Abstract
Dissatisfaction with drive theory has been building since the 1950s, such that most contemporary motivation theorists maintain that it should be rejected in favour of a cognitive approach to motivation. The cognitive approach has two major objections to drive theory. The first is the philosophical objection that drive theory cannot accommodate the causal role of higher mental processes, that is, it cannot explain behaviour produced by such things as reason, forethought, intention and choice. However, the teleological alternative postulated by cognitive theorists is grounded in an incoherent dualism which precludes an acceptable account of mental causation. In contrast, a coherent determinist theory of the role of cognition in behaviour can be developed via: (i) a relational view of mind, which includes the drives as the knowers, thereby preserving the reality of the mental while re-embodying it and re-locating it in the one spatiatemporal realm; and (ii) a conception of causation which shows that cognit(ve relations can, contrary to the widespread "locality assumption", function as causes of behaviour. The second objection to drive theory is based on experimental observations that organisms engage in or seek activity even when their drives are apparently satisfied. However, it is argued that the perceptual-cognitive apparatus operates in the service of biological drives such that a drive's being satisfied does not render it thereby inoperative. Drive theory, properly understood, is the only coherent, comprehensive theory of motivation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Realism and Psychology: Collected Essays |
| Editors | Nigel Mackay, Agnes Agnes Petocz |
| Place of Publication | Netherlands |
| Publisher | Brill |
| Pages | 839-871 |
| Number of pages | 33 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9789004188877 |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |