The Space of Motivations

Abstract

In the Sellarsian idiom, the space of reasons distinguishes rational beings as those invested in the game of giving and asking for reasons as set apart from beings merely susceptible to the space of causes, i.e. the realm of law. In this work I open a path toward perceiving and thinking that human beings characteristically live their lives in the space of motivations, an intelligible realm of perception, thought, and action whereby non-rational, non-causal descriptions and explanations of behavior serve as the primary and legitimating backdrop of those lives. The idea of motivations stems from the underdeveloped notion within the corpus of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In preparing a path toward the space of motivations, I argue for three claims. First, in the philosophy of mind, I argue for what I call the attentionality thesis (chapter 1), which states that the mind is primarily structured by attention in two senses: that consciousness has the capacity for re-direction toward different and multiple intentional objects, and that remaining directed toward an intentional object reveals different qualitative features of that object or mode of comportment. The attentionality thesis, which I draw from Merleau-Ponty's work, broadens the Brentano-Husserl intentionality thesis. I further argue that the attentionality thesis undercuts the distinction in kind between cognitive intentionality and motor intentionality (chapter 2), reveals shared problematic presuppositions of qualia theorists and functionalists (chapter 3), and challenges key concepts in Alva Noë's enactive theory of mind. Second, in light of the attentionality thesis, I diagnose concerns about whether perception is conceptual or nonconceptual, particularly with respect to John McDowell's conceptualism and Hubert Dreyfus's and Sean Kelly's nonconceptualism. I show that considerations of these arguments suggest an impasse between the claims that perception is conceptual, even in motor intentional comportments (chapter 2), and nonconceptual, in light of the fineness of grain argument (chapter 4). This leads to the final claim that the primary way to understand human perception, thought, and action is not via conceptual or nonconceptual considerations, but rather via motivations in the significance they lend (chapter 5).