Autonomy and Agency

According to the practice-focused approach to moral agency, a participant stance towards an entity is warranted by the extent to which this entity qualifies as an apt target of ascriptions of moral responsibility, such as blame. Entities who are not eligible for such reactions are exempted from moral responsibility practices, and thus denied moral agency. I claim that many typically exempted cases may qualify as moral agents by being eligible for a distinct participant stance. When we participate in moral responsibility (...) practices, we are not only participating as potential targets of moral reactions, but also as sources of such address, i.e. as moral addressors. By consequence, there are entities towards which we seem to have reason to adopt an addressor participant stance, regardless of their eligibility as moral addressees. This expanded theoretical room for moral agency may also be of normative import. (shrink)

This article argues that manipulation is negligent influence. Manipulation is negligent in the sense that manipulators do not chose their method of influence because for its potential to reveal reasons to their victims. Thus, manipulation is a lack of care, or negligence, exclusively understood exclusively in terms of how one influences. That makes the proposed account superior to the most influential alternative, which analyses manipulation disjunctively as violation of several distinct types of norms. The implication is a paradigm shift in (...) understanding manipulation in terms of what manipulators intend to do toward a focus on what they fail to do or intend. (shrink)

Biosemiotics deal with the study of signs and meanings in living entities. Constructivism considers human knowledge as internally constructed by sense making rather than passively reflecting a pre-existing reality. Consequently, a constructivist perspective on biosemiotics leads to look at an internal active construction of meaning in living entities from basic life to humans. That subject is addressed with an existing tool: the Meaning Generator System (MGS) which is a system submitted to an internal constraint related to the nature of the (...) agent containing it (biological or artificial). Simple organisms generate meanings to satisfy a “stay alive” constraint. More complex living entities manage meaningful representations with more elaborated constraints. The generated meanings are used by the agents to implement actions aimed at satisfying the constraints. The actions can be physical, biological or mental and take place in the agent or in its environment. The case of human agency is introduced with meaningful representations that may have allowed our ancestors to become self-conscious by representing themselves as existing entities. This paper proposes to use the MGS as a thread to address the above items linking biosemiotics to constructivism with relations to normativity, agency and autonomy. Possible continuations are introduced. (shrink)

Can agents overcome unconscious psychological influences without being aware of them? Some philosophers and psychologists assume that agents need to be aware of psychological influences to successfully control behavior. The aim of this text is to argue that when agents engage in a proactive control strategy, they can successfully shield their behavior from some unconscious influences. If agents actively check for conflicts between their actions and mental states, they engage in reactive control. For engaging in reactive control, agents need awareness (...) of those mental states which are in conflict with an action. In contrast, if agents are actively maintaining a goal in consciousness, they engage in proactive control. Proactive control does not consist of conflict detection or conflict resolution. I argue that proactive control explains how agents overcome unconscious psychological influences. In doing so, I claim that consciousness is important for engaging in reactive and proactive control. (shrink)

The universe is enormous, perhaps unimaginably so. In comparison, we are very small. Does this suggest that humanity has little if any cosmic significance? And if we don’t matter, should that matter to us? Blaise Pascal, Frank Ramsey, Bertrand Russell, Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Stephen Hawking, and others have offered insightful answers to those questions. For example, Pascal and Ramsey emphasize that whereas the stars (in all their enormity) cannot think, human beings can. Through an exploration of some features of (...) awe and its positive effects on us, I offer a novel way of answering the second question: even if we don’t matter, we, unlike the stars, naturally benefit from observing our own smallness. I explore implications for accounts of the absurdity of human life. Life might be absurd. But I give reasons to think that life isn’t absurd in the ways some such as Nagel and Camus suggest. Finally, I connect non-symmetric awe with Buddhist insights to strengthen a recent and more positive account of how to find meaning in life. (shrink)

