Author: Erasmus Mayr Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191619264 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Our self-understanding as human agents includes a commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: that agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order of the universe, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent's reasons for acting. While all of these claims are indispensable elements of our view of ourselves as human agents, they are in continuous conflict and tension with one another, especially once one adopts the currently predominant view of what the natural order must be like. One of the central tasks of philosophy of action consists in showing how, despite appearances, these conflicts can be resolved and our self-understanding as agents be vindicated. The mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action holds that this task can only be fulfilled by an event-causal reductive view of human agency, paradigmatically embodied in the so-called 'standard model' developed by Donald Davidson. Erasmus Mayr, in contrast, develops a new agent-causal solution to these conflicts and shows why this solution is superior both to event-causalist accounts and to Von Wright's intentionalism about agency. He offers a comprehensive theory of substance-causation on the basis of a realist conception of powers, which allows one to see how the widespread rejection of agent-causation rests on an unfounded 'Humean' view of nature and of causal processes. At the same time, Mayr addresses the question of the nature of reasons for acting and complements its substance-causal account of activity with a non-causal account of acting for reasons in terms of following a standard of success.
Author: Erasmus Mayr Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0199606218 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
How can we be active agents when processes in the world are explicable by the laws of natural science? Erasmus Mayr explores this deep-running tension in our self-understanding and develops a new agent-causal solution to the conflict. He argues that actions explained by aims and reasons are compatible with a scientific view of the universe.
Author: Barry Barnes Publisher: SAGE ISBN: 9780761963684 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 182
Book Description
In this penetrating and assured book, one of the leading commentators in the field argues that social theory is moving in the wrong direction in its reflections on human freedom and autonomy. It has borrowed notions of 'agency' and 'choice' from everyday discourse, but increasingly it puts a misconceived individualistic gloss upon them. Against this, Barnes unequivocally identifies human beings as social agents in a profound sense, and emphasises the vital importance of their sociability. Notions of 'agency', 'freedom' and 'choice' have to be understood by reference to their role in communicative interaction; they are key components of the discourse through which human beings identify each other, and have effects upon each other, as soci
Author: Eleanor Harrison-Buck Publisher: University Press of Colorado ISBN: 1607327473 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology explores the benefits and consequences of archaeological theorizing on and interpretation of the social agency of nonhumans as relational beings capable of producing change in the world. The volume cross-examines traditional understanding of agency and personhood, presenting a globally diverse set of case studies that cover a range of cultural, geographical, and historical contexts. Agency (the ability to act) and personhood (the reciprocal qualities of relational beings) have traditionally been strictly assigned to humans. In case studies from Ghana to Australia to the British Isles and Mesoamerica, contributors to this volume demonstrate that objects, animals, locations, and other nonhuman actors also potentially share this ontological status and are capable of instigating events and enacting change. This kind of other-than-human agency is not a one-way transaction of cause to effect but requires an appropriate form of reciprocal engagement indicative of relational personhood, which in these cases, left material traces detectable in the archaeological record. Modern dualist ontologies separating objects from subjects and the animate from the inanimate obscure our understanding of the roles that other-than-human agents played in past societies. Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology challenges this essentialist binary perspective. Contributors in this volume show that intersubjective (inherently social) ways of being are a fundamental and indispensable condition of all personhood and move the debate in posthumanist scholarship beyond the polarizing dichotomies of relational versus bounded types of persons. In this way, the book makes a significant contribution to theory and interpretation of personhood and other-than-human agency in archaeology. Contributors: Susan M. Alt, Joanna Brück, Kaitlyn Chandler, Erica Hill, Meghan C. L. Howey, Andrew Meirion Jones, Matthew Looper, Ian J. McNiven, Wendi Field Murray, Timothy R. Pauketat, Ann B. Stahl, Maria Nieves Zedeño
Author: Davood Gozli Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3030204227 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
This book offers an analysis of experimental psychology that is embedded in a general understanding of human behavior. It provides methodological self-awareness for researchers who study and use the experimental method in psychology. The book critically reviews key research areas (e.g., rule-breaking, sense of agency, free choice, task switching, task sharing, and mind wandering), examining their scope, limits, ambiguities, and implicit theoretical commitments. Topics featured in this text include: Methods of critique in experimental research Goal hierarchies and organization of a task Rule-following and rule-breaking behavior Sense of agency Free-choice tasks Mind wandering Experimental Psychology and Human Agency will be of interest to researchers and undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology, as well as various philosophical disciplines.
Author: Hans Herbert Kogler Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429980469 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
A crucial debate currently raging in the fields of cognitive and social science centers around general and specific approaches to understanding the actions of others. When we understand the actions of another person, do we do so on the basis of a general theory of psychology, or on the basis of an effort to place ourselves in the particular position of that specific person? Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten R. Stueber's Empathy and Agency addresses this other issues vital to current social science in an advanced and diverse analysis of the foundations of social-scientific methodology based on recent cognitive psychology. The book serves as both an introduction to the debate for non-academic audiences and as a catalyst for further discussion for serious theorists. Empathy and Agency provides a solid foundation of the fundamental issues in social and cognitive science, but also presents the most influential paradigms in the field at this time.
Author: Dr. Michael Goller Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3658182865 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 391
Book Description
Michael Goller gives a structured overview of the current discourses of human agency in relation to professional learning and development. Based on this discussion, the author develops a theoretical framework including human agency as an individual feature (i. e., a disposition) as well as a set of self-initiated and goal-directed behaviours that are assumed to affect employees’ learning and development (e. g., crafting of new work experiences). He then further specifies this theoretical framework and investigates it empirically in the domain of geriatric care nursing. Based on the findings of the three empirical studies conducted, the author discusses the relevance of human agency for the development of professional expertise of geriatric care nurses. The work received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Workplace Learning SIG 2017 Dissertation of the Year Award.
Author: Erasmus Mayr
Author: Erasmus Mayr
Author: Erasmus Mayr
Author: 
Author: Barry Barnes
Author: Eleanor Harrison-Buck
Author: Davood Gozli
Author: Hans Herbert Kogler
Author: Ionuţ Epurescu-Pascovici
Author: Dr. Michael Goller