienced, they are performed.
Pursuant to the following two points:
1)
2)
Is a goal or imagination a phenomenon in one's mind or head which can be experienced and perceived? If so, by what is it experienced and perceived? What and where is one's mind (it's intuitively obvious that heads can be perceived, but can minds be perceived)?
Is a goal or imagination something concrete which can be located in one's mind or head (i.e., either as a part of brain anatomy or neurophysiology)? Do anatomical and neurophysiological correlations (inductive evidence) of intent or imagination establish their location in one's mind or head?
Or are intent and imagination psychological functions (i.e., events or processes) or conditions which brain anatomy and neurophysiology facilitate? If so, how are they perceived by others and known to ourselves?
I think that others perceive one's goal and imagination behaviour (criterial evidence of one's intent and imagination), and that our psychological functions or conditions are known to ourselves in terms of verbal expressions which are socially learned. We perform psychological functions; they require no evidence to be known to ourselves. We do not experience them, but we may experience their cause(s) and effect(s).
So, to revise my answer to schopenhauer1's first question:
Psychological functions and conditions are socially learned verbal constructs which explain types of natural and acculturated behaviour.
Likely you're lacking a bit here. Dopamine peaks at a much higher level to get you to make tea than when you're actually drinking it. Desire/anticipation is pleasurable(?) or motivating. Apparently worn out amphetamine users get high before the drug enters their system by anticipation and a conditioned reward circuit.
How would "natural" be included in the explanation when "socially learned verbal constructs" usually falls under social and not instinctual, unless "natural" is used in a different way than a synonym for strict biologically determined behavior. If goals then are social constructs, is essentially everything we hold dear as humans in terms of our "supposed" desires, wants, hopes, motivations, etc. just a socially taught mechanism that has simply been one useful way for our species to survive? Are there alternatives for humans, or does the social construct of goals go along with having a general processor brains that have lost goal-oriented behaviors (instincts) of other animals? In other words, is the social construct just an exaptation- something that just so happened to arise but was not the reason for our unique evolution, or was it actually an adaptation- something that was specifically selected for? I'm pretty sure @unenlightened's desire for tea, for example, was not selected for :D.
If I desire tea because it is pleasant to desire tea, then what's the tea for, and why would I ruin the pleasure of desire by fulfilling it?
It may well be that real tea cannot live up to the standard of imaginary tea - which can very easily be 'just like the best tea you ever tasted, only even better'. But I don't think this requires a radical reworking
I figured this was probably what you meant, but I like to distinguish between the act of imagining (imagination), and the image, or other imaginary thing (thing in one's head). So as things in one's head, we have all sorts images, memories, words, beliefs, ideas, and of course goals and intentions. But as well as this, we have the act of imagination, and this act may establish relationships, associations between different images, memories, words, goals etc.. This act, as a creative act, will create new memories, goals, etc.. But in this description I assume that there is already content, images memories etc., from which new things in one's head are produced.
Isn't that description inaccurate then? The act of imagination is said to be what produces things in one's head, but it is presumed that there are already things within one's head for the act of imagination to work with. This is a vicious circle. The imagination can only create something if something already exists, but that something could have only been created by the imagination.
Wouldn't it be more precise to say that the act of imagination creates things from nothing? This is not nothing in an absolute sense, but it is the potential for things. So the act of imagination creates things within one's head, not by working with things which are already there, existing content, establishing associations and relationships with these existing things, it creates things from nothing, where there was just the potential for things.
Quoting unenlightened
Let's say that you mind creates the goal of a cup of tea. For the sake of argument, let's assume that it creates that from nothing. There is the potential for a seemingly infinite number of different goals, but your mind produces the goal of a cup of tea without consulting past memories, ideas, or any such thing, the goal just pops into your head, from the vast potential. Now your mind must validate, or justify this goal. Is it reasonable, is it obtainable, should it be sought etc.? At this point your mind consults already existing things in your head, drawing associations and relationships, to determine whether it is a good goal or not.
Quoting unenlightened
So in the end, I do agree that we can act without motive, if you allow that the act of imagination is such an act. The act of imagination will produce goals without any motivation, if we allow that these goals just pop into your head. But before we proceed to act on the goal, we will assess it, judge it, and I think that it is only following this judgement that one becomes motivated. This produces the distinction between two types of acts, the unmotivated "act of imagination", and the motivate act to fulfill a goal, with the medium of judging what is produced by the imagination, lying between these two. Therefore motivation must be related to judgement.
Quoting Galuchat
I believe you have met a logical roadblock here. I don't think that a mind can be perceived, this is logically impossible, unless one mind could directly perceive another mind. The mind is active in the act of perception, so the mind is the thing which is perceiving. It cannot be the thing perceived or else there would be a nonsensical circle of time, because an act requires the passage of time. By the time the act of perception occurs, the thing perceived no longer exists, so it is impossible that the act of perception is what is being perceived or else time would be circular. It is logically possible that one mind could directly perceive another, but since the mind is not sensed, and things external to a person are sensed, the nature of the sense world renders this physically impossible.
Quoting Galuchat
I believe that a goal, as an object is just as real as any physical object. So depending on what you mean by "concrete", a goal may be concrete (real). A goal may be identified, it may be analyzed, properties may be attributed to it, etc., just like any physical object. The difference is that the goal is an object understood to exist only in the mind, while a physical object is understood to exist outside the mind.
OK is this like the difference between a wink and a blink? It is difficult to tell them apart at times. Winks are intentional (I imagine having a nice cup of Jasmine tea, can almost see its golden strands and smell its elegant fragrance), isn't this the thick explanation, and the thin explanation (thin, because it is simply true or false) the physiological explanation about dopamine levels.
I don't think so. Imagine that terrible time before there was trade with China. The unenlightened of those days would never imagine liking tea in those days because 'tea' was a disgusting concoction of chamomile or blackcurrant leaves that was forced on you whenever you complained of quinsy or the King's evil. That poor unenlightened would have suffered, but never known what it was that was lacking in hie life, to even desire it. So there is no vicious circle that I can see. Like Tigger, one bounces through life bumping into hay-corns and thistles and not liking them much until one bumps into Roo's strengthening medicine, which is A A Milne's metaphor for tea. One learns from experience what one can desire, and the bouncing and bumping is the spontaneous movement of life.
What this view counters, or undoes, is the tyranny of desire. It stops being this slave driver, forcing you out of bed every morning, and take its rightful place as a mere thought that can refine one's bouncing so as to avoid some of the thistles.
Maybe you presuppose that I am looking for answers to these questions, when my actual intent is to elicit your opinions. I agree that a mind cannot be perceived, but because: like psychological functions, mind is not an entity which can be observed. It is a convenient term (schopenhauer1's "nominal label") for the set of psychological functions which a being is capable of exercising (a socially learned verbal construct). Therefore, attributing psychological predicates to a mind is nonsense, and attributing them to a brain (or anything "in one's head") is mereological confusion.
I agree that a particular goal (intention) may be identified, analysed, assigned attributes, etc., but only: by others when it is expressed to them (as in the first sentence of my previous paragraph), and by one's self when it is conceived of, or thought about. Inasmuch as it may exist in physical form when it is expressed, it does not "exist only in the mind". In fact, it never exists in a mind, because mind only exists as a verbal construct.
In my current conception:
1) The domain of Cognitive Psychology explains natural behaviour.
2) The domain of Social Psychology explains acculturated behaviour.
Both domains are socially learned verbal constructs (i.e., models).
Thanks for pointing out how ridiculous my revised answer to your first question is (obviously, I am testing developing concepts). Let me try a third time:
Psychological functions and conditions produce natural and acculturated behaviour which is described in terms of socially learned verbal constructs. In other words, I suspect that these functions are adaptations rather than exaptations.
OK, I admit that it is possible, that all goals are produced from prior experience like this. But how do we account for innovation and creativity then? With creativity It must be the case that the act of imagination creates something new and that new thing created must be something in the mind. Suppose we assume that the imagination always uses old parts when creating something new, then there is necessarily some things within the mind which were not created by the imagination.
What are these things, and where do they come from? We cannot class these things as imaginary now, because we've denied that they are created by the imagination. We've defeated your definition which states that all things in the mind are imaginary because we've found some fundamental things within the mind which cannot be imaginary.
Furthermore, for me this casts doubt on the assumption that there are unmotivated actions. I appealed to the idea of the imagination creating something out of nothing, as an example of an unmotivated action. But if the imagination always draws from something already existing when it creates, then aren't those things, which cause it to create what it does, motivating things? How can we get beyond the idea that these things are causes, in the creative act, to assume an unmotivated action?
If you spend some time with very small persons, you'll notice that everything goes in their mouth; chocolate, lego bricks, electric cable, carpet fluff, thumbs, clothes pegs, guitars, everything. Presumably, there is no 'desire for carpet fluff' required or even 'imagining carpet fluff', this is just exploration of whatever is around.
I learned about carpet fluff a long time ago, and I don't even like smoking it. Indeed there is no possible motive for eating carpet fluff, and in the same way, there is no possible motive for drinking concoction X, which might be delicious, revolting or poisonous. 'Suck it and see' is not really a motive so much as an attitude to the unknown, that infants necessarily adopt by instinct, and adults learn by bitter experience to renounce in favour of 'sticking with what works'.
So I would say that imagination can suggest trying some sugar (I know I like sugar) in the tea (I know I like tea), but cannot go beyond experience and rearrangements of experience. "How about baked beans in tea - I know I like baked beans?" but not, "How about concoction X in tea - What the fuck is concoction X ?"
But if you are young at heart, and there happens to be concoction X, you might try it, and you might like it, and then you have had a new experience, and a motive to use concoction X in all your old recipes.