This chapter concerns self-knowledge of our mental states, with a focus on how we know our own beliefs and intentions. It examines the agentialist approach to self-knowledge, which is driven by the idea that believing or intending on the basis of reasons is something that we DO, and hence involves agency. Agentialists maintain that, because beliefs and intentions are exercises of agency, self-knowledge of these attitudes differs fundamentally from self-knowledge of states that we simply undergo, such as sensations. Specifically, agentialists (...) claim that self-knowledge of our attitudes is linked with our identity as rational thinkers, capable of believing and intending on the basis of reasons. This chapter outlines the agentialist approach to self-knowledge, and canvasses and assesses a range of agentialist accounts of how we know our own beliefs and intentions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: One important criticism of algorithmic systems is that they lack transparency. Such systems can be opaque because they are complex, protected by patent or trade secret, or deliberately obscure. In the EU, there is a debate about whether the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) contains a “right to explanation,” and if so what such a right entails. Our task in this chapter is to address this informational component of algorithmic systems. We argue that information access is integral for respecting (...) autonomy, and transparency policies should be tailored to advance autonomy. -/- To make this argument we distinguish two facets of agency (i.e., capacity to act). The first is practical agency, or the ability to act effectively according to one’s values. The second is what we call cognitive agency, which is the ability to exercise what Pamela Hieronymi calls “evaluative control” (i.e., the ability to control our affective states, such as beliefs, desires, and attitudes). We argue that respecting autonomy requires providing persons sufficient information to exercise evaluative control and properly interpret the world and one’s place in it. We draw this distinction out by considering algorithmic systems used in background checks, and we apply the view to key cases involving risk assessment in criminal justice decisions and K-12 teacher evaluation. -/- The link below is to an open access version of the chapter. (shrink)

Kant takes the idea of autonomy of the will to be his distinctive contribution to moral philosophy. However, this idea is more nuanced and complicated than one might think. In this chapter, I sketch the rough outlines of Kant’s idea of autonomy of the will while also highlighting contentious exegetical issues that give rise to various possible interpretations. I tentatively defend four basic claims. First, autonomy primarily features in Kant’s account of moral agency, as the condition of the possibility of (...) moral obligation. Second, autonomy amounts to a metaphysical property as well as a normative principle and a psychological capacity. Third, although there is legitimate scholarly disagreement about whether or not autonomy involves self-legislation of the moral law, there is good reason to believe it underwrites an ‘inside-out’ (as opposed to ‘outside-in’) conception of the relationship between the will and moral requirements. Fourth, persons have dignity because their autonomy makes them members in the set of beings over whom the categorical imperative requires us to universalise our maxims, not because autonomy is an independently important property. (shrink)

Orthodoxy holds that the difference between weakness of will and compulsion is a matter of the resistibility of an agent's effective motivation, which makes control-based views of agency especially well equipped to distinguish blameworthy weak-willed acts from non-blameworthy compulsive acts. I defend an alternative view that the difference between weakness and compulsion instead lies in the fact that agents would upon reflection give some conative weight to acting on their weak-willed desires for some aim other than to extinguish them, but (...) not to their compulsive desires. This view allows identificationist theorists of moral responsibility to explain why weak-willed actions, but not compulsive actions, are attributable to agents such that they can, in theory, be praised or blamed for them. After motivating and presenting the view in detail, I show how it has unique resources for explaining the ethics of managing one's compulsions. (shrink)

An important philosophical issue in the study of addiction is what difference the fact that a person is addicted makes to attributions of autonomy (and responsibility) to their drug-oriented behavior. In spite of accumulating evidence suggesting the role of emotional dysregulation in understanding addiction, it has received surprisingly little attention in the debate about this issue. I claim that, as a result, an important aspect of the autonomy impairment of many addicted individuals has been largely overlooked. A widely shared assumption (...) in the philosophical literature is that for addiction to impair a person’s autonomy it has to make them (in some sense) take drugs against their will. So-called “willing addicts” are therefore usually seen as exempted from the autonomy impairment believed to characterize “unwilling addicts”, the latter being those who ‘truly want’ to stop using drugs but find their attempts repeatedly derailed by failures of self-control. In this article, I argue that the association between addiction and emotional dysregulation shows why this assumption is false. Emotional dysregulation is not only consistent with the possibility that many addicts take drugs ‘willingly’, it supports the hypothesis that they use drugs because they truly want to. The article proposes an explanation for why emotional dysregulation should nevertheless be seen as an aspect of their loss of control and an important reason why they have impaired autonomy. I end by exploring some implications of this account for addict’s decision-making capacity when they are prescribed the drugs to which they are addicted. -/- . (shrink)

