Human Agency (Philosophy)

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Human Agency (Philosophy)

1.

Being Human: The Problem of Agency
by Margaret S. Archer. 323 pgs.

Book

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The human subject is under threat from postmodernist thinking that has declared the "Death of God" and the "Death of Man." This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity--all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity.

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Title Page

Being Human: the Problem of Agency

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: The Impoverishment of Humanity

1: Resisting the Dissolution of Humanity

2: Modernity's Man

3: Society's Being: Humanity as the Gift of Society

Part II: The Emergence of Self-Consciousness

4: The Primacy of Practice

5: The Practical Order as Pivotal

Part III: The Emergence of Personal Identity

6: Humanity and Reality: Emotions as Commentaries on Human Concerns

7: Personal Identity: the Inner Conversation and Emotional Elaboration

Part IV: The Emergence of Social Identity

8: Agents: Active and Passive

9: Actors and Commitment

Conclusion: the Re-Emergence of Humanity

Index
2.

The Acts of Our Being: A Reflection on Agency and Responsibility
by Edward Pols. 252 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

I: The Question of the Authenticity Of Responsibility

II: The Metaphysical Conditions Of Ontic Responsibility

IV: The Conditions Fulfilled: A Reflexive VIndication

V: Manifest Image Vs. Ontically Significant Appearance

VI: Rational Action and Its Physiological Basis

VII: Participant Powers: the Ontology Of the Rational Agent

Notes

Index
3.

Motivation and Agency
by Alfred R. Mele. 264 pgs.

Book

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What place does motivation have in the lives of intelligent agents? Mele's answer is sensitive to the concerns of philosophers of mind and moral philosophers and informed by empirical work. He offers a distinctive, comprehensive, attractive view of human agency. This book stands boldly at the intersection of philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and metaphysics.

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Notes

I: Motivation and Action

1: Motivation and Desire

Notes

2: Goal-Directed Action

Notes

II: Motivation and Normativity

3: Reasons for Action and Action for Reasons

Notes

4: The Motivational Power of Practical Reasoning

Notes

5: Internalism Versus Externalism

Notes

6: Attitudes That Essentially Encompass Motivation to Act

Notes

III: Strength and Control

7: Motivational Strength

Notes

8: Control and Self-Control

Notes

IV: Decision, Agency, and Belief

9: Deciding

Notes

10: Human Agency Par Excellence

Notes

11: Motivated Belief and Motivational Explanations

Notes

References

Index
4.

Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments
by R. Jay Wallace. 288 pgs.

Book

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Jay Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly.

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

1: Introduction

2: Emotions and Expectations

3: Responsibility

4: Methodological Interlude

5: Blameworthiness and the Excuses

6: Accountability and the Exemptions

7: The Lure of Liberty

8: Conclusion

Appendix 1 Further Emotional Vicissitudes

Appendix 2 Alternate Possibilities

Index
5.

The Bounds of Agency: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
by Carol Rovane. 260 pgs.

Book

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The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense will embrace. Our very common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons.
Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which "all substantive ethical doctrines, ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be "group persons composed of many human beings and "multiple persons within a single human being. Her conclusion supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of per

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Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Part I: Lessons from Locke

Introduction to Part I

Chapter One: Preview of the Normative Analysis of Personal Identity

Chapter Two: On the Need for Revision

Chapter Three: A Revisionary Proposal

Part II: Personal Identity: the Body Practic

Introduction to Part II

Chapter Four: A Sufficient Condition for Personal Identity

Chapter Five: The Sufficient Condition is Also Necessary

Chapter Six: The First Person

Postscript

Bibliography

Index
6.

Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will
by Timothy O'Connor. 135 pgs.

Book

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This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

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Title Page

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction

1: Freedom and Determinism

2 Freedom and Indeterminism: Some Unsatisfactory Proposals

3 the Agent as Cause: Reid, Taylor, and Chisholm

The Metaphysics of Free Will

5: Reasons and Causes

6: Agency, Mind, and Reductionism

References

Index
7.

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Chap. 15 "Libertarian Views: Dualist and Agentcausal Theories")
by Robert Kane. 638 pgs.

Book

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This comprehensive reference provides an exhaustive guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of Free Will--perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The essays, most of which are previously unpublished, combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. Taken as a whole, the Handbook provides an engaging and accessible roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic.

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Title Page

Acknowledgements

Contents

Contributors

Chapter 1: Introduction: the Contours of Contemporary Free Will Debates

Notes

Part I: Theology and Fatalism

Chapter 2: Recent Work on Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will

Notes

Chapter 3: Fatalism

Notes

Part II: Physics, Determinism, and Indeterminism

Chapter 4: Quantum Physics, Consciousness, and Free Will

Notes

Chapter 5: Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will

Notes

Part III: The Modal or Consequence Argument for Incompatibilism

Chapter 6: A Master Argument for Incompatibilism?

