I will discuss one of the problems about motivation; that is, 'What motivates one to do an action?'. Although motivation may also be an improtant topic in connection with beliefs and thoughts, I will focus on human actions in this paper. It's not difficult to give some candidates for an answer to the question 'What motivates one to do an action?'. The most familiar one is, probably, desire, or some people may think that belief can motivate a person by itself. I, however, want to examine reason for action as the candidate to begin with. For, on one hand, even though it seems obvious that a person who thinks she has a reason for some action is motivated to do the action in question, its adequacy has been argued, especially in ethics; on the other hand, as long as there is a problem whether one must have both desire and belief or just belief in order for her to have a reason for action, it is inevitable to say something about desire and belief with respect to reason for action, anyway. Paying attention to irrationality found in actions, I will consider these things.
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