Living organisms act as integrated wholes to maintain themselves. Individual actions can each be explained by characterizing the mechanisms that perform the activity. But these alone do not explain how various activities are coordinated and performed versatilely. We argue that this depends on a specific type of mechanism, a control mechanism. We develop an account of control by examining several extensively studied control mechanisms operative in the bacterium E. coli. On our analysis, what distinguishes a control mechanism from other mechanisms (...) is that it relies on measuring one or more variables, which results in setting constraints in the control mechanism that determine its action on flexible constraints in other mechanisms. In the most basic arrangement, the measurement process directly determines the action of the control mechanism, but in more complex arrangements signals mediate between measurements and effectors. This opens the possibility of multiple responses to the same measurement and responses based on multiple measurements. It also allows crosstalk, resulting in networks of control mechanisms. Such networks integrate the behaviors of the organism but also present a challenge in tailoring responses to particular measurements. We discuss how integrated activity can still result in differential, versatile, responses. (shrink)

Deep learning AI systems have proven a wide capacity to take over human-related activities such as car driving, medical diagnosing, or elderly care, often displaying behaviour with unpredictable consequences, including negative ones. This has raised the question whether highly autonomous AI may qualify as morally responsible agents. In this article, we develop a set of four conditions that an entity needs to meet in order to be ascribed moral responsibility, by drawing on Aristotelian ethics and contemporary philosophical research. We encode (...) these conditions and generate a flowchart that we call the Moral Responsibility Test. This test can be used as a tool both to evaluate whether an entity is a morally responsible agent and to inform human moral decision-making over the influencing variables of the context of action. We apply the test to the case of Artificial Moral Advisors and conclude that this form of AI cannot qualify as morally responsible agents. We further discuss the implications for the use of AMAs as moral enhancement and show that using AMAs to offload human responsibility is inadequate. We argue instead that AMAs could morally enhance users if they are interpreted as enablers for moral knowledge of the contextual variables surrounding human moral decision-making, with the implication that such a use might actually enlarge human moral responsibility. (shrink)

What precisely does a distraction threaten? An agent who spends an inordinate amount of time attending to her smartphone – what precisely is she lacking? I argue that whereas agency of attention is the agent’s non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to, autonomy of attention is the agent, through her second-order desires, effectively interfering with her non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to. Freedom of attention is the agent’s possibility to hold or switch her focus of (...) attention without fixating on any specific focus against her will or without distraction from chosen foci. This conceptual work provides resources to track manipulations that diminish a person’s freedom of attention. (shrink)

Is the idea of the voluntary important? Those who think so tend to regard it as an idea that can be metaphysically deepened through a theory about voluntary action, while those who think it a superficial idea that cannot coherently be deepened tend to neglect it as unimportant. Parting company with both camps, I argue that the idea of the voluntary is at once important and superficial—it is an essentially superficial notion that performs important functions, but can only perform them (...) if we refrain from deepening it. After elaborating the contrast between superficial and deepened ideas of the voluntary, I identify the important functions that the superficial idea performs in relation to demands for fairness and freedom. I then suggest that theories trying to deepen the idea exemplify a problematic moralization of psychology—they warp psychological ideas to ensure that moral demands can be met. I offer a three-tier model of the problematic dynamics this creates, and show why the pressure to deepen the idea should be resisted. On this basis, I take stock of what an idea of the voluntary worth having should look like, and what residual tensions with moral ideas this leaves us with. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary agency theory and the phenomenological-existential tradition, this paper uses Mr. Stevens, the narrator-butler of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, to examine the interplay and potential tensions between different aspects (and thus different standards) of human agency. Highlighting the problem of mission creep described by John Martin Fischer, in which a notion expands beyond the original purpose, I use Stevens’s thoughts on dignity to outline three different ways actions can (or can fail to) trace back to (...) agents—autonomy as self-control, authenticity as sincerity, and authenticity as ownership. I then propose that the way Stevens embraces and acts consistently within his subservient professional role (autonomy as self-control) weakens his ability to take responsibility for his life in the sense required by authenticity as ownership. Because the self-responsibility of authenticity requires normative flexibility (the ability to revise and reshape one’s commitments and values), when normatively inflexible agents act in self-controlled ways according to their roles or welfare standards, they may limit their ability to take responsibility for their lives. In addition to illuminating debates about whether robust human agency is compatible with subservience, the normative flexibility involved in authenticity has implications for human agency more broadly. (shrink)

