Motivation for acting

When we talk about what people do, especially in the third person, we tend to treat actions as the products of a unified decision-making machine that is supposedly what the human body is. In reality, our lives and our actions are more complicated than this.

Actions are the product of what is called in artificial intelligence a value system. Basically a value system is a system that makes use of a network of action concepts and places value on them, in many cases the value is contingent on a certain place and time. A primitive value system might make use of the concepts of hungry/full and get something to eat/rest, linking these up in a way that leads the creature to go and get food when its hungry and rest when it's not.

Human beings are complex creatures, but we too have value systems like the simple one described above. The difference between us and a simple creature is that we have several value systems existing side by side which compete with each other. At certain time, certain conditions may lead to a certain value system being given precedence over others, and with changing conditions through time, this may change, leading to a different value system to assume control. The experiential product of this is our continual feelings of ambivalence about whatever activity we're pursuing. When we sit down to study for a test, the value system that values scholarly achievement has taken control, and is pushing other value systems (such as the "have sex" system into submission.

The description above was meant to illustrate what I mean by coexisting value systems, and it overlooks a few things. First of all, the value systems in our lives are not completely discrete. Different value systems work together in such a way that the activities that are pursued under the guidance of one value system may be rationalized by another (if they initially produce conflict with the goals of that second value system). In some cases, of course, two value systems maybe be unable to resolve their differences and one will eventually be pushed completely into submission.

The focus of this post is not on these intricate interrelationships, but on the broad fact that we are subject (in our daily pursuit of activities) to guidance from an array of different value systems. When trying to understand another persons actions, it is therefore incorrect to try to create a unified schema for why they act as they do. Instead, it is beneficial to try to understand another's actions as the product of several competing value systems.