Agency in its many guises
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation defends a contextualist approach to the problem of human agency. Its central thesis is that human behaviors are conferred agential status in the context of specific social practices, and, consequently, that the standards in virtue of which agency ascriptions are made exhibit practice-dependent variation. Qua status conferrals, agency ascriptions take the form of tacit or explicit modalities of interpersonal regard that sanction agents' behavioral interventions as adequate to sustain a specific shared practice. As such, I contend, substantive conceptions of value that animate these forms of interpersonal recognition become inextricably linked to our understandings of agency. In developing this view I am arguing against what is nowadays the mainstream approach in the field of action theory. This approach assumes that the nature of agency can be illumined by specifying forms of psychological structuring that ensure human agents' active participation in their thought and behavior. I argue that the theories deploying this approach are wrongheaded insofar they attempt to account for human agency by extricating the putatively relevant psychological capacities constitutive of it from the values-imbued human ways of life that make possible their individuation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Papadopol, Alma |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy |
| Primary advisor | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Hills, David James, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Anderson, R. Lanier |
| Thesis advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
| Advisor | Anderson, R. Lanier |
| Advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alma Papadopol. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2012 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Alma Papadopol
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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