It is seemingly bad for animals to have their desires modified in at least some cases, for instance where brainwashing or neurological manipulation takes place. In humans, many argue that such modification interferes with our positive liberty or undermines our autonomy but this explanation is inapplicable in the case of animals as they lack the capacity for autonomy in the relevant sense. As such, the standard view has been that, despite any intuitions to the contrary, the modification of animals’ desires (...) is not harmful (at least not in itself). In this article, I offer a different perspective on this issue, laying the foundations of a novel argument in defence of the view that animals _can_ be harmed by desire modification directly. I suggest that the modification of an animal’s desires (under certain circumstances) is harmful for that animal because it undermines their agency. (shrink)

Reading Foucault’s work on power and subjectivity alongside “developmentalist” approaches to evolutionary biology, this article endorses poststructuralist critiques of political ideals grounded in the value of subjective agency. Many political theorists embrace such critiques, of course, but those who do are often skeptical of liberal democracy, and even of normative theory itself. By contrast, those who are left to theorize liberal democracy tend to reject or ignore poststructuralist insights, and have continued to employ dubious ontological assumptions regarding human agents. Against (...) both groups, I argue that Foucault’s poststructuralism must be taken seriously, but that it is ultimately consistent with normative theory and liberal democracy. Linking poststructuralist attempts to transcend the dichotomy between agency and structure with recent efforts by evolutionary theorists to dissolve a similarly stubborn opposition between nature and nurture, I develop an anti-essentialist account of human nature and agency that vindicates poststructuralist criticism while enabling a novel defense of liberal democracy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the moral value of unconditional forgiveness is more complicated and constrained than it is often taken to be. When we unconditionally forgive, we engage with someone in a way that doesn’t take seriously their perspective about the meanings and values at stake in our relations with them. Other things being equal, this is problematic; it is normatively condescending, belittling the place of the other person’s moral agency in our relations with them. This doesn’t mean that unconditional (...) forgiveness is always bad or impermissible. It does, though, complicate how we should think about its moral value. (shrink)

Charland's article suggests that we need to think more about whether decision-making capacity is impaired in severe addiction, working from the idea that drug dealers rely on this understanding of addiction to draw in their clients. Charland argues that it is possible to make a choice without being in control (to make decisions without having decision-making capacity). I argue in support of Charland's ideas by examining the reasons supporting a medical model of addiction and its importance. (For Charland's article and (...) the full set of commentaries, please see the Research Gate link). (shrink)

Summary Background Self-binding directives instruct clinicians to overrule treatment refusal during future severe episodes of illness. These directives are promoted as having potential to increase autonomy for individuals with severe episodic mental illness. Although lived experience is central to their creation, service users’ views on self-binding directives have not been investigated substantially. This study aimed to explore whether reasons for endorsement, ambivalence, or rejection given by service users with bipolar disorder can address concerns regarding self-binding directives, decision-making capacity, and human (...) rights. Methods This study used qualitative data from an internet-based survey distributed to the mailing list of the UK charity Bipolar UK, which contained multiple closed and open questions on advance decision-making in bipolar disorder. Quantitative analysis of a closed question about self-binding directives had already demonstrated endorsement amongst a very high proportion of participants with bipolar disorder who completed the survey. We conducted thematic analysis of responses from those participants who answered a subsequent open question about reasons for their view. Research was co-produced within a multi-disciplinary team, with clinical, legal, and ethical expertise, and lived experience of bipolar disorder. Ideas and methodologies associated with all these areas of expertise were used in the analysis of these reasons and to gain insight into the thoughts of individuals with bipolar disorder about self-binding directives and associated issues. Findings Between Oct 23 and Dec 5, 2017, 932 individuals with a self-reported clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder completed the internet survey, with 565 (154 men; 400 women; 11 transgender or other) providing free text answers to the open question. A large majority of respondents endorsed self-binding directives, nearly all describing a determinate shift to types of distorted thinking and decision-making when unwell as their key justification. Responses indicating ambivalence were dominated by logistical concerns about the drafting and implementation of self-binding directives, while those who rejected self-binding directives also cited logistical concerns, validity of their thinking when unwell, and potential contravention of human rights. Interpretation This study is, to our knowledge, the first large study of reasons why mental health service users might endorse or reject the use of self-binding directives. The findings provide empirical support for introducing self-binding directives into mental health advance decision-making practice and policy and may help to address enduring ethical concerns surrounding possible implementation of the directive while a person retains decision-making capacity. The opinions expressed here in responses given by multiple service users with bipolar disorder challenge a prominent view within international disability rights debates that involuntary treatment and recognition of impaired mental capacity constitute inherent human rights violations. Funding The Wellcome Trust . (shrink)

This is a reply to commentators in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport's special issue symposium on GAMES: AGENCY AS ART. I respond to criticisms concerning the value of achievement play and striving play, the transparency and opacity of play, the artistic status of games, and many more.

