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Show Chapter II. The Belief-Desire Model of Motivation 72 This representational analysis of aversion is not exactly the converse of the representational analysis of desire, because aversion, on this account, is not simply a negative desire, i.e. a desire not to have something that someone else might have a desire for. An aversion is a complex emotion that also includes substantive spontaneous feelings - of distaste, of feeling revolted or oversensitive or invaded relative to the object, for example - that respond to the thought or representation of the object. They then in turn generate further feelings in response to the thought of actually realizing the object, and a subsequent desire to rid oneself of it. So the representational analysis of aversion embeds such a desire in (e'-g). But this subsequent desire is only one part of an aversion. It is not equivalent to it. Aversion also includes quite distinctive and visceral feelings of sensory overload, oversatiation, discomfort, and anxiety. On this revision of the Humean motivational model, the desire embedded in aversion is still the only source of effective motivation to action. But its prior or concomitant feelings may nevertheless cause spontaneous expressions of aversion, such as feeling nauseous, breaking into a cold sweat, heart palpitations, aggression, flight, or other instinctive behavior. It is the threat to one's sense of wholeness and sufficiency that motivates the desire for the eradication of O, not simply the experience of overload an sich. Like desire, aversion on the representational analysis is inherently selfreflective. It involves representations of and beliefs about oneself as sufficient relative to O, and so beliefs about what will threaten or overwhelm and therefore destroy one's sufficiency. An aversive object is one that one represents to oneself as invasive, i.e. as violating the boundaries of one's self, as intruding into one's self where no interior psychological space has been made for it. An invasive object is one that by definition causes pain or discomfort. To perceive the world through the lens of those desires embedded in aversions is to perceive oneself as wanting in control over one's environment; as unable to vanquish attacks on one's sense of wholeness; as invaded, fragmented, and overwhelmed by alien external objects which the interior psychological space of the self is too limited, fragile, or crowded to accommodate. So, like desire, an aversion includes negative beliefs about oneself: as powerless, fragile and permeable; as well as negative beliefs about the world as overwhelming, threatening, and invasive. This part of the Humean conception of the self thus supplements and underwrites that according to which the self is defined and constituted by its self-perceived deficiencies. Desires and aversions conjointly create a mutually interlocking and mutually supportive set of assumptions about oneself as constitutionally deficient in various respects; and about the external world as correspondingly resource-abundant in some respects and threatening and overwhelming in others. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
