In the evolution of different animals, lethal competition between individuals is replaced by elaborate courtship rituals.
Instead of fighting, there’s dancing or showing off. It’s safer, more cost-efficient, preserves genetic diversity and enables competing individuals to cooperate for the benefit of their species.
For many birds, dancing is part of their form of life. Being such a bird is the situation that sets its dancing behavior. So perhaps not an evaluation of competing motivations? GWT for birds?
Dan Smith in ‘Essays on Deleuze’ consider the similar situation when he hesitates between staying home and going to the tavern. “What, then, is the act of deliberation? At the moment when I am torn between staying home and going out for a drink, the tissue of my soul is in a state of disequilibrium— oscillating between two complex perceptive poles (the tavern and the study), each of which is itself swarming with an infinity of minute perceptions and inclinations. The error of the usual schema of judgment is that, in objectifying my two options—staying home or going out—as if they were weights in a balance, it presumes that they remain the same in front of me, and that the deliberating self likewise remains the same, simply assessing the two options in terms of some sort of decision procedure (my interest, a calculus of probabilities, an assessment of potential consequences, and so on). But this falsifies the nature of deliberation: if neither the options nor the self ever change, how could I ever arrive at a decision? The truth of the matter is that, during the entire time the deliberation is going on, the self is constantly changing, and consequently is modifying the two feelings that are agitating it” (Smith, ‘Essays on Deleuze’, pg. 184) In this framework, there isn’t a consistent, detached self, capable of immediately reflecting on a situation. Rather, a complex unfolding of tendencies constitutes a dynamic process, primarily hidden from our conscious awareness. Once the decision is made, a dynamic unfolding of states is instantly replaced.
There’s nothing binding a drug lord. That’s the whole point of being one.
What do you mean by “binding” because I think we might be using it differently here. By “binding” I mean obligations that an individual finds psychologically compelling, not necessarily ones that are morally or legally binding.
I don’t seem to get this: if the self is continually changing throughout the deliberation, what explains the relative stability of personality across time? Why do individuals exhibit enduring behavioral tendencies rather than appearing psychologically novel with each decision?
An interesting hypothesis. Could you express it analytically?
I’d also like to share some information and see how it works in practice.
It concerns extreme conditions of human survival. In particular, I recently finished reading a book about Stalin’s repressions and survival in a camp in Kolyma.
Here’s a summary of the author’s ideas. He wrote fiction, not strict philosophy.
Could you use your model as an example to demonstrate how motivation works in such conditions?
Many of our motivations and our capacities for reason are evolved.
They do therefore appear purposeful and they conform to an architecture
As your schema is broadly naturalistic I think you should explore this more fully.
You may feel you have escaped this by virtue of your pluralist approach. I would be sceptical about that. Evolution is to quote its foremost philososphical proponent a universal acid.
So we have a tripartite structure a. survival, b. social being and c.mind
I suggest that the purposive features of b and c are features of emergent phenonena, social being produces culture and culture produces mind.
This does not necessarily imply a hierachy, precedent does not imply privalege.
Perhaps, however when stressed we descend the ladder, moving from concern about virtue and elegance to concern about survival.
My insight, if I have any, is that as Epicurus would say all pleasures are the same. The same lessons apply whether we are eating good food, cultivating friemdship or enjoying the garden. Do not chase pleasure that is unobtainable or brings with it disturbance. We are happiest when we fear least the pleasures that we may miss.
Well, much appreciated, Johnny. You’ve raised an important distinction between the evolutionary origins of motivational systems and their functional organization. My present concern is primarily the latter: my hypothesis tries to explain how competing motivations are organized and prioritized once they exist, rather than how evolution produced them. I do, however, agree that any sufficiently naturalistic account should eventually engage with evolutionary explanations.
Your point about stress is interesting too, though rather than viewing stress as causing us to descend a fixed hierarchy my inclination is slightly different. I’d suggest it alters the relative weighting of competing motivations. Self-preservation often becomes more influential under extreme conditions, but from what I’m currently reading about in Shalamov’s observations in the Kolyma camps, the picture appears more complex. From his observations, I suggest that duty and meaning sometimes continue to prevail even then (well, from what I’ve read so far), and that variability is precisely what I’m trying to understand.
One should not consider the account of a self that continuously changes during deliberation as the sole explanation. Otherwise, it would directly oppose the basic empirical finding of lasting behavioral tendencies. Our drives and impulses are intrinsically linked to our social environment. Socially conditioned investments essentially sustain even highly rational involvements. Shawn Gallagher notes: “Cognitive studies of decision-making show that even if one seems to be engaged in solitary mental reflection, decision-making is really a matter of embodied, emotion-rich, environmentally modulated processes. Even if we are trained as hard-nosed rationalist philosophers, or no-nonsense business executives, or data-driven scientists, research has shown that our decisions are influenced by various institutional practices. Sometimes the effects are unintentional and are accidental features of the institutional environment; sometimes they are the result of an institution’s strategic planning. Examples can be found almost everywhere.”(Gallagher, ‘Action and interaction’, pg. 224) The structural infrastructure of social practices often induces one to follow narrowed and predetermined behavioural patterns.
I think this moves even closer to the distinction I am trying to make. I agree that social conditioning can produce remarkably stable behavioral tendencies, but do institutions and society prescribe behavior directly, or do they shape how more fundamental systems are interpreted and weighted? The latter is closer to the direction I am currently exploring, where social conditioning functions as a modifier of motivational competition rather than as an independent motivational system.
If you have time you can check out this( reflectivenomad.github.io ) may it’ll help put accross my idea better than I currently am. Just check out the working Papers the rest are unfinished drafts.
It is an interesting paper. However, despite your abstract approach, the problem you are addressing seems to go beyond the scope of how you have defined it. So there are options to reframe it using philosophical ideas about free will or to reformulate it in terms of embodied/enacted theories of cognition and behaviour. Or, one could shift the focus from the philosophical dilemma of the will to the dynamic interplay between ‘primary motivational systems’ and ‘secondary modifying systems,’ as you have defined them. The interaction seems unlikely to be an outcome of systems that were already in place independently, while the hierarchy still presupposes an ultimate dichotomy.
Thanks, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit actually. The primary/secondary distinction was meant to be functional rather than separate psychological systems, though I probably didn’t make that clear enough. Where my thinking has changed, though, is around hierarchy; I’m becoming more interested in whether stable behavior can emerge from changing motivational weighting rather than a permanent ordering of motives.
