you do need to read some more before you think. try touching upon many areas like cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, connectionist networks, etc.

as for motivation, i have a couple things to add. when you withdraw your hand from a hot surface or run away from something scary, these are biologically hardwired "motivations". certain parts of the brain deal with these stimuli very fast so that you don't do the normal "thinking process" to decide what to do.

usually when i think of motivation i think about why i decide to go eat at a certain place, or why i decide to study something, or why i play sports, etc. there are several kinds of motivations here... 1) some activity is associated with "fun" or "goodness" in memory so i decide to participate in that activity. 2) some activity is associated with eventually leading to "fun" or "goodness" in memory. Like i study in college because i think eventually i will be able to use the knowledge i learn here to have fun doing research or something. I think there really isn't much of a fine distinction between type 1) and type 2). In terms of how these associations are coded in the brain, I think they are the same, just different in degree.

ok now lets assume that motivation is something to do with association with a general idea of "goodness" in long term memory, and this is why i am motivated to do something. this makes sense because i'm sure some people are motivated to do things that are associated with "badness" because of their inner guilt or whatever. So i'm pretty sure there must be a conceptual bridge between the memory or concept of an action (soccer) and the actual decision to do that action (go play soccer), and this is the concept of "goodness" (soccer is fun). and to recapitulate, because one is capable of deciding to do things that are "bad" and "unfun", the mechanism that decides to perform an action associated with "goodness" must not be mechanical but "conscious" in the sense that other processes can influence this behavior.

is a single general concept of "goodness" good enough? or do people develop multiple concepts of "goodness", for example "goodness for leisure" vs "goodness for work", "secondary goodness i don't need" vs "goodness i need"? I don't know. Is there a concept of "badness" in the brain, or does it matter? maybe the concept of "badness" isn't necessary because everything is just a degree of "goodness".

Also what about actions that may be associated with both goodness and badness? take for example stealing. I could enjoy the action and results of stealing but something also tells me its wrong, and that if i get caught i can get in trouble. what would motivate me to steal things? what are the computations involved in this kind of decision? I don't know. but i have a hint, which is that the only thing preventing me from stealing something right now, is an image of getting caught, and i think "bad bad bad...". 1) my motivation to steal something is suppressed by the negative associations or 2) i find that my present state, sitting in front of this computer is "good" compared to the image of myself after getting caught stealing, so i choose the better action, which in this case is inaction. I think the second case (2) is more correct and reflects the processing that happens in my head.

One more thing i want to note: I dont remember actually thinking "hey, its better that i don't steal, its better to just sit here than go out and steal something". maybe this is because this sort of comparison happens so often that 1) it no longer registers in my memory because i don't need to remember this process, it is fairly automatic and conscious recall is not necessary or 2) this explicit comparison actually does not occur, rather i have developed a shortcut that is more like (1) from the previous paragraph.

I just want to conclude by saying that i think in terms of how the brain works, there is no fine distinction between these possible explanations, which is usually the case with neural "wetware". And in terms of AI, i don't think such fuzziness is necessary, but i think it makes for a faster and more adaptable system if AI were encoded more like the brain.