Abstract
In proposing a next step in loosening the restriction of action to humans, this paper explores what we call the agency of attitudes and especially the ethical and practical questions that such recognition should entail. In line with Actor-Network Theory, we suggest that attitudes, passions and emotions can be seen to have agency in a similar vein as tangible agents (e.g., technological devices, texts, machines). We illustrate this suggestion using an example of socialization towards pain experienced during sports. Finally, we propose that the awareness of attitude’s agency extends rather than reduces the ownership of choice of people, as it facilitates making “true decisions.”
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Notes
However, it is noteworthy that beings do not have agency in themselves, but only in a chain of agency, what ANT precisely calls a network. This means that attitudes can only have agency in contingent contexts.
At this point, one might wonder why we do not simply speak of influence instead of agency, given that speaking of an attitude’s influence seems, at first sight, less controversial than speaking in terms of agency. It is actually on purpose that we chose the word “agency” as we want to stress the (controversial) idea that attitudes do things to the extent that influencing precisely is a verb of action. As long as we speak of causalities and influences, we remain in a scientific vocabulary that can problematically hide not only that a capacity to make a difference is at stake, but also that this raises important questions in terms of ethics and responsibility.
By in/determination, we mean that the logic we are promoting lies precisely in this middle ground that traditional concepts does not allow us to refer to (no complete determination, but no complete indetermination either). It is therefore also a logic of im/purity.
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van Vuuren, M., Cooren, F. “My Attitude Made Me Do It”: Considering the Agency of Attitudes. Hum Stud 33, 85–101 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9137-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9137-x