Notes

Chapter 7: Free Will Remains a Mystery

Notes

Part IV: Compatibilist Perspectives on Freedom and Responsibility

Chapter 8: Ifs, Cans, and Free Will: the Issues

Notes

Chapter 9: Compatibilist Views of Freedom and Responsibility

Notes

Chapter 10: Pessimists, Pollyannas, and the New Compatibilism

Notes

Chapter 11: Who's Afraid of Determinism? Rethinking Causes and Possibilities

Notes

Part V: Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Frankfurt-Style Examples

Chapter 12: Frankfurt-Type Examples and Semi-Compatibilism

Notes

Chapter 13: Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Cases

Notes

Chapter 14: Responsibility and Frankfurt-Type Examples

Notes

Part VI: Libertarian Perspectives on Free Agency and Free Will

Chapter 15: Libertarian Views: Dualist and Agentcausal Theories

Notes

Chapter 16: Libertarian Views: Critical Survey of Noncausal and Eventcausal Accounts of Free Agency

Notes

Chapter 17: Reasons Explanations of Action: Causalist Versus Noncausalist Accounts

Notes

Chapter 18: Some Neglected Pathways in the Free Will Labyrinth

Notes

Part VII: Nonstandard Views: Successor Views to Hard Determinism and Others

Chapter 19: The Bounds of Freedom

Notes

Chapter 20: Determinism as True, Both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism as False, and the Real Problem

Notes

Chapter 21: Living Without Free Will: the Case for Hard Incompatibilism

Chapter 22: Free Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion

Notes

Chapter 23: Metaethics, Metaphilosophy, and Free Will Subjectivism

Notes

Chapter 24: Autonomy, Selfcontrol, and Weakness of Will

Notes

Part VIII: Neuroscience and Free Will

Chapter 25: Do We Have Free Will?

Notes

Chapter 26: Neurophilosophy of Free Will

Notes

References

Index
8.

Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective, in Annual Review of Psychology
by Albert Bandura. 26 pgs.

Journal Article
9.

Capabilities, Culture and Social Structure, in Review of Social Economy
by William A. Jackson. 24 pgs.

Journal Article
10.

The Structure of Social Theory (Chap. 1 "Structure and Agency")
by Anthony King. 268 pgs.

Book

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Over the last three decades, social theory has become an increasingly important subdiscipline within sociology. Social theory has attempted to elucidate the philosophical basis of sociology by defining the nature of social reality. According to social theory, society consists of objective institutions, structure, on the one hand, and individuals, agency on the other, it promotes human social relations, insisting that in every instance social reality consists of these relations.

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Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgements

Part I: Contemporary Social Theory

1: Structure and Agency

2: The Relevance of Parsons

3: Structure, Habitus, Discourse

4: The Reality of Realism

Part II: Classical Sociology

5: Hegel and the Concept of Geist

6: From Praxis to Historical Materialism

7: Status Groups and the Protestant Ethic

8: Society and Ritual

Part III: Towards a Hermeneutic Sociology

9: Hermeneutics and Idealism

10: Hermeneutics and Individualism

11: Hermeneutics and Critique

12: Beyond Structure and Agency

Notes

Bibliography

Index
11.

Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics
by Roland Bleiker. 294 pgs.

Book

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This book examines a wide range of dissident practices, from street protests to political poetry, in an attempt to demonstrate that they are becoming an increasingly important aspect of global politics. The author draws on several case studies, including an analysis of the events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The theoretical discussions focus on how people influence the course of politics at a time when boundaries between domestic and international spheres are blurring.

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Cambridge Studies in International Relations: 70

Cambridge Studies in International Relations

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue Theorising Transversal Dissent

Introduction Writing Human Agency After the Death of God

Part I: A Genealogy of Popular Dissent

1: Rhetorics of Dissent in Renaissance Humanism

2: Romanticism and the Dissemination of Radical Resistance

3: Global Legacies of Popular Dissent

Part II: Reading and Rereading Transversal Struggles

4: From Essentialist to Discursive Conceptions of Power

First Interlude Confronting Incommensurability

5: Of 'Men', 'Women' and Discursive Domination

6: Of Great Events and What Makes Them Great

Part III: Discursive Terrains of Dissent

7: Mapping Everyday Global Resistance

Second Interlude: Towards a Discursive Understanding of Human Agency

8: Resistance at the Edge of Language Games

9: Political Boundaries, Poetic Transgressions

Conclusion: The Transitional Contingencies of Transversal Politics

Index

Cambridge Studies in International Relations
12.

Race, Ethnicity, Nation, and Class within Theories of Structure and Agency, in Social Justice
by Edward J. McCaughan. 22 pgs.

Journal Article

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