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.

The Frankenstein Myth in contemporary cinema

Abstract: Through an examination of Rocky IV, Blade Runner, and The Terminator, this essay constructs an evolving dystopian shadow myth that expresses repressed fears the culture has about its relationship to technology. In its patriarchal form, the myth depicts an increasing division of technological agency from human agent, leading toward an entelechial end of human obsolescence. If this tragic “perfection” is to be averted, the myth implies, the culture must reintegrate feminine values into its consciousness, thereby activating an oppositional entelechial motive to reidentify agent with agency.

New frontiers in the neuroscience of the sense of agency

Abstract: The sense that I am the author of my own actions, including the ability to distinguish my own from other people’s actions, is a fundamental building block of our sense of self, on the one hand, and successful social interactions, on the other. Using cognitive neuroscience techniques, researchers have attempted to elucidate the functional basis of this intriguing phenomenon, also trying to explain pathological abnormalities of action awareness in certain psychiatric and neurological disturbances. Recent conceptual, technological and methodological advances suggest several interesting and necessary new leads for future research on the neuroscience of agency. Here I will describe new frontiers for the field such as the need for novel and multifactorial paradigms, anatomically plausible network models for the sense of agency, investigations of the temporal dynamics during agentic processing and ecologically valid virtual reality applications.

Power and Social Movements in the Other Occident: Latin America in an International Context

Abstract: Across a broad range of social and political enquiry, the analysis and conceptual location of social movements continue to evoke controversy and engender new spheres of reflection. In exploring the emergence of social movements and especially what have come to be termed "new social movements" as a significant presence in much contemporary debate, three main factors can be mentioned. In the first place, there has been continuing growth of interest in questions of agency and subjectivity. In the wake of a surfacing disillusionment with the traditional anchorage of class analysis, the issue of the constitution of social subjects and their potential relation to collective action and political change has become increasingly pivotal. In this analytical context, the study of movements provides a potential point of convergence and condensation for many of the theoretical and political arguments that traverse this wider territory. Second, the controversies surrounding the potential political relevance of social movements, especially in connection with the differential meanings of democracy, have tended to flow into and reinforce the importance of discussions of the state-society nexus. Finally, in an era sometimes characterized in terms of a posited "end of history" and one in which the percepts of neoliberalism and possessive individualism have gained greater currency-Connolly (1991: 172), for example, refers to the "universalization of the drive to affluence"-the widespread occurrence of movements of protest has engendered a sense of hope. Social movements have, however tenuously or indeterminately, held open the possibility of another horizon; optimism of the will, in a time of disenchantment, has been given a new dynamic.

An Economic Approach to Business Ethics: Moral Agency of the Firm and the Enabling and Constraining Effects of Economic Institutions and Interactions in a Market Economy

Abstract: The paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural (economic) approach to business ethics. Special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral ‘ought’ implies a practical ‘can’, which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy, in particular competition. The paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo-classical views, on the one hand, and institutional, libertarian thought, on the other hand. Implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm. The paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive ‘market’ interactions, which is conventionally disputed by classical/neo-classical and institutional, libertarian economics. The paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm--stakeholder interactions. This yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory.

Suffering, justice, and the politics of becoming.

Abstract: To suffer is to undergo, to bear, to endure. Suffering exists on the underside of agency; it is as important to ethics as agency. The experience of suffering is never entirely captured by the ethical, political, medical and spiritual categories in which it is represented. Perhaps an engagement with suffering can open up hidden connections between these domains. After examining John Caputo and Friedrich Nietzsche comparatively on the relation between suffering and ethics, this essay explores the relation of the “politics of becoming” to suffering. The politics of becoming is a paradoxical process by which a new cultural identity is drawn into being and yet is irreducible to the energies and motives that spurred its initiators to action. To exemplify and think the politics of becoming is to call into question the sufficiency of existing paradigms of morality. A critical examination of the Rawlsian model of justice brings out, for example, the insufficiency of justice to the politics of becoming. It suggests the need, first, to pursue an “ethics of engagement” between several parties drawing upon a variety of sources of ethical inspiration and, second, to cultivate ldcritical responsiveness” to new social movements that struggle to place new identities onto the cultural register. If the latter movements sometimes modify general understandings of suffering, identity, justice and medical practice they also indicate the role cultural thinkers can play in re-examining periodically established codes of interaction between these domains.