Motivation is the experience of desire or aversion (you want something, or want to avoid or escape something). As such, motivation has both an objective aspect (a goal or thing you aspire to) and an internal or subjective aspect (it is you that wants the thing or wants it to go away).
At minimum, motivation requires the biological substrate for physical sensations of pleasure and pain; animals can thus want or disdain specific objects based on sense perception and experience. Motivation goes on to include the capacity to form concepts and to reason, which allows humans to be able to surpass this minimum state, with a much greater possible range of desires and aversions. This much greater range is supported by the ability to choose one's own goals and values, combined with "time horizons" for value achievement that can perhaps encompass years, decades, or longer, and the ability to re-experience past events.[1]
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