Normativity, I believe, is very different from motivating force. Neither includes, or implies, the other. Other animals can be motivated by their desires and beliefs. Only we can understand and respond to reasons.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the unique capacity of humans to understand and act upon reasons, distinguishing us from other animals who are driven solely by desires.
Derek Parfit highlights the distinction between normative considerations and motivational factors. While both humans and other animals can be driven by their desires and beliefs, humans have the unique ability to comprehend and react to reasons. This ability to understand norms and reasons is what sets human motivation apart from that of other species and reflects our capacity for rational thought and moral reflection.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the differences between human and animal cognition.
Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.
Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad.
We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot.
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.
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