So creativity can be exploring new arrangements of the same old paints and brushes, or exploring new materials, but the aspect that is intended is always the known aspect, and to be creative there must also be an aspect of 'suck it and see', which I previously called 'spontaneous action'.
Think of intentions/goals as the predicted outcome of some action. Our goals are like simulations of how we'd like it to be. The difference between how we'd like it to be and how it is is what motivates us. We aren't motivated when things are how we'd like it to be. We are content.
I agree. Generally, the cause of motivation is dissatisfaction. Specifically, dissatisfaction due to:
1) Negative affect produced by unpleasant sensations and/or feelings.
2) Unfulfilled human needs (i.e., requisites for good mental and corporeal health which facilitate human well-being).
3) Unfulfilled propositional attitudes (i.e., desires, hopes, opinions, beliefs, convictions).
This is the core of Schopenhauer's theory of Will.
I don't understand what you mean when you say mind is only a verbal construct. Isn't the opposite of this what is really the case, minds create words? A goal can't really exist in a physical form, the words are a representation of the goal. The actual goal always exists in the mind.
Quoting unenlightened
This attitude toward the unknown is the philosophical mindset, wonder, the desire to know. Wouldn't you consider that wonder is a motive?
Quoting unenlightened
So I can't say that I agree with this statement. Do you not think that there is motive behind trial and error? The thing tried in the process of trial and error, must be tried for some reason or purpose, or else there could be no determination of "error". Concoction X is tried for some reason, so there must be motive, but the reason is not evident, and maybe not even to the one who is trying it. Youngsters try all kinds of drugs and their motives aren't clear, but that doesn't mean there aren't motives.
Suppose the child is popping things into its mouth completely randomly, without any determination of "error", and therefore with no motive. Isn't this just the same things as saying that the idea, the goal to put the thing in its mouth, just pops into the child's head from nowhere? So now we're back to the same position I stated earlier. The act of imagination produces this idea from nothing, it just pops into the child's head, what you call "spontaneous action". And this is what creativity is. The difference between what you're saying and what I said, appears to be that you do not want to call this spontaneous action an act of imagination.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't think so. Even when we feel content, we are still motivated to act. Moving is a physiological thing, and we are naturally inclined to move. You might argue that we move because we are not content to sit still, but then there are no goals, or "how we'd like it to be" which is motivating us, we are just motivated to move because we are discontent with being how we are.
This is the motivation of discontent. If one is inclined to move due to dissatisfaction, we can't really say that it is a goal or intention which motivates that person, it is just a general inclination toward change.
1. why do we do what we do?
2. what is inspiration?
3. what is motivation?
1. Humans base their decisions and actions to fulfill their highest values or what is most important to them. Our biggest "perceived" voids create our biggest "perceived" values. For example, like @Bitter Crank mentioned, if a car becomes too hot or cold, you have a perceived void of a more pleasant temperature. This also works on a larger scale. For example, a lot of people that become wealthy have relatively poorer upbringings which can create a void/ value on building wealth. On the other hand, if you have an upper-middle class upbringing, you may not have as high of a value on money and may simply follow in your parents footsteps to a similar upper-middle class life.
2. Inspiration arises when we are fulfilling what is truly meaningful to us. Think of the Statue of David, The Mona Lisa, The Geodesic Dome, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water etc. These great masterpieces came from people that were doing what was truly meaningful to them. On the other hand, if an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright was instructed to become a make up artist, he would have very low inspiration and wouldn't perform nearly as well and be considered a "failure". In this case, a boss may try to "motivate" the employee.
3. Motivation is an external force required to do something that is not really that important to you. A boss may try to motivate you with money. You may try and motivate yourself to workout with a motivational video or motivate yourself to study for a degree your parents told you to do etc. Sometimes motivation can be helpful, but if you are not mainly doing what is important to you, you will live an unfulfilling life.
Ultimately, the goal is to live an inspired life, fulfilling what is most meaningful to you. If you need motivation to do something, it is not that important to you or you haven't chunked down what you are trying to achieve into manageable bites.
How so? The underlying condition is discontent. This wells up in our linguistic brains as some sort of goal to move away from discontent in goal-directed action (get the date, get the ice cream, get the better job, build that career, etc. etc.) which according to Schopenhauer, never ceases to get rid of the underlying dissatisfaction which will always well up into more goals to be directed towards in our linguistic brains.
Yes, that is the difference. But I think it is a real and crucial difference. I say that we do things, without motive, without idea and without a goal. I could call it 'play'. It has the effect of trial and error, but is not motivated by that idea, which the child is not yet capable of forming. What this formulation does, which I think makes it more true, is it establishes the primacy of being over thought. One is in the world, one experiences, one moves; and ideas, judgements, plans, understandings, come from that, and not - emphatically not - the other way round.
And this is the escape from the prison of discontented will - that it is merely an idea one has formed about oneself, and it is a mistaken idea. Why go on living? Why have children? No reason, no motive, no plan! Motives are thought excrescences on life that divert it from its course, which is just fine a lot of the time, but thought is the servant of life, not the master.
Is it not clear that before motive can get off the ground, life must have already been busy forming itself into the being that can be motivated?
I don't see where you're disagreeing with what I said. The goal would be to move. The difference between wanting to move and currently sitting still motivates us to move. The question we should ask is what comes first - the motivation or the goal? It seems that the motivation comes first as we notice the difference between our current state and the state we want. We then establish the goal and act. But then it also seems that both the motivation and goal are established together and may actually be one and the same. Can you have a goal without motivation, or vice versa?
"Mind" is the name of a verbal concept which can be described as: the set of faculties exercised by a psychophysical being which produce natural and acculturated behaviour. When considered in relation to other verbal concepts (e.g., particular faculties), it becomes a verbal construct (i.e., mental model).
The set of faculties described in this conception of mind are real (i.e., they exist). However, "mind" (conceived of as an entity having these faculties) does not exist. So, use of the word "mind" only makes sense as a convenient way of referring to these faculties collectively, rather than by enumeration.
Inductive evidence in the form of physiological correlates, and criterial evidence in the form of observed behaviour, establish the existence of psychological functions and conditions.
If an experiment can be devised which resolves the question: "does the mind (as an entity) exist?", it is an empirical question, and the fact of its existence or non-existence can be established. For example, once it has been decided what constitutes the entity "mind", an experiment using PET, fMRI, MEG, or NIRS technology can determine whether or not it has neural correlates.
If there is no way to experimentally test the hypothesis, "the mind (as an entity) exists", then whether or not it exists is a conceptual question requiring logical investigation. For example, does it make sense to conceive of beings as composed of two parts (body and mind) or as an integrated whole?
If beings are composed of a body and mind, questions of interaction and mind location need to be resolved. Modern neuroscientists (and some philosophers) think this dualist problem is resolved by replacing mind with brain. But, this only transfers the attribution of psychological functions and conditions from mind to brain, when logically they are attributes of a being (a psychophysical unity).
Also, coherent concepts of psychological functions and conditions do not only take into consideration brain anatomy and physiology, but the anatomy and physiology of all the organic systems of a living being.
N.B. The foregoing is distilled from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker (2003).
What I'm saying is that the discontent motivates the brain to produce goals and consequently goal-directed action. So I place motivation between discontent and goals, as a cause of goals. The brain in action needs not focus on goals, it may focus on intelligible ideas, logic, or other problems. This is contemplation, but an individual needs to be motivated to focus on these logical problems rather than focusing on goal-directed action as a means of release from dissatisfaction.
Contemplation is an activity, which requires motivation to carry it out. This is the perspective which allows Aristotle to say that contemplation is of the highest virtue. To be virtuous, it must be an activity, and as an activity it requires motivation. So the act of contemplation, which brings about good ideas, and good goals, is only brought about by the motivated individual, just like any other virtuous act.
Quoting unenlightened
You are associating "motive" with "idea" and "goal", as if they are equivalent, or as if motive doesn't exist without a determinate goal. But "motive" refers solely to the source, or cause of motion, and there need not be a particular goal in mind which leads to the activity. So I think we have to assign motivation to lower animals, and even plants, which move without having any particular goal in mind.
I think you are misrepresenting what "motive" actually means. You are providing an understanding of the term which limits its use to a particular type of motive, how "motive" would be used in a law court or something like that, "the person's motive", meaning the person's intent. When in common usage, "motivate" has a much more general meaning, more closely associated with "impetus". In this way you seek to restrict the use of "motive", so that an idea or goal provides motivation, but it cannot be motivation which is responsible for the creation of ideas, they are spontaneous or random occurrences. In actuality though, "motive" refers to the factors which induce one to act. And thinking, which creates ideas and goals, is an act.
Quoting unenlightened
I agree that we can escape discontent through acting in the world, having a family, becoming socially active, etc.. But this is not necessary, as we can also escape discontent just through thinking, contemplation and imagination. To escape discontent, we do not need to form specific goals, and act in the world to bring these goals to fruition, we need only to think, theorize, and bring about ideas. You might call this living in a fantasy world, but that's what a theorist does and it's effective for escaping discontent. Sure the theory needs to be tested empirically to be proven, but this is not necessarily important to the theorist.
Let me see if I can interpret what you are saying.
Quoting Galuchat
"Mind" refers to a bunch of faculties of a being, each of which produces a particular type of behaviour.
Quoting Galuchat
Now you lose me. Why do you say that the faculties exist, but "mind" does not exist? Let's say "human being" refers to a set of physical parts which perform certain activities. Why would you say that the parts performing the activities exist, but the whole, the human being does not exist? This appears to be what you are doing with "mind". You are assigning existence to each individual faculty, but denying existence from the whole. Just because we can break a thing into parts, this does not mean that the parts exist but the whole does not. How many of these faculties could exist on their own, without being a part of the mind?