The objective of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the Kantian notion of freedom (especially the problem of the third antinomy and its resolution in the critique of pure reason); its significance in the contemporary debate on free-will and determinism, and the possibility of autonomy of artificial agency in the Kantian paradigm of autonomy. Kant's resolution of the third antinomy by positing the ground in the noumenal self resolves the problem of antinomies; however, invites an explanatory gap (...) between phenomenality and the noumenal self; even if he has successfully established the compatibility of natural causality and non-natural causality through his transcendental argument. This paper is also devoted to establishing the plausibility of the knowledge claim that Kantian reduction of phenomenality has served half of the purpose of the AI scientists on the possibility of Artificial Autonomous Agency. (shrink)

While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our “reactive attitudes”—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this paper advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the (...) praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize, etc.), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps render intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships. (shrink)

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking (...) about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons. (shrink)

This paper proposes a distinctive kind of agency that can vindicate the agency of members of marginalised groups while accommodating the autonomy-undermining influences of oppression. Socially-embedded agency—the locus of which is in the exercise of our ability to negotiate between different social features—is compatible with, and can explain, various phenomena, including double-consciousness and white fragility. Moreover, although socially-embedded agency is neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy, exercising it is practically necessary for autonomy, at least for members of marginalised groups in (...) our non-ideal world. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 355-373, October 2021.

Abstract: A self-abnegating person lacks contact with their agency. This can be against their will, in absence of their will, or voluntarily. This does not mean that they cannot provide reasons for or a narrative about their actions. It’s just that the reasons or narrative are someone else’s. People abnegate parts of their agency regularly; for example, within hierarchical institutions. In other cases, the self-abnegation is all-encompassing; for example, a victim of brainwashing. An agent in such a position can completely (...) fail to understand themselves or be understood by others as having a self. I focus on two problems related to self-abnegation. The first is whether there is a conception of a self that can reliably discriminate between strong selves and abnegated selves. The second is whether a person with an abnegated self should be treated as a person with a strong self. I conclude that the good of respecting derived or instrumental agency comes in putting that person in a position to agentially flourish and in maintaining the structural conditions and expectations of agency. (shrink)

We develop a broader, more fine-grained taxonomy of forms of ‘transformative experience’ inspired by the work of L.A. Paul. Our vulnerability to such experiences arises, we argue, due to the vulnerability, dependence, and affliction intrinsic to the human condition. We use this trio to distinguish a variety of positively, negatively, and ambivalently valenced forms of epistemically and/or personally transformative experiences. Moreover, we argue that many transformative experiences can arise gradually and cumulatively, unfolding over the course of longer periods of time.

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

El consentimiento informado del paciente se inserta en el ámbito de su autonomía decisoria. Aunque presenta un sustrato corporal, este aparece combinado con elementos de índole moral que presuponen una noción concreta de persona como libre y autónoma. Tanto de las definiciones doctrinales como del material normativo se desprende que se trata de una posición jurídica subjetiva del paciente, alternativamente calificada como una “pretensión” o “derecho subjetivo en sentido estricto”, en términos hohfeldianos; un “derecho negativo de defensa”, o una “inmunidad”. (...) En España, el Tribunal Constitucional ha vinculado el consentimiento informado del paciente al derecho fundamental a la integridad física y moral (15 CE), lo cual permite plantear el análisis en clave iusfundamental. Con todo, se advierten dudas e incompatibilidades entre la explicación habitual del consentimiento informado, su fundamento constitucional y su regulación jurídica. El objetivo de la presente tesis doctoral consiste en proporcionar una definición integral del consentimiento informado como derecho subjetivo del paciente y como manifestación de un derecho fundamental, a partir de una óptica poliédrica que aporta certeza en la práctica asistencial y jurídica. // The patient's right to informed consent is inserted within the scope of his decision-making autonomy. Although it has a bodily background, it is combined with features of moral nature, which presupposes a concrete notion of person as free and autonomous. Both, doctrinal approaches and normative legal material show that it is a subjective legal position of the patient, being alternatively qualified as a Hohfeldian “claim” or a “subjective right in a strict sense”; a "negative right" or an "immunity." The Spanish Constitutional Court has linked the informed consent of the patient to the fundamental right to physical and moral integrity (15 CE), which allows us to propose a fundamental rights-based analysis. Nonetheless, doubts and inconsistencies are perceived between the customary explanation of informed consent, its constitutional foundation and its legal regulation. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to provide a comprehensive definition of informed consent as subjective right of the patient and expression of a fundamental right, from a multi-fold perspective that provides certainty in both legal and health care practice. (shrink)

