Contingent Creatures: A Reward Event Theory of Motivation and ValueWhat motivates behavior? What are the qualities of experience which make life worth living? Taking a new interdisciplinary approach, Morillo advances the theory that pleasure--interpreted as a distinct, separable, noncognitive quality of experience--is essential for all positive motivation and is the only intrinsic, nonmoral good in the lives of human beings and many other sentient creatures. Morillo supports her arguments with recent neuropsychological evidence concerning the role of reward centers in the brain and philosophical arguments for a naturalistic theory of value and the good life. Contingent Creatures will interest philosophers, psychologists, and neurobiologists. |
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action activity amphetamine anhedonia argue associated behavior belief biological brain brain events Brandt causal role cause claim cognitive concept conditioning conscious experience constituted constraints contingently connected creature dependent distinct dopamine eating emotions emphasize empirical epiphenomenal ethical evidence Experience Machine explanation external goals externalist focus focused functional Gibbard human hunger intentional content intentional object interpretation intrinsic property intrinsic quality intrinsic value intrinsically motivating intrinsically positive introspective issue learning limbic system lives mechanisms monism moral Moral Realism naturalistic fallacy naturalistic theory negative hedonic tone neurological noncognitive normative object of desire pain phenomena philosophical plausible play positive affect positive hedonic tone possible preference psychological egoism psychological hedonism psychological theory quality of experience question rational reasons reinforcement relational property relational-property theory relevant Reward Event Systems Reward Event Theory sense specific Stellar and Stellar theoretical theory of intrinsic theory of motivation theory of value ultimate Wise and Bozarth