Orchestrating the Powers of the Will: Understanding Motivation Enhancement Through Higher and Lower Order Volitions

摘要

What happens when you take a prescription medication and you suddenly feel more motivated to go to work? In the multifaceted debate about enhancement interventions there has been investigation of the neurological effects of the drugs, of the effects as perceived by the users (Ilieva, Boland, and Farah 2013; Repantis et al. 2010), and of the ethical and social dimensions (Parens 1998). Kjaersgaard (2015) raises awareness of the ethical issues involved in usage of prescription drugs for motivation enhancement purposes, such as alienation~1 and the value of effort. However, a conceptual basis for a thorough ethical analysis of motivation enhancing drugs is still lacking. We offer a framework that arranges human willpower in a.hierarchical structure of higher and lower orders, and thereby helps to disentangle the ethical issues. But before explaining this framework, we step back one moment to clarify some conceptual prerequisites of motivation enhancement itself, as they have not yet gained sufficient attention.