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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.


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Book
08 May 2008
TL;DR: The concept of peace and its usage in the main theoretical debates in IR, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism, as well as in the more direct debates on peace and conflict studies, are discussed in this paper.
Abstract: This updated and revised second edition examines the conceptualisation and evolution of peace in International Relations (IR) theory. The book examines the concept of peace and its usage in the main theoretical debates in IR, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism, as well as in the more direct debates on peace and conflict studies. It explores themes relating to culture, development, agency, and structure, not just in terms of representations of IR, and of peace, but in terms of the discipline of IR itself. The work also specifically explores the recent mantras associated with liberal and neoliberal versions of peace, which appear to have become foundational for much of the mainstream literature and for doctrines for peace and development in the policy world. Analysing war has often led to the dominance – and mitigation – of violence as a basic assumption in, and response to, the problems of IR. This study aims to redress this negative balance by arguing that the discipline offers a rich basis for the study of peace, which has advanced significantly over the last century or so. It also proposes innovative theoretical dimensions of the study of peace, with new chapters discussing post-colonial and digital developments. This book will be of great interest to students of peace and conflict studies, politics, and IR.

147 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that it is possible for human subjects who are socially constructed to engage in effective and authoritative acts of resistance to the social norms and institutions within which they were formed.
Abstract: How is it possible for human subjects who are socially constructed to engage in effective and authoritative acts of resistance to the social norms and institutions within which they were formed? Ju...

147 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the relationship between light, material culture and social experiences is discussed, and it is argued that light may be used as a tool for exercising social intimacy and inclusion, of shaping moral spaces and hospitality, and orchestrating movement.
Abstract: This article addresses the relationship between light, material culture and social experiences It argues that understanding light as a powerful social agent, in its relationship with people, things, colours, shininess and places, may facilitate an appreciation of the active social role of luminosity in the practice of day-to-day activities The article surveys an array of past conceptions of light within philosophy, natural science and more recent approaches to light in the fields of anthropology and material culture studies A number of implications are discussed, and by way of three case studies it is argued that light may be used as a tool for exercising social intimacy and inclusion, of shaping moral spaces and hospitality, and orchestrating movement, while working as a metaphor as well as a material agent in these social negotiations The social comprehension of light is a means of understanding social positions in ways that may be real or imagined, but are bound up on the social and cultural associ

147 citations

Proceedings Article
08 Feb 2017
TL;DR: Before they will be trusted by humans, autonomous agents must be able to explain their decisions and the reasoning that produced their choices, which is referred to as explainable agency.
Abstract: As intelligent agents become more autonomous, sophisticated, and prevalent, it becomes increasingly important that humans interact with them effectively. Machine learning is now used regularly to acquire expertise, but common techniques produce opaque content whose behavior is difficult to interpret. Before they will be trusted by humans, autonomous agents must be able to explain their decisions and the reasoning that produced their choices. We will refer to this general ability as explainable agency. This capacity for explaining decisions is not an academic exercise. When a self-driving vehicle takes an unfamiliar turn, its passenger may desire to know its reasons. When a synthetic ally in a computer game blocks a player's path, he may want to understand its purpose. When an autonomous military robot has abandoned a high-priority goal to pursue another one, its commander may request justification. As robots, vehicles, and synthetic characters become more self-reliant, people will require that they explain their behaviors on demand. The more impressive these agents' abilities, the more essential that we be able to understand them.

147 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A model of molecular autonomous agents is offered which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construction; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison.
Abstract: Ultimately we will only understand biological agency when we have developed a theory of the organization of biological processes, and science is still a long way from attaining that goal. It may be possible nonetheless to develop a list of necessary conditions for the emergence of minimal biological agency. The authors offer a model of molecular autonomous agents which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary (and, we believe, conjointly sufficient) for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construc- tion; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison. When combined with the arguments from preadaptation and multiple realizability, the existence of these agents is sufficient to establish ontological emergence as against what one might call Weinbergian reductionism. Minimal biological agents are emphatically not conscious agents, and accepting their existence does not commit one to any robust theory of human agency. Nor is there anything mystical, dualistic, or non-empirical about the emergence of agency in the biosphere. Hence the emergence of molecular autonomous agents, and indeed ontological emergence in general, is not a negation of or limitation on careful biological study but simply one of its implications.

146 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20247
20235,872
202212,259
2021566
2020532
2019559