Quoting Galuchat
If we extend my analogy, you'd be asking what constitutes the entity called "human being", and looking at the parts of the human being, to see which of these parts could be the "human being". Do you see the flaw in this technique, examining the different parts to determine which of the parts "constitutes" the whole. You have defined "mind" as the whole "set" of these faculties, so that's what mind is, just like "human being" is the whole of the living being. So it is pointless to examine the parts to see which of them constitutes the whole, because the determination that the mind is "the whole" has already excluded this.
One might ask, "does the human being exist?", but if you've already decided that the human being is just a collection of different parts engaged in different functions, and that the collection as a whole has no special significance over any individual part, then what point is such a question?
Quoting Harry Hindu
My point is that we often move without having the goal to move. We need motivation to move but we do not need a goal to move. But I think we agree by and large anyway, because we both say that motivation is prior to the goal. I believe that a goal comes about from thinking, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation.
I never understood what the big deal with the intelligible ideas, logic, and "other problems" were. I mean, sometimes I get a sort of buzz when I think of the world in a certain way, but what makes studying logic and math and intelligible ideas (whatever this really means) so special? If you ask a Buddhist, it is Nirvana/Enlightenment, if you ask a Hindu it's Moksha, if you asked one of the Abrahamic faiths, it's probably some sort of communion with the divine. In other words, there are a lot of variations on this concept of special states of experience. How is one to prove that these are "real" experiences, or just reified concepts with a ton of secondary literature built on a sandcastle of nonsense?
It's just a matter of studying, and learning different things. Some people like to take numbers and logical principles and apply them to the physical world. Some people just want to direct their attention toward these logical principles directly, and study their existence. It's a different interest, we are motivated in different ways.
How and when do we often move without having the goal to move - when we have a nervous twitch or something? When I move, I often have the goal to move. How can you be motivated without a goal?
You also cherry-picked my post. The last part you left out began to question the distinction between motivations and goals. It seems that both the goal and the motivation are the same thing. The goal is what motivates you to act. I asked, can you be motivated without a goal and vice versa? Was the question to difficult or something?
That's right. And if we are just arguing about the meaning of words, there is no real problem or disagreement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, that is what a theorist does, and that is what I call the world of ideas or fantasy to distinguish it from the empirical world, which is what you have done there also.
So the question I need to ask, I suppose, is what are these 'factors that induce one to act', that are not ideas projected as goals and that you think of as motives and I do not? And since you include plants, you seem to be saying that plants have motives in this sense, which I find rather a misleading locution. But never mind, as long as we are clear that it is not ideas, or indeed any thought based factor, but something in the physical nature of a plant that it grows towards the light, or makes seeds or responds to the environment in all sorts of ways that we can make sense of in terms of evolutionary function, but the plant itself cannot consider at all.
A plant's genes encode a repertoire of automatic responses to environmental stresses, that have the effect of making it adaptive to the environment in ways that aid survival. If you want to call these responses motivated, well I sort of understand. And humans have similarly 'built in' responses, that in my language, I tend to use terms such as 'instinct' and 'reflex' for. Propensities to act that one can be aware of and think about, but which originate in the body without thought. Thus hunger is a physical condition that provokes suckling, or crying; curiosity provokes exploration and learning. Drought provokes spinach to run to seed. I call these responses spontaneous because they are unthought.
So per my earlier example, but in your language, thirst motivates drinking, but thought motivates the modification of behaviour from drinking some water to making tea, based on remembered previous experience. And one might say that biology, or evolution is motivated to provoke thought as a means to increase the diversity of responses through just such modification by learning. But in humans, thought reaches such a level that it can become wholly antagonistic to the motives of life that give rise to it, and this is the sad condition in which we find ourselves; that the thought that modifies the instinct to run to seed, to delay it rather than accelerate it perhaps, becomes anti-natalism, and wholly opposed to life.
The concept of antinatalism is a logical response to the self-reflection on the repetitious (instrumental) nature of existence, the unrelenting desires that motivate us (that you just described), the polar boundaries of survival and angst, and the myriad of contingent/circumstantial harms that befall us. It is simply a self-reflecting creature making the logical conclusion from such circumstances that we face when coming into existence. Perhaps Peter Zapffe was correct, our own self-awareness, makes us too aware of our situation- an exaptation from the simple evolutionary trajectory for better learning. However, what you cannot do is put the cat back in the bag. We have this ability, we can come to this conclusion. We can use techniques to ignore it, but the logic is there and apparent. X leads to Y, so prevent X. X = birth and Y= all the contingent and structural harms for a new person. What is the collateral damage? People sad that they don't have kids and that they cannot project some future person that does this or that. Is there a pre-existing person that is deprived? No.
This is not a question which is easily answered. The reason I suggested differentiating between the goals and the motivation, near the beginning of the thread, is because I see motivation as that which inspires one to achieve one's goals. And this is different from the goal itself. Motivation is associated with things like "ambition", "spirit", and "passion". You may be correct in saying that when we speak of "motives", as particular things, we refer to the particular goals which appear to motivate us, but when we speak of motivation we refer to the courage or ambition required in overcoming obstacles in the effort to achieve the goals. So I don't think it's really the goals which motivate us, but the passion which we feel for the goals. This is conviction, or determination, the strength with which we adhere to our principles. That I believe is the true motivator, rather than what we refer to as "the motive", or goal itself.
Quoting unenlightened
Is it correct to refer to this spirit as something in the physical nature of the living being? If we reference the Platonic tripartite person, spirit or passion takes an intermediate position between the material body, and the immaterial mind.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, I think this is where we get our ambition from, we are born with it, it is instinctual. We do not learn how to be ambitious or passionate about things, either we have that spirit, or we do not. And I think we see this in other animals and plants as well, some are more spirited (motivated) than others. Would you really believe that this ambition is an automatic response encoded by the genes? What if one identical twin is more motivated than the other?
Quoting unenlightened
I quite agree with this passage. Could we say that thought mitigates ambition and motivation? So instead of running to get some water as soon as you are thirsty, because you are a highly motivated person, you take the time to make tea instead. But if we follow Plato, he'll let us know that ambition works the other way as well. If you have an idea which you strongly believe in, this will strengthen your ambition and determination. If you believe you are dehydrated you probably wouldn't take the time to make tea. So thought will sometimes soften your motivation, but other times strengthen it. If a person cannot decide when to mitigate, or when to strengthen, one's ambition, or makes the wrong decisions concerning this, it is a sad condition.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Any time we do something habitual we move without having the goal to make that movement. When I'm walking I'm moving my legs without having the goal to move the legs. My goal might be to get somewhere, or just to wander, but each time I take a step when I'm walking, I do not form the goal of taking that step.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I thought the answer to this question is obvious from what I've been arguing. I've been arguing that you need to be motivated to create a goal, but motivation may produce things other than goals.
I think these are two separate questions. 'Motivation' is a word we use for reasons we ascribe for our behaviour. 'Why we do what we do' is best answered scientifically, or with a shrug, but a well-informed shrug - one, say, by shoulders whose resident person has read plenty of good novels.
But walking is one of those things that, as adults that have been walking since we can remember, we take for granted. As infants we did have to make deliberate motions to move our legs in specific ways to accomplish walking. This is what happens when we learn new things - it takes practice and concentration. Once we master it, we don't really need to focus on it. We do seem to have that goal of taking the first step. In order to get somewhere, you do initially have the goal of moving your feet from a resting position, just like having the goal to throw a ball, you need to send the signal to the arm to move in a particular way. It seems to me that you can't walk or throw a ball without that initial goal of moving your body to accomplish the primary goal.
I asked, can you be motivated without a goal and vice versa? — Harry Hindu
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverHow is one motivated to create a goal? Is it your discontent about the way things are currently that motivates one to create a goal? Once you create the goal, it is the goal driving you forward and no longer the discontent because the actions you take are directed towards that specific goal that you wouldn't take if the goal were different. There are many ways to alleviate discontent (different goals one could work towards in alleviating discontent) and each one needs a different order of actions to accomplish it.
This is interesting; we haven't talked much about habit. Making tea has become a habit for me, to the extent that it bypasses both the motive of thirst and the goal of drinking tea; it's as automatic as walking. And it illustrates again the inadequacy of the 'every action is the result of desire' thesis. Habits are learned, and once learned become 'autonomous' - that's not quite the right word - unintentional?
One doesn't generally intend to fall over, but when walking one does not intentionally not fall over either. Most of the time it just happens without thought, but if the ground is very rough, one has to become aware of each step and take care. I don't know what we should say - that the motive of not falling is always there, but not conscious, or that it is only there when it is needed. Perhaps it doesn't matter much.
Imagine that I am out of milk, and I need milk for my tea, so I decide to walk to the corner store. Off I go. I never develop the goal of moving my feet. The goal is what I want, to get milk. I have choices of how to achieve that goal, so I decide to walk to the store. Walking to the store is the means to the end. Once I've made up my mind, the habit kicks in, but the movements required for walking never enter my mind as part of the goal.
So let's take your example of throwing the ball. Suppose you're a quarterback, and the throw must be precisely timed. You hold the goal, to throw, and you hold the ball, to throw. At the exact right moment, you must pull back and release the ball. The motivating factor for the release is not the goal, because despite having the goal of throwing you continue to hold the ball, perhaps even to the point of getting sacked. The motivating factor appears to be the judgement "now", at which time the habit takes over and the throw is made.
