motivational explanation a type of explanation of goal-directed behavior where the explanans appeals to the motives of the agent. The explanation usually is in the following form: Smith swam hard in order to win the race. Here the description of what Smith did identifies the behavior to be explained, and the phrase that follows ‘in order to’ identifies the goal or the state of affairs the obtaining of which was the moving force behind the behavior. The general presumption is that the agent whose behavior is being explained is capable of deliberating and acting on the decisions reached as a result of the deliberation. Thus, it is dubious whether the explanation contained in ‘The plant turned toward the sun in order to receive more light’ is a motivational explanation.
Two problems are thought to surround motivational explanations. First, since the state of affairs set as the goal is, at the time of the action, non-existent, it can only act as the ‘moving force’ by appearing as the intentional object of an inner psychological state of the agent. Thus, motives are generally desires for specific objects or states of affairs on which the agent acts. So motivational explanation is basically the type of explanation provided in folk psychology, and as such it inherits all the alleged problems of the latter. And second, what counts as a motive for an action under one description usually fails to be a motive for the same action under a different description. My motive for saying ‘hello’ may have been my desire to answer the phone, but my motive for saying ‘hello’ loudly was to express my irritation at the person calling me so late at night. See also ACTION THEORY, EXPLANATION, FOLK PSYCHOLOGY , PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. B.E.