From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 20:24:34 MDT
The long-suffering and patient readers of the thread,
"Psych/Philo: Brains want to cooperate" have doubtless
been hoping that either gts or Lee would by accident
stumble upon some issue of substance, rather than
endlessly debating the meanings of certain words, but
it is not meant to be, hence the new thread title.
Be that as it may, I hasten to assure such patient
readers of the *utmost* importance to Extropianism
to nail down precisely whether the concept of
"motivation" is to be extended to every molecular
motion constituting a human being or not; if we don't
know what our motives are, then where are we? nay, not
only is it of crucial importance to all Extropian
thought past, present, and future, but (though perhaps
a slight exaggeration) of singular importance to all
humanity!
Onward.
gts writes
> Lee [wrote]
>
> > The usual sorts of things done unconsciously
> > (like crossing your legs or knotting your brow)
> > one does not speak of having a motive for.
>
> Okay, but the axiom I proffered was this:
>
> "Every human behavior has a motivation."
>
> Apparently you thought I meant this:
>
> "Every human behavior has a motivation, and every human is conscious of
> his motivation for each behavior and is capable of speaking about it."
No. I never claimed that all motives *had* to be conscious.
Typically, they are, however, hence the common term "unconscious
motivation", because, of course, almost all the time they *are*
conscious. (Except when employed by you.)
I'm just asserting that there should be a link between
"motive" and "motivation". You admit above that we should
not speak of "having a motive" for crossing one's legs (unless
the circumstances are exceptional, of course). Therefore,
it's incorrect to say that crossing one's legs has a
motivation.
>> Now I'm sure that we would agree that it would
>> be incorrect to say that my heart beats because
>> I'm motivated to get blood to all my organs.
> No, I don't agree. That statement is correct. You beat your heart
> because you are motivated to move blood to your organs.
My statement was correct, and your new statement is
incorrect: you have to admit that if you made your
statement to a number of people at large, they would
look at you funny, and then (were they articulate
enough) say that you were using the word in a peculiar
way. Is a small baby motivated to move blood through
its organs? The key here is that you are using an
unwieldy and unfamiliar extension of what is meant
by "you", in order to bolster your unfamiliar extension
of what is meant by "motivation".
> You want to insert the words "consciously" into my axiom.
> But that word is not present. As I stated at the outset,
> some motivations are unconscious. You are battling a straw-man.
Am not! :)
Here is how terminological disputes can sometimes be settled:
try expressing *exactly* the same thing without using the
offending word.
> My axiom is: "Every human behavior has a motivation."
I think you mean something closer to "explanation" or
"reason". Can you think of two equivalent ways of saying
what you want to say (even if they are each several
sentences) without using the m-word?
For the amazingly patient reader who has followed us even
all the way down to this point, here is the reason that
debating the meaning of words is sometimes important: some
words, e.g. "murder" (and "motivation"), carry important
semantic links that *cannot* be ignored.
Thus, a pro-choice advocate cannot allow an anti-abortionist
to get away with "abortion is murder", because if you do,
then it almost immediately follows that abortion is wrong.
(It's how our minds work.)
Lee
P.S. My second paragraph above, of course, was written in
an ironical tone to have fun with any accusations that we
might be off-topic or picking nits.
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