I wouldn't say that it is the "initial goal of moving your body" which is the motivating factor, because you can hold that goal of moving your body, without ever moving. These people who have goals without acting on them, we call unmotivated. It is the impetus of "act now!", which we refer to as motivation. And this is separate from the goal, because it may be applied to any goal. That is why ambitious, motivated people may be motivated toward all sorts of different goals. What makes the person motivated is not the goal itself, it's the person's attitude toward the goal.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A goal is a mental object, like any conception or idea. It must be conceived. To produce a goal requires thought, and thinking is an activity which requires motivation. I think it is a mistake to represent the goal as driving you forward, because the goal does not drive you forward, it may just sit there in your mind. It is your dedication to achieving the goal, and the will to act, which drives you forward, not the goal itself. The goal itself is a passive thing with no causal power.
Goals are not passive things. They are active states of constraint. So they may not be efficient causes, but they are final causes. They shape the intentional space in which consequent decision making unfolds. If we have an image of the final destination, then that is how we can start filling in all the necessary step actions to get us there.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When playing fast sport, the decision-making has to be all pretty much habitual or automatic. Habitual responses are learnt behaviour - reactions ready to go - so can be executed in around a fifth of a second. Attention-level deliberation takes half a second at least. So it is much too slow to actually be in control while playing football.
The proper role of attentional-level goal forming is in the breaks in play. The "wait and get ready with a plan" moments. That is where the quarterback delays to become clear on his general intention during the next play. He has to start with a state of broad focus which shuts out everything he can expect to be able to ignore - like the cheerleaders prancing on the sidelines - so that his trained habits will be able to pick out all the rapid subtleties, like last instant reshuffles in the opposition defensive line.
Then the play starts to unfold and all his trained instincts can slot in according to a general intent. He is itching to pull the trigger on the throw. A conjunction of observed motions on the field hit the point where the habits themselves provide the timing information. The "go now" command is issued by the mid-brain basal ganglia in concert with the brainstem's cerebellum. The conscious brain can discover how it worked out a half second later as attentional-level processing catches up to provide a newly integrated state of experience. The quarterback can start thinking oh shit, or hot damn.
So the mistake is to try to assign thought, cause, motivation or intention to just one level of mental operation. And yet also, the general desire - neurobiologically speaking - is for a strong dichotomy to emerge.
Attention wants to do the least it can get away with. Everything that can be handed down the chain to learnt automatism will be handed down. But then that also leaves attention responsible for the very stuff that is the most critical or difficult or novel when it comes to "thought, cause, motivation or intention".
So a kid learning to play really does have to focus on the mechanics of simply timing a throw. There is no remaining capacity for thinking about the patterns of play likely to be unfolding on the field. But as a skilled player, even reading the game is something that doesn't need specific attention. Most of the effort has to go to just not getting distracted by cheerleaders, or whatever.
Motivation is thus dichotomous. It has both its generality and its particularity - the two levels complementing each other. You have to be governed by the constraint of some generalised intent. And then within that, you will be able to see all the particular steps needed to get you to that destination.
Action is not about summoning up the energy to do the bidding of reason. That is a mechanical metaphor - the psychology inspired by the industrial age when hot steam was needed to make the wheels turn.
Instead, a biological organism is always some host of spastic potential, itching and twitching, restless to be doing. Just watch a newborn squirming randomly. What it then needs is the focus so all that potential gets a clear direction that is useful. And over time, that intentionality has to become transformed into stable, reliable, habit. The ultimate goal is an economy of motion - achieving the most by doing the least.
Rather than motivation being about feeding the machine with more energy to get it to go harder, it is about learning how to reduce the informational load on acting so that doing what you need to do feels like an easy downhill ride - the flow experience of the truly skilled individual.
Who needs motivation to climb stairs or drive a car? Once the habits have been learnt, these dangerous and complex actions could not feel easier. We just get on and do them without having to break down any informational barriers.
Of course then there is real life where as soon as we have mastered the basic skills, higher level decision making gets piled on top. We even seek greater demands as unthinking and repetitive action gets boring. There are always new horizons to automate and assimilate to habit.
So when people complain about a lack of motivation to study, exercise, tidy their bedroom, whatever, it is because they face informational barriers - conflicted intentions - that make going in that direction too hard. They are really faced with the choice of either actually learning the appropriate life routines, or dealing with the possibility that its not actually something they believe in as a globally constraining life goal.
The whole first half of your post ignores what I said about learning how to walk. When you are in the process of learn something, then each step has to be focused on to complete the primary goal of walking. The same for throwing a football. I coach youth flag football and in teaching a kid how to throw a football requires all these other steps of positioning your feet, fingers, hand and arm, and the motion of your arm, fingers and hand, and even your body, as you throw the ball. A kid learning this often forgets each step and it takes practice to get it all. Once they've done it many times it becomes automatic. I don't think Tom Brady focuses much about how to plant his feet and positioning his fingers on the laces of the ball. All that information is in his subconscious. So the goal and process of moving your legs and arms are still there - it's just that you can focus on other tasks, not tasks you have performed over and over again. The brain is capable of multitasking by leaving he goals and means of achieving them to the subconscious while the conscious part focuses it's attention (which seems to be the special thing about consciousness as opposed to the subconscious and unconscious. It has attention) on other things.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverOf course the goal has causal power. How else do you explain your current state of walking to the store, if the goal of having tea doesn't have causal power? If your goal was to watch your favorite TV show, then you wouldn't be walking to the store. The goal itself dictates the actions you are taking now, or else you could never say why you are doing this particular thing now (walking to the store) as opposed to something else (looking for the remote control).
I disagree with this, A goal is a describable object, it is a state, and as such it is static. The mind iswhat is active in forming goals. If a goal were to change, it can no longer be called "the same goal". This is necessary in order to be consistent with the laws of logic. Goals cannot change,one goal is replaced with another. So it is quite true that one's formal intention is active and changing, just like the form of any object, but when a person's formal intention changes the person can no longer be said to have the same goal. This is despite the fact that we may say that a physical object is the same object despite some changes to the form of the object. To assume this would make the goal unintelligible (contrary to the laws of logic), assuming that it could be the same goal after changing, which would contradict the fundamental nature of the goal, as an intelligible object.
Quoting apokrisis
This I disagree with as well. In fast sports, every situation is different, and it is the rapid thinking mind, the ability to foresee the rapidly changing future, the ability to adjust quickly with changes, which is on display in these sports. Hockey is a fine example. Yes, good habits are essential and all professional hockey players must develop these, but when we judge their "star" level we are judging their ability to think outside the box, be creative, and basically, their rapid decision making. The very nature of the habit is to constrain, so it is the difficult task of a fine hockey coach, to maintain a delicate balance between habit and creativity within the high-spirited, highly motivated hockey players.
Quoting apokrisis
What? Come on now, are you saying that the "go now" command is not produced by the conscious mind? The quarterback doesn't consciously decide when to throw? The hockey player doesn't consciously decide when to shoot the puck? I find that counter-intuitive, and hard to believe, but I'm ready to allow this proposition, if only just for the sake of argument. After all, I'm arguing a separation between the goal, and the motivation which gives the "go now". So if the goal is attributed to the conscious mind, and the "go now" is not, this provides the separation I need.
However, I have difficulty with the logic of this claim, and I'll explain to you my difficulty. Perhaps you can give me an explanation which will help me to get beyond this problem. Suppose that the goal is to throw the ball and this is within the conscious mind. The QB must resist going through with the throw, until the moment is right. So the QB uses will power to stay in this zone of being about to throw, but not yet throwing. I believe that this will power involves a conscious effort. When the throw is made, there must be a release of this will power, a release from this conscious effort not to throw. But this "release" can only be a conscious decision, or else the conscious effort not to throw would be totally ineffective. If the non-conscious could overcome the conscious effort of will power at any moment, then the conscious effort to restrain would have no power to actually do that.
That's the problem I invite you to help me resolve. It appears to be impossible that the conscious effort to refrain from acting could have any power of self-restraint, if the motivation to "go now" was derived from the non-conscious. The non-conscious motivation to "go now" could just arise at any time, overpowering the conscious effort of restraint. In reality, the conscious effort actually restrains the "go now" motivation or else there would be no conscious restraint. How could the release be non-conscious without upending the whole thing?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I agree with this designation of primary goals and sub-goals. But the problem is that moving my feet never becomes a goal at all, it just happens automatically, like my breathing isn't a goal, it just happens automatically. I decide to walk to the store, and I stand up and go. I do not decide to move my feet. There's many different muscles in my legs, ankles, and feet. I do not decide which ones to move, and how to move them, yet they still move properly when I decide to walk to the store. How would you draw a line? Which movements are described by the goal, and which just come about automatically because the person is motivated to achieve the goal?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I didn't address this because it isn't relevant. I'm not talking about learning how to walk, I'm talking about walking as a habit. When we know well how to walk, we do so without setting goals of where and when to move our feet, this just happens naturally without the goal. When an individual who knows how to walk is motivated to walk, that person does so without setting goals of where and when to move one's feet. Whether or not one had to proceed with such goals when learning how to walk is irrelevant because I was talking about habitual actions, not learning such things.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, the goal is not still there, and that's the point. To be "there" it must be in the conscious mind. I have no idea what goals I had in my mind when I was learning to walk, so whatever those goals were, they are definitely not still there. I now walk without having in my mind the goals which assisted me in learning how to walk in the first place. And the walking activity is "automatic". It occurs without those goals.
Quoting Harry Hindu
How do you suppose that the subconscious has goals? I don't see how this is possible. I can understand that a subconscious activity is carried out for a purpose, but this does not mean that the goal itself is within the subconscious.
Quoting Harry Hindu
As I explained, it is not the goal of walking to the store, or having tea, which causes me to walk to the store. It is the decision to "act now" which causes me to go. I could be sitting on the couch for a very long time, maintaining the goal of walking to the store, without actually doing it, if I am unmotivated. So clearly it is not the goal which has causal power. I must be motivated to act on the goal or else nothing becomes of the goal.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The reason why of a particular thing, is not the same as a cause of action.