This presentation discusses a notion encountered across disciplines, and in different facets of human activity: autonomous activity. We engage it in an interdisciplinary way. We start by considering the reactions and behaviors of biological entities to biotechnological intervention. An attempt is made to characterize the degree of freedom of embryos & clones, which show openness to different outcomes when the epigenetic developmental landscape is factored in. We then consider the claim made in programming and artificial intelligence that automata could show (...) self-directed behavior as to the determination of their step-wise decisions on courses of action. This question remains largely open and calls for some important qualifications. We try to make sense of the presence of claims of freedom in agency, first in common sense, then by ascribing developmental plasticity in biology and biotechnology, and in the mapping of programmed systems in the presence of environmental cues and self-referenced circuits as well as environmental coupling. This is the occasion to recall attempts at working out a logical and methodological approach to the openness of concepts that are still to be found, and assess whether they can operate the structuring intelligibility of a yet undeveloped or underdeveloped field of study, where a “bisociation" and a unification of knowledge might be possible. (shrink)

Much of the literature on impairment to self-governance focuses on cases in which a person either lacks the ability to protect herself from errant urges or cases in which a person lacks the capacity to initiate self-reflective agential processes. This has led to frameworks for thinking about self-governance designed with only the possibility of these sorts of impairments in mind. I challenge this orthodoxy using the case of melancholic depression to show that there is a third way that self-governance can (...) be undermined: an agent may fail to form the desire she most wants to act on. (shrink)

As diachronic agents, we deliberate and decide in the present to perform future courses of action. Such future‐directed decisions normally enjoy a distinctive species of rational authority over subsequent thought and action. But what is the nature of this authority, and what underwrites its normative force? In this paper, I argue that our answer to this question must begin by situating future‐directed deciding within an intrapersonal model of cross‐temporal influence. The role of future‐directed deciding (and intending), then, is not to (...) generate a novel decision‐based reason for action, but instead to preserve a certain positive normative status over time. I develop an entitlement approach to decisional authority, according to which an agent who rationally decides to ϕ enjoys a practical entitlement, rather than a reason‐based practical justification, to ϕ at the appointed time. This entitlement is underwritten, I argue, by the warrant‐preserving nature of the sequence taking an agent from deliberation to subsequent action. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

We sometimes fail unwittingly to do things that we ought to do. And we are, from time to time, culpable for these unwitting omissions. We provide an outline of a theory of responsibility for unwitting omissions. We emphasize two distinctive ideas: (i) many unwitting omissions can be understood as failures of appropriate vigilance, and; (ii) the sort of self-control implicated in these failures of appropriate vigilance is valuable. We argue that the norms that govern vigilance and the value of self-control (...) explain culpability for unwitting omissions. (shrink)

Games occupy a unique and valuable place in our lives. Game designers do not simply create worlds; they design temporary selves. Game designers set what our motivations are in the game and what our abilities will be. Thus: games are the art form of agency. By working in the artistic medium of agency, games can offer a distinctive aesthetic value. They support aesthetic experiences of deciding and doing. -/- And the fact that we play games shows something remarkable about us. (...) Our agency is more fluid than we might have thought. In playing a game, we take on temporary ends; we submerge ourselves temporarily in an alternate agency. Games turn out to be a vessel for communicating different modes of agency, for writing them down and storing them. Games create an archive of agencies. And playing games is how we familiarize ourselves with different modes of agency, which helps us develop our capacity to fluidly change our own style of agency. (shrink)

