Agency (philosophy)

About: Agency (philosophy) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10461 publications have been published within this topic receiving 350831 citations. The topic is also known as: Thought & Human agency.

Conceptualising population health: from mechanistic thinking to complexity science

Abstract: The mechanistic interpretation of reality can be traced to the influential work by Rene Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton. Their theories were able to accurately predict most physical phenomena relating to motion, optics and gravity. This paradigm had at least three principles and approaches: reductionism, linearity and hierarchy. These ideas appear to have influenced social scientists and the discourse on population health. In contrast, Complexity Science takes a more holistic view of systems. It views natural systems as being 'open', with fuzzy borders, constantly adapting to cope with pressures from the environment. These are called Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). The sub-systems within it lack stable hierarchies, and the roles of agency keep changing. The interactions with the environment and among sub-systems are non-linear interactions and lead to self-organisation and emergent properties. Theoretical frameworks such as epi+demos+cracy and the ecosocial approach to health have implicitly used some of these concepts of interacting dynamic sub-systems. Using Complexity Science we can view population health outcomes as an emergent property of CAS, which has numerous dynamic non-linear interactions among its interconnected sub-systems or agents. In order to appreciate these sub-systems and determinants, one should acquire a basic knowledge of diverse disciplines and interact with experts from different disciplines. Strategies to improve health should be multi-pronged, and take into account the diversity of actors, determinants and contexts. The dynamic nature of the system requires that the interventions are constantly monitored to provide early feedback to a flexible system that takes quick corrections.

God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment

Abstract: Method in the study of theology the transcedence and creative agency of God - the basic structure of Christian discourse I God and efficacy of creatures - the basic structure of Christian discourse II the modern breakdown of theological discourse.

Autonomy and Enactivism: Towards a Theory of Sensorimotor Autonomous Agency

Abstract: The concept of “autonomy”, once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis (or basic autonomy in the molecular or biological realm) and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure (autonomy), deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling (sensorimotor dynamics); making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio (a 1D cellular automata) as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds.

Negotiating a pathological identity in the clinical dialogue: Discourse analysis of a family therapy

Abstract: Within the framework of social constructionism, psychotherapy has been re-conceptualized as a semiotic process, which consists of the creative generation of new meanings in the context of collaborative discourse. In recent years, research approaches that draw from social constructionism, such as discourse analysis, have been fruitfully employed in the study of psychotherapy processes, whilst being in line with the contemporary emphasis on language, narrative, and meaning making. This paper aims to further the exploration of the usefulness of discourse analysis in the study of psychotherapy processes, and in particular, in situations where the medical discourse is powerfully implicated in the construction of a person's identity. It is based on the analysis of a family therapy with a family whose child has a diagnosis of autism. The analysis focuses on two features of the family's talk, namely shifts in the flexibility of employment of a diverse range of discourses and subject positions, and shifts in the ways agency is constructed and discursively negotiated in the clinical conversations. It is suggested that these shifts can be used as indications of change in the family's network of meanings. The analysis suggests that an important aspect in clinical work with families with a member with a psychiatric diagnosis lies in decentring, or deconstructing, the dominant, pathology-maintaining accounts, and allowing for a wider range of less problematic narratives and subject positions to emerge.

Disciplinary Literacy in History

Abstract: In this article, we draw clear distinctions between generic reading comprehension and disciplinary literacy in history. We argue that disciplinary reading restores agency to the reader, changing the typical relationship between text and reader, in which knowledge flows down from one to the other. Sourcing, for example, enjoins readers to engage authors, querying them about their credentials, their interest in the story they are telling, their position vis-a-vis the event they narrate. Contextualization prompts the reader to question the social and political circumstances surrounding the text. In a digital age characterized by unfettered access to information, such skills become essential tools for an informed citizenry.