Even habit level execution takes a tenth of a second to make the simplest decision, like hear the pistol shot that starts the race. And to react to something more complex, like a bad bounce of a cricket ball, takes a fifth of a second.
This is all very well studied in sports psychology labs. It is even written into the laws of the games, as in the thresholds set for false starts in sprint races.
It should be obvious really. The more complicated the processing, the longer it is going to take. So habit is learnt skill that makes the least demand. Attention is a whole brain analysis that just has to take more time.
Yes, skilled competitors are good at throwing in unpredictability. And coping with unpredictably. That is what happens when you put in enough practice of the right kind. Tricky things can be handled "instinctively".
Again, we are talking about organisms and not machines. Simple is not dumb. Simple is proof of having learnt. Simple is the mastery of efficient achievement of goals.
I don't think that this is a good argument. The precise time, the "millisecond accuracy" can be predicted in advance, so all the extra time require for the voluntary act can be accounted for in the QB's prediction of when to throw. If something suddenly appeared in front of the QB, and he had to respond within a millisecond, I agree that this would be impossible. But nothing is moving that fast, and this is not the case. The QB is simply waiting for the appropriate time to throw. So all the time is factored into the decision, the time the ball is in the air, the time the arm is moving, and the time that the brain messages are travelling. You have no argument here, that the decision to release is not voluntary.
Quoting apokrisis
See, here you are talking about reaction time, but reaction time is not what the example is all about. What is the case in the example, is that the QB is holding the ball, with the goal of throwing, but waiting for the precise "right" moment to release it. This is how I am separating having a goal, from the motivation to act on that goal, as two distinct things. We can hold a goal, and decide to act on it at a later time. So having goals and being motivated to act, are two distinct things. .
Very Schopenhauer of you!
And on anticipation, of course anticipation is absolutely necessary. The brain is a prediction engine. But the same story applies. We learn how to predict at an slow attentive level. Then we get good and familiar with this predicting such that is can be executed as rapid habit. Both levels of processing are anticipatory. But one has to start out and form a general intent ahead of time - prime for the decision by setting up some notion of the constraining goal. Then the other can kick in and supply the particular action commands right up to the last split instant - which is still a good tenth of a second behind the world, and so also is by necessity anticipatory.
Generally, we are motivated by three basic things (two of which are deeper- one of which is immediate).The deeper motivations are survival and boredom. The immediate motivation is dissatisfaction. Goals-directed behavior has become the primary tool to put the underlying drives into some form of activity. Why do we participate in the economy, etc, is because of survival. Why do we do this or that non-survival related thing? Because of boredom. Why did we turn on the air conditioner? Because of dissatisfaction. No matter how complex a behavior, it comes down to that. Even these three can just be distilled into dissatisfaction, as survival and boredom are forms of not having something fulfilled. So, the quarterback learns his routines and habits because he either needs to make money or is bored or both. Something is "fulfilling" when dissatisfaction seems to be at its least. Culture and personal inclination direct where the Will directs its relentless effort regarding survival and boredom.. A causal chain of watching an Iron Man competition, and hearing about a friend who is into it, makes someone (who may already be inclined) to get going on practicing for triathlons. The idea of being tough and completing the challenge becomes the immanent reasons. However, the whole time, it was driven by the underlying boredom. His cultural and causal setting simply gave him the content to relieve this boredom. It may not even be apparent to the person regarding the underlying cause. If we were completely content, no one would be motivated, as there is no impetus to action. We would be purely being without needing to become.
I agree that habits short circuit conscious decisions, that's consistent with the point I was making to Harry Hindu. But what I'm looking for is the bridge between conscious decisions and habitual actions, because this is what I believe "motivation" refers to.
Quoting apokrisis
This is not the way that such activities are actually carried out though. The skilled hockey player must master a vast variety of habits, and continually choose, and change choice of which habit to rely on at any particular time. So the skill which the star hockey player has, involves the rapid changing from one habit to another. This is the execution of the changing from one habit level skill to another, with out loosing stride. It is not a case of relying on rapid habit execution, what is relied on is the capacity to rapidly change from one habit to another. And any occupation which requires alert attention, relies on this capacity of having a vast skill set of habits which one can choose from, and switch one to the other at a moments notice.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, I believe anticipation is the critical thing here. This may be what bridges the gap between conscious intent and habitual performance, forming the basis for motivation. The intent must be left as general, in order that it adapts to the rapidly changing environment, while maintaining the very same goal. The individual is motivated toward a general intent (winning the game), allowing that there is a massive number of possible means to this end. As the situation unfolds, the appropriate means to this end (habits) are constantly being decided upon. These decisions are based on anticipation and the desire to avoid negative results in favor of the positive.
So attention forms an intent as a general constraint? It doesn't matter how that intent is satisfied in terms of particular connecting actions?
Isn't that what I said over the course of many threads?
No, attention hasn't really entered the model yet. We've been discussing the role of motivation in relation to intent, and habit. Attention enters as the result of motivation, like any other habit. But you do not seem to recognize attention as a habit. It is a mental habit. That's where I was headed toward in our last discussion, but you were not listening.
That's probably a habit I picked up from studying psychology/neuroscience.
Alternatively, action can be motivated by either a desire to move away from something or a desire to move towards something.
In operant conditioning, this is shown by the fact that removing a negative reinforcer can strengthen a behaviour, and providing a positive reinforcer can also strengthen a behaviour.
So the complexity of behaviour would in fact be reduced to the dichotomy of pleasure and pain. Everything is not merely an escape anymore that one would argue everything was an approach. The positive and the negative are both motivators.
Well, study some philosophy and maybe you can break this bad habit.
In the meantime...
How to walk isn't a goal, it is a set of instructions. If you didn't have the set of instructions for walking, talking, or things that we learned before and now do habitually, then how do you explain you knowing how to do it? Walking isn't "automatic". It's just that you don't have to pay much attention to it because you've done it so often that you your conscious mind doesn't need to focus on it. Notice how consciousness is only needed for the things you don't know how to do and are learning how to do it. When you learn well how to do it the task gets relegated to the subconscious.
Also notice that you can have a goal of changing your breathing - even holding your breath, and that happens when you focus on your conscious attention on your breathing. You breath without paying attention to it and it is only when you want to change your rate of breathing that it becomes part of consciousness. Consciousness seems to be all about one's attention.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverWhat is the difference between a goal and a purpose? What is the difference between intention and goal? What is the difference between motivation and goal? They all seem to be the same thing to me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you say you have the goal of going to the store but not the motivation because you are still sitting on the couch, then what you are really saying is that you have conflicting goals. We often have conflicting goals and it is where we reach a state of indecision - of not being able to establish a clear goal over another. It seems to me that, because you are still sitting on the couch, your goal to sit on the couch is winning over the goal of going to the store, or else you wouldn't still be sitting on the couch.
The concept of "habit" was first formally defined by Aristotle in his work on logic. The word is derived from the same word as "have", and refers to a property which a living being has. This property is the propensity to behave in a particular way. In his work on biology "De Anima" (On the Soul), it is noted that a habit is a potential which the living being has. The different powers (potencies) of the living are necessarily understood as potentials of the living creature, because they are not at all times active. So we say that the creature has the power of self-nourishment, the power of self-movement, sensation, or intellection, and by referring to these as potential, it is noted that the described activity is not being carried out by the living being at all times, but it has the capacity to carry out this act.
Thomas Aquinas carried out a much more in depth analysis of what a habit itself, is. Since "habit" refers to the propensity for a particular activity, and not the activity itself, he concluded that the habit, as a property of the living being, must be a property of the potential for the act, and not a property of the act itself. In this way, we can say that a potential, which has no particular necessary actualization, has properties which are described as the inclination toward a particular actualization.
If you are familiar with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, you will find in his 1809 book "Zoological Philosophy", a very in depth study of the relationship between the habits of an animal, and it's physical constitution.
So, according to my understanding of what a habit is, from these and other philosophers, I don't see how "attention" as per your reference to William James, above, or any common notion of the activity referred to by "attention", is anything other than the activity of a habit. Care to explain how you see things differently?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'd say that walking is a habit. My body has numerous different capacities for movement, and some have an inclination to actualize in a particular way, and this activity is called walking.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't think that these are all the same thing, and that's why they are different words. For instance, the word "goal" implies something consciously aimed for. Non-conscious things can have a purpose, but they do not have a goal. All the components in my computer each has its own purpose with respect to the functioning of the computer, but I cannot say that these parts each has a goal. There is one goal here, the functioning of the computer, but that goal was in the minds of the people who built the computer. The purpose of each part is within the computer itself, within the relationship between the part and the whole, while the goal is in the minds of the people who built the computer.
The difference between motivation and goal is what we've been discussing in this thread.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Are you saying that having no motivation is the very same thing as having conflicting goals? If so, I disagree. A motivated person will proceed with the mental activity of attempting to solve such conflicts. The activity here is the act of thinking, and the motivated person is engaged in this act of thinking, while having conflicting goals at the same time. So the person is motivated, and engaged in activity, yet has conflicting goals at the same time. Therefore it is impossible that having no motivation is the same thing as having conflicting goals.
You seem to have very little understanding of habit. A habit is acquired, but it is not necessarily learnt. If attention is required to learn, this does not exclude the possibility of attention itself being an unlearned habit. That's the way that habits are structured, they build on each other, supporting each other.
But also, that evolved brain architecture favoured the division of labour that I've mentioned - attentional level processing for dealing with novelty, habit level processing for dealing with the routine. So what was acquired as large brains developed through evolutionary learning was a strong dichotomisation of what we would call habits and attention. The taking of habits also evolved.