Disorders of agency could be described as cases where people encounter difficulties in assessing their own degree of responsibility or involvement with respect to a relevant action or event. These disturbances in one’s sense of agency appear to be meaningfully connected with some mental disorders and with some symptoms in particular—i.e. auditory verbal hallucinations, thought insertion, pathological guilt. A deeper understanding of these experiences may thus contribute to better identification and possibly treatment of people affected by such disorders. In this (...) paper I explore disorders of agency to flesh out their phenomenology in more detail as well as to introduce some theoretical distinctions between them. Specifically, I argue that we may better understand disorders of agency by characterizing them as dimensional. In §1 I explore the cases of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) and pathological guilt and I show that they lie at opposite ends of the agency spectrum (i.e. hypoagency versus hyperagency). In §2 I focus on two intermediate cases of hypo- and hyper- agency. These are situations that, despite being very similar to pathological ones, may be successfully distinguished from them in virtue of quantitative factors (e.g. duration, frequency, intensity). I first explore the phenomenon of mind wandering as an example of hypoagency, and I then discuss the phenomenon of false confessions as an example of hyperagency. While cases of hypoagency exemplify situations where people experience their own thoughts, bodies, or actions as something beyond their control, experiences of hyperagency provide an illusory sense of control over actions or events. (shrink)

The prevalent views of animal liberty among animal advocates suggest that liberty is merely instrumentally valuable and invasive paternalism is justified. In contrast to this popular view, I argue that liberty is intrinsically good for animals. I suggest that animal well-being is best accommodated by an Objective List Theory and that liberty is an irreducible component of animal well-being. As such, I argue that it is good for animals to possess liberty even if possessing liberty does not contribute towards their (...) subjective well-being, and even in some cases where it has a negative effect upon their subjective well-being. To establish this view I argue that if animals are agents, as I assume they are, then like humans they must be able to determine the course of their own lives (to some extent). Further, having the opportunity to self-determine one’s life just is the very same thing as liberty, and having the opportunity to determine the course of one’s life is intrinsically good. Thus liberty has intrinsic value for humans and animals. So, in addition to the instrumental harms of having one’s liberty restricted, I claim that restricting animals’ liberty in principle harms them because it undermines their capacity for self-determination and fails to acknowledge their authority as agents to make their own choices. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that agency-based accounts of moral status are more plausible than many have previously thought. I do this by developing a novel account of moral status that takes agency, understood as the capacity for intentional action, to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the possession of moral status. This account also suggests that the capacities required for sentience entail the possession of agency, and the capacities required for agency, entail the possession of sentience. (...) Thus on this account sentient beings possess agency and agents possess sentience. If this is correct, it will show that an Agency Account of moral status can offer a plausible defence of the moral status of all sentient beings, something that previous Agency Accounts have not succeeded in doing. What is more, this account could establish that all sentient animals are not just moral status holders per se, but that they are owed pro tanto obligations regarding continued existence and liberty, similar in kind, though not always in strength, to those owed to humans. (shrink)

Nos sociétés érigent en idéal la capacité d'agir, celle de l'individu libre et autonome. Pourtant, de tout le corps social montent des exaspérations, revendications ou souffrances de la part de vies empêchées, à mille lieues de cet idéal d'accomplissement. L'avenir de la social-démocratie passe par l'invention de nouveaux pouvoirs d'agir : travail, consommation, liens intimes, citoyenneté, connaissance. Il est crucial de garantir notre puissance d'agir dans toutes ces sphères, sauf à sombrer dans un sentiment d'impuissance face aux inégalités ou à (...) la transition climatique. Cet essai indique les conditions pour que la liberté continue d'exister au bénéfice de chacun et de tous."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Der Gedanke, der sich in der modernen Idee der Autonomie verdichtet, ist ein doppelter: Die Figur der Autonomie enthält zugleich eine neue Auffassung von Normativität und eine eigene Konzeption von Freiheit. Dem Gedanken der Autonomie zufolge ist ein Gesetz, das wahrhaft normativ ist, eines, als dessen Urheber wir uns selbst betrachten können; und eine Freiheit, die im vollen Sinne wirklich ist, drückt sich in Gestalt eben solcher selbstgegebener Gesetze aus. Die Idee der Autonomie artikuliert so die Einsicht, dass man Freiheit (...) und Gesetz nicht durch ihre Entgegensetzung bestimmen kann, sondern durcheinander erläutern muss. Wirkliche Freiheit ist nicht Freiheit von Gesetzen, sondern Freiheit in Gesetzen; verbindliche Normen sind nicht das, was Freiheit äußerlich beschränkt, sondern das, was Freiheit innerlich verwirklicht. Die Idee der Autonomie, die für die moderne praktische Philosophie seit Rousseau und Kant grundlegend ist, zielt so darauf, Freiheit und Verbindlichkeit in einem Zuge zu artikulieren: durch die Form selbstgegebener Gesetze. Mit Beiträgen von Robert Brandom, Judith Butler, Thomas Khurana, Christoph Menke, Terry Pinkard und Sebastian Rödl. (shrink)

