First-personal aspects of agency

Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2):1-16 (2011)
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Abstract

Abstract: On standard accounts, actions are caused by reasons (Davidson), and reasons are taken to be neural phenomena. Since neural phenomena are wholly understandable from a third-person perspective, standard views have no room for any ineliminable first-personal elements in an account of the causation of action. This article aims to show that first-person perspectives play essential roles in both human and nonhuman agency. Nonhuman agents have rudimentary first-person perspectives, whereas human agents—at least rational agents and moral agents—have robust first-person perspectives. The author concludes with a view of intentional causation, according to which reasons are constituted by (but not identical to) neural phenomena. The idea of constitution without identity allows for a causal account of action that automatically includes first-personal aspects of agency

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Author's Profile

Lynne Rudder Baker
PhD: Vanderbilt University; Last affiliation: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Citations of this work

Human Persons as Social Entities.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2014 - Journal of Social Ontology 1 (1):77-87.
Kantian Constructivism and the Moral Problem.Bagnoli Carla - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (4):1229-1246.
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Agency and reductionism about the self.Marko Jurjako - 2017 - In Boran Berčić (ed.), Perspectives on the Self. University of Rijeka. pp. 255-284.

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References found in this work

Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
Actions, Reasons, and Causes.Donald Davidson - 1963 - Journal of Philosophy 60 (23):685.
Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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