So sure, we can step back and take the really long-term perspective, and this is what we see. The cerebellum and basal ganglia are also particularly large in humans.
Thus if we are talking about the functional architecture of brains as it is actually divided, you are talking out your hat as usual. You are thinking like a reductionist in wanting to reduce two things to one thing. But an organicist can see that a division into two things is how you can arrive at the functional harmony or synthesis of an effective division of labour. Study brain science and you will discover that it is all about this principle of complementary logic.
I'll throw in another reference for you - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/complementary-nature
This sounds about right. I think im right in saying that the motivation to surrvive can be called the Schopenhauerian will to life. Is it at all possible to loose the motivation to survive? one might argure that a suicidal person has lost the will to life, but im not sure, hence why im asking. It seems to me that death is inevitable so unless we stive for something greater than life, our actions are futile, that is those caused by the will to life.
Additionaly can it be said that all humans, if possible will act to alleviate dissatisfaction or are there cases when people rather suffer. If so why?
P.s. Im self taught so im not entirely sure if my interpretation of schopehauer is right.
OK, now that we're clear on this, we can approach the issue of motivation with some level of agreement in principle.
Quoting apokrisis
It's fine to have your "division of labour", if it helps you to understand the workings of the brain, but I don't see that it is of any advantage in this issue. What we are looking for here is the motivation to get something done, and this is prior to any such a division. So whether the motivating factor at one time motivates a habit level activity, or an attentional level activity (which is really just another level of habit anyway) is irrelevant to our inquiry into the motivating factor itself.
What would be relevant, would be to find the motivating factor motivating something which is not a habitual activity whatsoever. Then we could see the motivating factor in action without the distraction of the habit. Furthermore, since the nature of each habit is that of a potential to act, the motivating factor must be prior to all habits in order that every habit has the potential to act. Thus we will get to the motivating factor where there is activity without habit.
So I'll return to the question I posed already. Since the conscious will power gives us the power to refrain from all activity, how could the motivating factor be anything other than the conscious decision? I think you would agree with me that there are many internal activities of the human body which the will does not have the power to suspend. So the motivating factor is to be found within these internal parts, rather than within the conscious mind. But to motivate the will power, is the closest thing we have to motivation without activating habits, because the will power to refrain from action is to deny the action of habits as far as possible. So it is the motivation behind will power, what motivates willpower, which is the motivation to resist activity, that we will find the purest form of the motivating factor.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I like Schopenhauer, one of the few philosophers who actually has an understanding of the will.
Survival is just one manifestation of the Will as mediated in the world of phenomena (space/time/causality/subject/object). At root, I think it is more akin to a dissatisfaction. Suicide would simply be the will trying to will itself to no longer exist. It's still will, but turned against itself. There is a dissatisfaction with life itself, and the person thinks that this will resolve the dissatisfaction.
Quoting Gotterdammerung
Ultimately there might be an underlying dissatisfaction which is alleviated by choosing to suffer. If the person is alive, the persons decisions are probably still mediated from the desire to survive in some fashion, or alleviate the boredom in some fashion. Otherwise, there is the dissatisfactions of the immediate.
You are forgetting that my approach is quite different from yours on this. Again, you want to boil things down to the effective causes of behaviour. And that leaves out the complementary role played by the final causes.
So should "motivation" be entirely a question of "what local thing triggered this action"? Or is motivation a big enough concept that it includes "what global goal gave form to action itself"?
I of course defend the latter.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Isn't this another way of saying that attentional level processes can constrain our habits in fruitful fashion? I will respond out of learnt habit unless I take time to watch what I am doing and impose some kind of working memory/prefrontal plan on things?
Again we are back to a division of labour. I want to be able to do as much as possible without having to think about it. But I also want to be able to stop and think about anything that needs a non-habitual response.
So back to the power of a functional dichotomy. Two styles of processing are better than one. I want to be in control when it matters. I also like an easy life where I can let routine stuff take care of itself. Most of the time, this itself feels like a seamless and automatic habit. The two ways of processing the world are so smoothly integrated that I don't need to pay attention to any join.
But in high pressure, fast moving, situations - like playing sport - the fact that the processes are quite different in things like temporal scale can really show.
There is not enough time to consciously plan the throwing of a pass. There often isn't even the time to do the quicker thing of simply halting a subconsciously unfolding action plan. Free won't is faster than freewill. Yet even then, we find ourselves often thinking oh shit, shouldn't have done that, as the body is already launching into action.
So you are stuck on the usual reductionist regress of trying to find "the self" that wills the body to act. If I flex my little finger voluntarily, it seems that I must of commanded it, because it just happened. And yet I can't actually find any thought or effort that "I" delivered at that precise moment to make the finger move. It just as much felt as if it moved by itself. Because it suddenly felt like it.
As long as you are focused on finding a trail of effective causes, an organ like the brain is going to be a mystery. But ahead of time I can decide - at an attentional level - to form a state of constraint that regulates my little finger. I can say the general goal is to flex in the next few moments. Go as soon as you like and I won't stop you. I have a clear mental expectation of what should happen, and what should not happen - like I don't want the little finger of my other hand to do the flexing. So I have restricted my habits of finger moving in a very specific and attentional fashion. Pretty much the only thing the habit level brain can do is move in the way expected. So for all its varied propensity, the probability approaches 1 that it will emit the response that has been attentionally anticipated.
It is a different way of making things happen. Organic rather mechanistic.
The body's habits are a whole collection of potential routines or degrees of freedom. I could break into a moonwalk at any instant. It is just one of umpteen learn possibilities. Then attention does the other thing of restraining the space of possible actions until only the one desired action becomes the probable outcome. I form the goal of moonwalking and the whole of the brain becomes motivated in that behavioural direction as every other option has been momentarily suppressed.
Quoting Gotterdammerung
That is a good question. I think there is no such thing as motivation. To quote the great philosopher, psychologist, neurologist, psychiatrist and scholar Sigmund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939), “If you can't do it, give up!” The point of this is to say that we should nIt be motivated if something is impossible and should give up rather than pursuing a Quoting schopenhauer1 which is meaningless and cannot be achieved by any humanly possible means available.
Anyway, thanks Götterdämmerung for that question. It leaves an interesting conversation that I am sure many people are interested in. I could write an entire essay on this subject.
Hmm interesting idea....
what this quote also Demontrates is that if it is indeed possible for an action to be done, unless we have other reasons for inaction (no motivation), there is nothing stoping us from achieving our goals.
Given that actions occur, and that we act, it is thefore necessary to discover the reason behind why we act. If as you claim there are no motifs, I would be interested in your explanation for why we do what we do. Even if this takes the form of a long essay
So what if they are different words? The English language has many different words that mean the same thing. We have a tendency to complicate things. The fact is that we use these words interchangeably. We often talk about "purpose" in our doing things. Saying that someone did something on "purpose" is the same as saying that they did it "intentionally", or that was their "end-goal".
Merriam-Webster
Purpose: something set up as an object or end to be attained: Intention
Intent: the act or fact of intending : Purpose
goal: the end toward which effort is directed
Per the Synonym Guide on Merriam Webster's dictionary:
goal Synonyms
aim, ambition, aspiration, bourne (also bourn), design, dream, end, idea, ideal, intent, intention, mark, meaning, object, objective, plan, point, pretension, purpose, target, thing, name of the game
Synonym Discussion of goal
intention, intent, purpose, design, aim, end, object, objective, goal mean what one intends to accomplish or attain. intention implies little more than what one has in mind to do or bring about. ?announced his intention to marry? intent suggests clearer formulation or greater deliberateness. ?the clear intent of the statute? purpose suggests a more settled determination. ?being successful was her purpose in life? design implies a more carefully calculated plan. ?the order of events came by accident, not design? aim adds to these implications of effort directed toward attaining or accomplishing. ?her aim was to raise film to an art form? end stresses the intended effect of action often in distinction or contrast to the action or means as such. ?willing to use any means to achieve his end? object may equal end but more often applies to a more individually determined wish or need. ?his constant object was the achievement of pleasure? objective implies something tangible and immediately attainable. ?their objective is to seize the oil fields? goal suggests something attained only by prolonged effort and hardship. ?worked years to reach her goals?
It seems clear to me and Merriam-Webster that they mean the same thing, or are at least more closely related than you seem to think. The fact that I can use any of these terms to get the same message across indicates that they refer to the same thing - the idea in your head that motivates you to act.
As for "motivation""
motivation: a motivating force, stimulus, or influence
Here I have to ask what is it that is the motivating force, stimulus, or influence that gets you off the couch and walking to the store - specifically? If it isn't the realization of your goal/purpose/intent, then what is it?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover...and I have yet to see a clear distinction between the two be made.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. I'm saying that they are all the same thing. In other words, I'm saying that where you have conflicting goals, you have conflicting motivations.
I'm not leaving out final causes, I want to bridge the gap between final and efficient cause. Do you agree that conscious goals are final causes, but the cause of an habitual action is an efficient cause?
If this is the case, then how do we show how a conscious goal "acts" as a final cause to produce a chain of efficient causes (habitual action)?
Quoting apokrisis
What you write though, does not defend the role of final causation. When we discussed the activity in sports, you spoke as if the activity was necessarily all habitual, as if that were the only way that the athlete could keep up to speed with the world, through the rapidity of reflex reactions. The athlete's goals cannot enter into the activity as final causes, because there is no time for that. I was arguing the role of rapid decision making.
Then we found a principle which we had a certain degree of agreement on, and this was anticipation. It appears like anticipation might be completely associated with consciousness, because it predicts, or foresees the future, and it appears like this can only be done through conscious imagination. If anticipation is only a property of consciousness, then it could be associated with goals, and final causation, so the bridge between final cause and efficient cause would be found in the relationship between anticipation and habit.
