The Content of Originally Intrinsic Desires and of Intrinsic Motivation

: (1) Originally intrinsic desires are motivational intrinsic desires for those aims for which the subject has no further reason and, since one may have forgotten the reason, never had any reason. (2) The most familiar and important hypothesis about these desires is psychological hedonism. Some examples of the strong explanatory force of psychological hedonism are given. (3) But there are originally intrinsic desires beyond hedonic ones, namely feeling-induced desires, especially emotion-induced desires, e. g. when in a rage the desire to destroy or hurt the "aggressor". The origins and mechanisms of such desires are expounded and their irreducability to hedonic desires is shown. (4) A comparison with other theories shows the progress being made by this approach. (5) Being instable over time feeling-induced motives are not apt as a basis for rational utility functions.