This introductory article outlines the themes and aims of this special issue, which offers new perspectives on early modern debates about agency in two ways: First, it recovers writings on agency and liberty that have been widely neglected or that have received insufficient attention, including writings by Anne Conway, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, William King, Gabrielle Suchon, Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, Mary Astell, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Second, it reveals the richness of early modern debates about (...) agency and liberty. (shrink)

Those who argue that corporations can be morally responsible for what they do help us to understand how autonomous corporate agency is possible, and those who argue that they cannot be help us maintain distinctive value in human life. Each offers something valuable, but without securing the other's important contribution. I offer an account that secures both. I explain how corporations can be autonomous agents that we can continue to be justified in blaming as responsible agents, but without it also (...) being the case that corporations are morally responsible for anything that they do. The upshot is that we can make sense of the reality of corporate agency and the value that we derive from our sophisticated interactions with them as autonomous agents, while vindicating the idea that they are not members of the moral community. (shrink)

Epistemic conservatism says that an agent is in some measure justified in maintaining a belief simply in virtue of the fact that the agent has that belief. In his new book On Evidence in Philosophy, William Lycan argues that there is no special objection to EC that does not also impugn the other epistemic virtues. In a forthcoming Synthese piece, Daniel Coren argues that, for us as we are, EC cannot be evaluated. Coren does not discuss Lycan, and vice versa. (...) Here I connect these two discussions of EC in order to shed light on the broader nature of epistemic virtues. Does Coren’s argument extrapolate to the other virtues? I argue that both answers to that question yield interesting results. If his argument does not extrapolate to the other virtues, that would show there is something special about EC that Lycan failed to notice. If, instead, Coren’s argument does extrapolate to the other virtues, then we learn something significant and novel about virtues such as simplicity, namely, simplicity cannot be evaluated. I discuss those results. (shrink)

A lot of scholarly attention has been given to Aristotle’s account of how and why animals are capable of moving themselves. But no one has focused on the question, whether self-change is possible in plants on Aristotle’s account. I first give some context and explain why this topic is worth exploring. I then turn to Aristotle’s conditions for self-change given in Physics VIII.4, where he argues that the natural motion of the elements does not count as self-motion. I apply those (...) conditions to natural change in plants. Then I explore the reasons for and consequences of Aristotle’s argument that plants are incapable of sensation. I argue that for Aristotle plants cannot possess the directing faculties for self-change, namely, desire and phantasia. My goal is to show why growth, metabolism, and reproduction in plants would not count as self-change for Aristotle, despite many of these natural changes appearing as autonomous as the analogous changes in animals. This sheds light on how, for Aristotle, self-change differs from natural change. (shrink)

Our rapidly increasing reliance on frictionless AI interactions may increase cognitive and emotional distance, thereby letting our adaptive resilience slacken and our ethical virtues atrophy from disuse. Many trends already well underway involve the offloading of cognitive, emotional, and ethical labor to AI software in myriad social, civil, personal, and professional contexts. Gradually, we may lose the inclination and capacity to engage in critically reflective thought, making us more cognitively and emotionally vulnerable and thus more anxious and prone to manipulation (...) from false news, deceptive advertising, and political rhetoric. In this article, I consider the overarching features of this problem and provide a framework to help AI designers tackle it through system enhancements in smartphones and other products and services in the burgeoning internet of things (IoT) marketplace. The framework is informed by two ideas: psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s cognitive dual process theory and moral self-awareness theory, a four-level model of moral identity that I developed with Benjamin M. Cole. (shrink)