The literature on motivation, drive, and the forward pressure of life is among the oldest in philosophy and among the most active in the cognitive sciences. The framework engages a series of standing positions by name; each is taken up again at [§8.1.5](<8.1.5 What is Concluded.md>) once the structural account is in view.

*Classical-philosophical accounts of striving.* Spinoza's *conatus* (Spinoza, B., (1677) 1996), III names the striving by which each finite mode perseveres in its being. Schopenhauer's Will (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1818) names the blind cosmic drive he posited beneath every appearance. Nietzsche's will-to-power names life's drive to express and expand itself. Bergson's *élan vital* (Bergson, Henri, 1907) names the forward pressure he located in life as such. Each tradition was reaching for a structural fact the framework now names (the first-person perspective on energy-gradient coupling) but each came with metaphysical baggage the structural account can shed. Whether the *conatus*, the Will, the will-to-power, and the *élan vital* refer to one phenomenon or several remains a live exegetical question; the framework reads them as four angles on the same structural fact and surrenders the substance-talk each tradition wrapped around it.

*The plurality of drives and the order of rank.* Nietzsche presses a sharper claim than the other striving traditions, and one aimed at the framework's own vocabulary: that the word *drive*, taken in the singular, already falsifies the organism. What a living thing is, on his account (Nietzsche, Friedrich, (1886) 2002), §12, §19, §36; (Nietzsche, Friedrich, (1881) 1997), §109, is not one striving but a multiplicity of drives (*Triebe*): hunger, fear, curiosity, the sexual drive, the drive to command, each construing the world from its own angle, each seeking its own discharge, and standing to one another in an *order of rank* (*Rangordnung*): some commanding, some obeying, the configuration shifting as ascending and declining drives gain or lose the upper hand. The unity we call a self is, on this reading, an after-the-fact construction (the temporary expression of whichever drive or coalition currently rules) and will-to-power names not a single appetite but the form the competition among the drives takes. The challenge to any account that speaks of *drive* in the singular is direct: if Nietzsche is right, the singular term names only the surface of a plurality whose real structure is competitive and hierarchical, and the account owes either a defense of the singular or an account of how the plurality is organized. The framework's position is returned at [§8.1.5](<8.1.5 What is Concluded.md>).

*Drive in psychoanalysis.* Freud's libido (Sigmund Freud, 1905); (Sigmund Freud, 1923), in the broad sense of life-energy seeking expression, and the later distinction between Eros and Thanatos (Sigmund Freud, 1920), name the same baseline as Spinoza and Schopenhauer with a different vocabulary. Subsequent psychoanalytic traditions (Klein, Winnicott, Lacan) refined the picture in ways that remain contested both within psychoanalysis and at its interface with empirical psychology. The framework reads Freud's libido as the first-person perspective on the structural forward pressure, accurately tracked under contestable metaphysics.

*Reward, anticipation, and the SEEKING system.* Contemporary affective neuroscience disputes how to carve the territory traditionally called drive. Berridge and Robinson's distinction (Kent C. Berridge; Terry E. Robinson, 1998) between *wanting* and *liking* (anticipatory drive versus consummatory pleasure) reorganized the field, with dopaminergic activation now widely understood as tracking the anticipatory side. Panksepp's SEEKING system (Panksepp, J., 1998) names the mammalian-wide phylogenetically ancient system that drives curiosity, exploration, and pursuit. Whether SEEKING is best understood as one primary emotional system or as a feature of the broader motivational architecture is debated (Joseph E. LeDoux, 2012); (Ralph Adolphs, 2017); the framework reads the SEEKING activation as the substrate side of what the structural account names first-person perspective as drive.

*Optimal-foraging and behavioral-ecology accounts.* The behavioral-ecology literature (David W. Stephens; John R. Krebs, 1986); (Eric L. Charnov, 1976) treats drive operationally as the variable a foraging organism is optimizing, and predicts species-specific behavior from energetic and informational constraints. The accounts are powerful and predictive but largely silent on the first-person perspective. The framework treats them as correct external descriptions whose subjective character is what the structural identification supplies.

*Goal-directedness and teleosemantics.* Millikan (Ruth Garrett Millikan, 1984); (Ruth Garrett Millikan, 1995), Papineau (David Papineau, 1987), and the broader teleosemantic literature locate purpose and goal-directedness in evolutionary function. The framework agrees that evolutionary function explains *what* the drive is for, and adds that the first-person perspective on the functional fact is what drive *is* phenomenologically. The two are not competitors. The *for* at issue is etiological, not Aristotelian: a drive's function is what selection built it to do, a fact about past efficient causes, not a final cause drawing the organism toward an end that does not yet exist. The framework keeps the directedness teleosemantics names while shedding the forward-pulling teleology Spinoza's *conatus* wrapped around it; [§8.1.5](<8.1.5 What is Concluded.md>) returns to the *conatus* on exactly this point.

*Play, surplus, and intrinsic motivation.* Whether play represents excess beyond minimal maintenance or is itself instrumental practice for adult skills remains contested (Bekoff, M., and J. A. Byers, eds., 1998); (Gordon M. Burghardt, 2005); (Sergio Pellis; Vivien Pellis, 2009). The recent bumblebee ball-rolling results (Olli J. Loukola; Clint J. Perry; Louie Coscos; Lars Chittka, 2017); (Lars Chittka, 2022) press the dispute outward into invertebrates whose architectures were not previously thought to support play. The framework reads play as the first-person perspective on energy surplus running outward at the depth where it can register as such, a real phenomenon, present wherever the depth admits it.

*Hedonism and its discontents.* The hedonist tradition (Jeremy Bentham, 1789); contemporary defenders such as (Roger Crisp, 2006) holds that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the fundamental motivational variables. Critics (Nozick's experience machine (Robert Nozick, 1974); Kraut (Richard Kraut, 2007)) argue that what we want is not pleasure as such but engagement with reality. The framework's reading is that pleasure and pain are surface registrations of the deeper structural fact (the first-person perspective on a being's flourishing or failing) and that the hedonist's content-level account picks up the surface accurately while missing what the surface tracks.

*Reductionist eliminativism.* A small but persistent literature (Paul M. Churchland, 1986) argues that folk-psychological talk of *drive*, *desire*, *motivation*, and *will* will be eliminated by a mature cognitive neuroscience. The framework's response, parallel to its response to eliminativism about consciousness ([§7.8.5](<7.8.5 What is Concluded.md>)), is that drive will be identified rather than eliminated: the underlying activity is real, the folk vocabulary tracks something genuine, and the mature description will refine rather than discard it.

The literature on drive divides over the metaphysics of striving, the carve-up of motivational sub-systems, the locus of value in the wanting/liking distinction, the role of play, the adequacy of hedonist accounts, and the eliminative or identifying treatment of folk vocabulary. The framework commits to specific answers on each; they are taken up again at [§8.1.5](<8.1.5 What is Concluded.md>) after the structural account is in view.


---

← [8.1 Drive](<8.1 Drive.md>) | [8.1.2 What is Required](<8.1.2 What is Required.md>) →