Do you think that it is possible that an anticipatory action can be habitual, or is there a necessary separation between these two such that all anticipatory reactions require conscious decision? For instance, something is suddenly flying rapidly at your head. You duck to the right, or to the left, or straight down, in anticipation. Does this require a conscious decision, a goal (final cause), or is it strictly a reflexive habit, (efficient cause)?
Can I return to your example of the runners waiting for the starting gun, because I don't think you've paid proper respect to anticipation here? You describe the event completely in terms of habitual reaction, when in reality anticipation plays a large role in the speed of one's start. The runners are given warning, "on your mark, get set", and the gun shot is anticipated. If the anticipation runs too high, a runner might jump the gun. So clearly the rapid start of the race, for the runner, is more complex than just a habitual reaction to the sound of the shot. Anticipation of the shot, which produces preparedness, is just as important as habit, if not more so.
Quoting apokrisis
I disagree with this, in sports there is always enough time to plan one's actions. Something would have to come out of nowhere, and whack you on the head in a fraction of a second for you not to have time to think about your actions. I've been in more than one car accident, driving, where the scene unfolds very quickly, but I've always maintained conscious control over how I operated the controls of the vehicle until the end.
It would be a mistake to think "oh shit, shouldn't have done that", because things are moving so rapidly that there is time only to think about what is impending. This is where the habit of attention is of the greatest importance, to keep us focused on what is impending when things are occurring very rapidly, allowing us the greater power of anticipation. If you are one who is distracted by "oh shit shouldn't have done that", in the middle of a rapidly occurring situation, you are one who has not developed a good habit of attention. This leads us to another aspect related to anticipation, which is confidence. The two work together to enable the habit of attention.
Quoting apokrisis
This is exactly the logical problem which I tried to bring to your attention already. If using will power to prevent the habit of moving your little finger involves telling it "go as soon as you like", then you have no will power, because you are not preventing your finger from moving, it moves whenever. If you are using will power to prevent your finger from moving, then it only moves when you release it from this will power, so the release, which allows the finger to move, like the will which prevents the movement is a conscious effort. If you know of a way to avoid this logical issue, I'd love to hear it.
The problem I see with what you have written here is that you are relying on your habit/attention dichotomy which I do not think properly represent the situation. Since attention is actually a habit, the better dichotomy would habit/anticipation. The problem with using "attention" as your principle is that we can only properly pay attention to what is occurring. And what is occurring, that which we are paying attention to, has already occurred by the time it is present to the conscious mind. So attention really only gives to our minds what has occurred, the past. Now we need a principle, such as anticipation, whereby the fact that something is about to occur, is present to the mind. The runner waits for the starting gun with anticipation. One's attention is focused on the anticipation. So the above paragraph referring to the moving of your little finger would be better written if you referred to your anticipation of your finger moving, and the attention which you give to this anticipation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No that's not true some words can be used in place of another, so they have one sense which is similar to a sense of another word, but no two words have the same meaning. So I refuse to argue whether two words have the same meaning, as I think that is a pointless exercise.
Attending releases the appropriate habits, while suppresing the inappropriate ones.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In broad way that is so. But habit is also final cause/constraint that has got baked in over a long period of learning. So the contrast is in an efficient division of labour in a time-pressured world. Habits represent finality that has been learnt to the point it is baked-in intentionality. Attention is then the finality we have to construct specifically to deal with the current moment in time.
It is confusing, I agree. But in terms of forming intentions, attention is much slower than habit because habit has already accumulated intentionality over a lifetime of learning. And attention is also much slower at executing in terms of efficient cause actions as again it is dealing with novelty and must spend time deliberating on the sequence of steps that might make some plan.
If I have to go to the bank and the shops, I can decide which to do first. But it might take a few seconds to work that out. Or if instead it is a learnt routine, I find my feet just making that choice for me. I am turning left rather than right before I've even had time to think at the road junction.
So both attention and habit are separable systems. And being systems, each requires the same structure - finality and efficient cause in interaction. Or constraints vs degrees of freedom.
Yet then in a broader sense, they are an integrated in themselves - each a specialisation of brain function in the two directions of economical habit vs effortful attention. One then seems to be all about the component actions, the other about the broad plan.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I thought I said that. Sprinters must really concentrate their attention so that nothing stands in the way of responding as fast as possible to the gun. They must suppress all possible distractions and maintain a vivid impression of the event that is expected. And it can be so vivid that you get false starts.
So attention creates states of focused sensory anticipation/motor intention. Everything that can be got ready is got ready - to lower the informational barrier and make the processing as fast as biologically possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Alternatively time slows. The fact that attentional level processing doesn't have time to make sense of what is going on leaves us with the feeling of the moment being stretched out and lasting an eternity.
And then you say you were in conscious control. Yet sports science will say the best that could be the case was that you were in the usual zone of responding out of trained habit, then afterwards there was a reportable working memory as attention fixed a record of the blur of events.
So it is your belief against the scientific evidence here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, relabel the same things anyway you like. It makes no difference. I just go with the standard labelling that has emerged in psychology and neuroscience.
My only quibble is that "anticipation" is useful for signalling another paradigm difference - the switch from "consciousness" as the output of a representation, to seeing it as about predictive modelling. It is anticipation that comes first. And then that acts as a selective filter on awareness which allows us to in fact ignore as much of the world as possible.
So yes, if habit is then understood in this light as what we can manage to ignore (because it is already predicted), then it is just the relabelling of the same functional dichotomy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, I already said that "consciousness" involves both the half second before and the half second after. So the fact that attentional level processing is slow means that it is there in advance of the moment, and there afterwards mopping up. First it generates the prediction that allows most things to be ignored. Then it deals with what in turn couldn't be ignored. After that, we have a tidied up impression of the world that can be filed as reportable memory.
Actually, it is a pointless exercise to argue with someone who thinks that they are right and Merriam Webster is wrong.
The word "synonym" means two words that mean the same thing. So, we have a word for the thing that you say doesn't exist (words that mean the same thing).
I think that this is a misrepresentation of habits. Habits do not represent finality, or final cause because a habit develops as a means to an end, whereas final cause is the end itself. As the means, the habit may prove to be useful toward many different ends. if looked at in any particular instance of activity, the habit may be used toward an end which is quite unrelated to the end which it was originally developed toward. So a habit, being a formal constraint, is not a final cause, nor is it properly representative of a final cause, it is better referred to as a formal cause.
It would be difficult to identify final cause as constraint, because an agent is free to produce one's own goals. We cannot say that an agent is constrained by one's goals, when an agent is free to choose one's goals. What constrains the agent, thereby restricting one's goals, is existing forms, and so we should associate constraint with formal cause rather than with final cause. Habit, as well as the forms of physical reality which constrain a person are the two types of formal cause. Habit may sometimes be overcome by intention and final cause, when we break a habit.
Quoting apokrisis
You are not properly distinguishing between existing forms, which constitute formal cause, and desired forms , goals, which are constitutive of final cause. Formal causes may be understood as existing constraints on the thinking being, whereas the being is free to determine goals. Therefore final cause which is derived from future possibilities is inherently free, and only constrained when formal cause is brought to bear upon the goal in judgement.
Quoting apokrisis
There is a large gap, a division opening wider and wider between neuroscience and modern phenomenology. Phenomenology starts with the premise of being, which is existing at the present. From here it proceeds to recognize the present as a division between past and future, and tries to understand living, in terms of this division, which is the most significant thing in our lives. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies heavily on principles derive from the Special Relativity theory which renders this distinction between past and future as unreal, or extremely vague if it's given a charitable interpretation.
The result is that neuroscience has no real principles for distinguishing between how the thinking mind is differentiating between things of the past and things of the future. The closest thing you have put forward is the concept of "attention", but you have no real way to distinguish between paying attention through your senses to things which have just happened, and paying attention through anticipation to things which are impending. Instead, you offer the blanket term "attention", which loses all such distinction in a vague "present".
The gap between phenomenology and neuroscience continues to widen, due to these failings of neuroscience.
Quoting apokrisis
It is not a case of switching from consciousness as "the output of a representation", to consciousness as "predictive modelling", it is a matter of understanding consciousness as both. This requires distinguishing the two, and providing the proper dichotomy between these two. Because if the human mind mixes up, and confuses actual things of the past (oh shit I shouldn't have done that, I'm going to try to make it so that I didn't do it) with future possibilities (X is inevitable and there's nothing I can do about it), then that human mind has a real problem. Your concept of "attention" combines these two together, in this confused way.
Quoting apokrisis
This is exactly what I mean. You say "attentional level processing" "involves both the half second before and the half second after", as if there is no fundamental difference between these two. They are both grouped together under "attentional" as if the mind, at the most fundamental level does not differentiate between the before and after. But if the mind, at the most fundamental level really does distinguish between the before and the after (which it must in order to avoid having a real problem), then why group these two together as "attentional"? The only reason would be that you are overlooking this most fundamental distinction asan unimportant distinction.
Ah. Again the return of the agent, the mysterious witnessing and deciding self who is conscious. We are back to the ghost in the machine. Who needs neuroscience.
Of course we have words for things which do not exist, words like "nothing". We also have words like "impossible", and despite something being designated as impossible, some will say it's possible. What does this mean to you?
If that's how you support your principles and defend neuroscience, it's a pathetic defense.
Thjs is surprising coming from someone who supports the idea of "final causes". What do you think final cause is, if not a dualist principle?
In any activity, there is always an "agent". This is the thing which is acting, the agent produces an effect. The agent (thing which is acting) may be motivated (moved to act) through efficient causes or final causes. Inanimate agents we observe to be motivated by efficient causes, while we observe human agents to be motivated by final causes.
