Agency (philosophy)

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Wikipedia

Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. In some contexts, the exercise of agency is linked to questions of moral responsibility, and may pertain to questions of moral agency.[1][2][3]

Agency may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action).[citation needed] An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing.[citation needed] In 'goal directed action' an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior.[4]

Human agency

Human agency entails the claim that humans make decisions and enact them on the world, independent of whether it is deterministically or through free will.[5][6][7][8][9][10] This is in contrast with objects reacting to natural forces, devoid of any thinking capacity.[11][12] In this respect, agency does not necessitate free will.[13][14][15][16][17]

In philosophy

The philosophical discipline in charge of studying agency is action theory. In certain philosophical traditions (particularly those established by Hegel and Marx), human agency is a collective, historical dynamic, rather than a function arising out of individual behavior. Hegel's Geist and Marx's universal class are idealist and materialist expressions of this idea of humans treated as social beings, organized to act in concert. There is ongoing debate, philosophically derived in part from the works of Hume, between determinism and indeterminacy.

Structure and agency forms an enduring core debate in sociology. Essentially the same as in the Marxist conception, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices, based on their will, whereas "structure" refers to those factors (such as social class, but also religion, gender, ethnicity, subculture, etc.) that seem to limit or influence the opportunities that individuals have.

In sociology

Within sociology, agency occurs when an agent engages with the social structure.[18][19] The primacy of the social structure vs. individual capacity regarding an agent's actions is debated within sociology.[18][19][20][21] This debate includes influence of reflexivity on an agent's actions.[21]

In economics

Economics stresses the purposive action of economic agents, who act to advance their subjective well-being given fundamental constraints. Thus, economic models typically begin with "an agent" maximizing some objective. In contract theory, economics also addresses the problem of agents who represent another party (the principal) potentially unfaithfully.

In psychology

The term of agency used in different fields of psychology with different meaning. It can refer to the ability of recognizing agents or attributing agency to objects based on simple perceptual cues or principles, for instance the principle of rationality,[22][23] which holds that context-sensitive, goal-directed efficient actions are the crucial characteristics of agents. This topic is thoroughly investigated by developmental and comparative psychologists to understand how an observer is able to differentiate agentive entities from inanimate objects, but it can be also related to the term of autonomous intelligent agency used in cybernetics. Agency can also imply the sense of agency, that is the feeling of ownership of control.

Emergent interactive agency defines Bandura's view of agencies, where human agency can be exercised through direct personal agency.[24] Bandura formulates his view of agency as a socio-cognitive one, where people are self-organizing, proactive, self-regulating, and engage in self-reflection, and are not just reactive organisms shaped and shepherded by external events. People have the power to influence their own actions to produce certain results. The capacity to exercise control over one’s thought processes, motivation, affect, and action operates through mechanisms of personal agency. Such agencies are emergent and interactive, apply perspectives of social cognition, and make causal contributions to its own motivations and actions using ‘reciprocal causation’.[25]

In social cybernetics

Autonomous agency is able to embrace the concepts of both the economic agency and the emergent interactive agency. An autonomous system is self-directed, operating in, and being influenced by, interactive environments. It usually has its own immanent dynamics that impact on the way it interacts. It is also adaptable and (hence viable thus having a durable existence), proactive, self-organizing, self-regulating and so forth, participates in creating its own behavior, and contributes to its life circumstances through cognitive and cultural functionality. Autonomous agency may also be concerned with the relationship between two or more agencies in a mutual relationship with each other and their environments, with imperatives for an agency's behavior within an interactive context due to immanent emergent attributes.[26]