You claim to support the idea of final causes but then you describe human activities in your neuroscientific way, as if they are all efficient causes. Unless you can describe an interaction between efficient causes and final causes within one model, there is no basis to your claim that you both support the idea of final causes, and deny dualism.
I thought I've explained ad nauseum? It is a dialectical or dichotomistic principle. Final and formal cause are wrapped up in the systems notion of top-down acting constraints. They are matched in complimentary fashion by bottom-up acting degrees of freedom - a notion wrapping together material and efficient cause.
So Aristotle was the great systems thinker. This is what modern systems thinking looks like.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quotemarks are good. The agent should vanish if the systems account is working. We end up with a system that has the property of agency exhibited hierarchically over all scales of its being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But in the systems view, both the global constraints and the local degrees of freedom produce effects. Both the general context and the particular events are causal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. That is just how you insist on understanding everything, no matter how regularly I correct you on that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep. You really do never listen.
As I explained, "top-down constraint" is formal cause, but this is inconsistent with "final cause" which gives the thing acting (the agent) freedom to choose a goal.
Quoting apokrisis
If you assign "freedom" to bottom-up actions, then to maintain consistency you must assign "final-cause" to bottom-up actions. The acorn becoming a tree, is a bottom-up action. The tree, which will come to be, from the acorn does not constrain the acorn, because it does not even exist when the acorn is acting.
Otherwise the human agent has no freedom to choose one's own goals, and this is inconsistent with observations of human behaviour. We freely choose our goals, they are not enforced through top-down constraint. Goals are freely chosen by the human mind, and goal-directed actions are bottom-up, starting from within the neurological system.
Quoting apokrisis
Agency cannot vanish unless there is nothing which is active. If nothing is active then there is no activity.
Quoting apokrisis
Then what is the thing which is active? Global constraints and local degrees of freedom produce effects on what? Unless you have an agent, you have a system of constraints and freedoms without anything actually being affected by that system, and your claim that these constraints and freedoms produce effects is just smoke and mirrors because there is nothing there which is being affected.
No, no. Top-down constraint is formal and final cause bound up. Although - following the logic of dichotomies - we would also follow Aristotle in dividing constraint into its generality and particularity. So goals are general imperatives. And forms are particular states of constraint that would serve those imperatives.
Take the Platonic solids. You can place the general constraint on geometric possibility of limiting volumes to regular-sided polygons. So the goal is maximised regularity. And then you have the five forms that meet the requirement. These forms in turn can be used as actual limits which shape lumps of matter that have efficient causes, like the property of whether they stack nicely, or not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hardly. The acorn packs a genome - the product of millennia of evolved intentionality. You couldn't pick a worse example. The acorn - as a small package of carbohydrate and basic metabolic machinery - has to grow. It must construct an oak by constraining material flows for 100 years. But the fact it will be an oak is already written into its destiny.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And so you again ignore all the science that has shown that this kind of "ghost in the machine" freedom is a dualistic illusion.
That doesn't mean there is no "freedom of choice". It means that we are constrained by our biology and sociology to act intelligently and creatively. We have the capacity to negotiate the balance between our individual wants and our social demands. And we can do that well, or do that badly. Selection will weed out what works and what doesn't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are locked into cause and effect thinking. A doer and a done-to. That is the mental habit you need to break. Aristotle ought to be a good start for any systems thinker. His four causes approach was the basis for self-organising entelechy. Material potential becomes actualised as it expresses its functionality.
This is where the temporal problem lies. Formal cause relates to what exists, and final cause relates to a goal for the future. By binding up these two, you negate the division between past and future, also negating the need for dualism. But you no longer have a true "final cause".
Quoting apokrisis
I didn't pick the example, it's Aristotle's. If it appears to you like a bad example, it's because you misunderstand final cause. And in your explanation you conflate the particular and the general. If the acorn grows, it will construct an oak tree (in general), but not any particular oak tree, the intent is something general. Furthermore, there is no necessity for it to grow, it may not grow, and this is due to the nature of the material cause. So the acorn consists of material cause, potential, it consists of formal cause. what it is, or how that potential exists, and it consists of final cause which is the intent to become something. But the "something" in the intent is something more general than the specific "something" which is the acorn. And so there is a necessary separation between formal cause and final cause.
Quoting apokrisis
This claim is just as hollow as your claim that the acorn "must grow".
Quoting apokrisis
You still haven't explained how you have activity without something which is active. It's easy to say "let's just talk about the activity, and forget about the thing which is active", but it doesn't make a metaphysics because you have an ontology without any being. You think I should break the good mental habit of insisting that if there is activity, there is something which is active, to opt for the bad mental habit of describing the activity with total neglect for the thing which is active.
Your mode of thinking is to just combine formal and final cause, and forget about the material which separates these two. Matter is the potential for change. Formal cause relates to the form which the matter has, and final cause relates to an intended form. If you remove the relationship between form and matter then you no longer have this distinction between what is (necessitated as "the past"), and what may be (in the future).
Perhaps get someone to explain genes to you sometime.
What kind of reply is that? Genes play a part in determining the characteristics of the individual, but that's only a part. This is where we find final cause active, within the local aspect. Final cause acts from within and there is an inherent element of freedom as is evident from genetic mutations and evolution. But there is also the environment, global constraints. You seem to somehow twist these around.
As stated- survival, boredom, dissatisfaction.
You always stress the escape from negativity and ignore the approach to positivity. But it takes two to tango.
So what we really have here is an inherent direction that points the way to progress. For things to be even meaningfully understood as bad, the logically corollary is that they could be good. Thus your pessimism collapses due to its own first premise.
In biology, they are the determining part. What happens during growth or development is then that this finality gets mixed with a lot of particular accidents.
So the acorn is a one-off genetic template - a particular form that can only deliver that one adult tree. Sexual reproduction ensures a shuffling of the genetic cards to create a unique hand.
But then the tree grows. The acorn happens to have fallen on a stony hillside. One year as a sapling there is a big drought, another year it is hit by a pest invasion, eventually it gets hit by lightning.
So the mighty oak ends up a bit mangled in ways that the acorn's genome couldn't envision. Constraints may be top-down determining, but also the development of actuality is subject to irreducible contingency. There are many particular accidents of fate that get woven into the final form of the genetic intention.
So roughly the original envisioned oak emerges. And if not too beaten up, it can produce its crop of new acorns. Its biological goal has been achieved on the whole, to the extent it matters.
Again, you have brought the discussion back to a reductionist way of thinking where constraints must be absolutely determining. But organically, constraints only have to regulate contingency to the degree it really matters. Doing more than that is pointless over-kill.
Once you get that naturalistic systems principle, it is pretty easy to apply that to the discussion of brains and habits we were having.
If satisfaction is actually impossible, then it can't really be said to be missing. Motivation remains the direction you want to take because it is "leaving something definitely behind by definitely heading in the exact other direction".
Agreed.
It is not true that biologists generally conceive of genetics in this way. There are many "accidents" which can occur right within the genetic system, different types of mutations which are responsible for variations, and they are necessary to evolutionary theory. If the genetics of the seed determined the particular plant which would grow, there would be no such thing as evolution. And not all genetic mutations are due to environmental factors. You are just stipulating this in an effort to support your metaphysical position instead of accepting that this position is untenable.
Furthermore, your own system of metaphysics claims local degrees of freedom. So you are producing inconsistency within your own system with this form of determinism, unless the activity explained by genetics is global rather than local. But if you look for an even smaller, microscopic level of activity, you will find final cause active even at this smaller level. No matter how microscopic you go, you will never separate the local degrees of freedom from the final cause.
Your move is to remove final cause from the local freedom, describing it as a global constraint, and this is all just an effort to remove the "ghost in the machine". Why? Do you have some deep seated fear of dualism? When all the evidence, and many rational arguments throughout history point in that direction, why are you insisting on inconsistent principles just to avoid a name, "dualism"? By pulling the ghost out of the machine, you are just left with a machine. But you now have an even bigger problem. Machines are artificial, created with intention. To maintain consistency with this evidence, that machines which act with purpose are created, you need to assume a creator of that machine. So either we follow the evidence, that final cause is immanent within the living being to the most fundamental particles of matter, or we look for an external creator, of which we can't find any evidence.
Quoting apokrisis
OK, so if the genes, operating under the principle of final cause, within the acorn, cannot produce one specific oak tree, because there are degrees of contingency involved. Then we cannot say that the intent within the acorn is to produce that one particular tree. We have to say that the intent within those genes is vague and general. The genes will not produce this certain tree, they will produce an oak tree in general. So if we speak of final cause as a constraining or determining factor it is so in this general way, it is not a particular constraint, as formal cause is. And this makes an important difference between formal cause and final cause, one is a particular constraint and the other is a general constraint
The need is never satisfied to the point of perfection so your conclusion of boredom is inappropriate. Whenever we anticipate a point of satisfaction, and that point comes, there are always elements of dissatisfaction remaining, even if related to a different need. Our needs are many and varied so boredom is unnecessary.
Quoting apokrisis
So how does "self organisation", in which a "self" is implied, differ from "ghost in the machine" or avoid a homuncular regress?
The self is the system as a whole. And it is a whole in that all four causes evolve via mutual interaction. They arise within the system itself. Top-down constraints shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And those bottom-up degrees of freedom in turn construct - or rather reconstruct - those prevailing global states of constraint.
Holism is pretty simple once you get your head around the fact it is not the usual unholy mx of reductionism and transcendentalism that folk try to apply to metaphysical questions. The machine and its ghost.
So the question, what creates the system, as a whole? A system cannot create itself, it requires an author.
I think this is the wrong place to ask that question. You have to direct it at the right people.