In political economy

Human agency refers to the ability to shape one’s life and a few dimensions can be differentiated. Individual agency is reflected in individual choices and the ability to influence one’s life conditions and chances. The individual agency differs strongly within the society across age, gender, income, education, personal health status, position in social networks, and other dimensions. Collective agency refers to situations in which individuals pool their knowledge, skills, and resources, and act in concert to shape their future. Everyday agency refers to consumer and daily choices, and finally strategic agency refers to the capacity to affect the wider system change. Political economy approaches can be used to conceptualize the agency enabling or limiting rule system, which constitutes the “grammar” for social action and that is used by the actors to structure and regulate their transactions with one another in defined situations or spheres of activity.[27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sugarman, Jeff (2005-12-01). "Persons and Moral Agency". Theory & Psychology. 15 (6): 793–811. doi:10.1177/0959354305059333. ISSN 0959-3543.
  2. ↑ Shapiro, Paul (2006-10-01). "Moral Agency in Other Animals". Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. 27 (4): 357–373. doi:10.1007/s11017-006-9010-0. ISSN 1573-1200. PMID 16906349.
  3. ↑ Parthemore, Joel; Whitby, Blay (2013). "What makes any agent a moral agent? reflections on machine consciousness and moral agency". International Journal of Machine Consciousness. 05 (2): 105–129. doi:10.1142/S1793843013500017. ISSN 1793-8430.
  4. ↑ Wilson, George; Shpall, Samuel (4 April 2012). "Action". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  5. ↑ Watson, Gary (1987). "Free Action and Free Will". Mind. 96 (382): 145–172. doi:10.1093/mind/XCVI.382.145. ISSN 0026-4423. JSTOR 2255145.
  6. ↑ Frankfurt, Harry G. (1969). "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility". The Journal of Philosophy. 66 (23): 829–839. doi:10.2307/2023833. ISSN 0022-362X. JSTOR 2023833.
  7. ↑ Van Inwagen, Peter (1975). "The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism". Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition. 27 (3): 185–199. doi:10.1007/BF01624156. ISSN 0031-8116. JSTOR 4318929.
  8. ↑ McCall, Storrs (1985). "Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford1983)". Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 15 (4): 663–680. doi:10.1080/00455091.1985.10715883. ISSN 0045-5091.
  9. ↑ Feldman, Gilad (2017). "Making sense of agency: Belief in free will as a unique and important construct". Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 11 (1) e12293. doi:10.1111/spc3.12293. ISSN 1751-9004.
  10. ↑ Lavazza, Andrea (2016-06-01). "Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 10: 262. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00262. ISSN 1662-5161. PMC 4887467. PMID 27313524.
  11. ↑ Dennett, D. C. (1971). "Intentional Systems". The Journal of Philosophy. 68 (4): 87–106. doi:10.2307/2025382. ISSN 0022-362X. JSTOR 2025382.
  12. ↑ Maturana, Humberto R.; Varela, Francisco J. (1980). "Autopoiesis and Cognition". Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. 42. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-8947-4. ISBN 978-90-277-1016-1. ISSN 0068-0346.
  13. ↑ Hornsby, Jennifer (1980). Actions. International library of philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7100-0452-9.
  14. ↑ Velleman, J. David; Bratman, Michael E. (1991). "Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason". The Philosophical Review. 100 (2): 277. doi:10.2307/2185304. JSTOR 2185304.
  15. ↑ Mele, Alfred R. (1997). "Agency and Mental Action". Philosophical Perspectives. 11: 231–249. ISSN 1520-8583. JSTOR 2216132.
  16. ↑ Gallagher, Shaun (2007). "The Natural Philosophy of Agency". Philosophy Compass. 2 (2): 347–357. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00067.x. ISSN 1747-9991.
  17. ↑ Clark, Andy (2013). "Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 36 (3): 181–204. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12000477. ISSN 0140-525X.
  18. 1 2 Emirbayer, Mustafa; Mische, Ann (1998). "What Is Agency?". American Journal of Sociology. 103 (4): 962–1023. doi:10.1086/231294. ISSN 0002-9602 – via JSTOR.
  19. 1 2 Burkitt, Ian (2016-08-01). "Relational agency: Relational sociology, agency and interaction". European Journal of Social Theory. 19 (3): 322–339. doi:10.1177/1368431015591426. ISSN 1368-4310.
  20. ↑ Bourdieu, Pierre; Bourdieu, Pierre (2002). Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (11. print ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-674-21277-0.
  21. 1 2 Caetano, Ana (2019). "Designing social action: The impact of reflexivity on practice". Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 49 (2): 146–160. doi:10.1111/jtsb.12196. ISSN 1468-5914.
  22. ↑ Gergely, György; Nádasdy, Zoltán; Csibra, Gergely; Bíró, Szilvia (1995). "Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age". Cognition. 56 (2): 165–193. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)00661-h. ISSN 0010-0277. PMID 7554793. S2CID 4973766.
  23. ↑ Gergely, György; Csibra, Gergely (2003). "Teleological reasoning in infancy: the naı̈ve theory of rational action". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7 (7): 287–292. doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(03)00128-1. ISSN 1364-6613. PMID 12860186. S2CID 5897671.
  24. ↑ Bandura, A. (1999). "Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective" (PDF). Asian Journal of Social Psychology. 2: 21–41. doi:10.1111/1467-839X.00024. PMID 11148297. S2CID 11573665. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  25. ↑ Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Bormann, 1996
  26. ↑ Guo, K.J., Yolles, M., Fink, G., Iles, P., 2016, The Changing Organisation: Agency Theory in a Cross-cultural Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  27. ↑ Otto, Ilona M. (January 2020). "Human Agency in the Anthropocene". Ecological Economics. 167 106463. Bibcode:2020EcoEc.16706463O. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106463.

Further reading