This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Action and Passivity Capability/Incapability and Need Choice, Rationality, Freedom/Constraint Independence and Dependency References Further reading.

Many contemporary eudaimonists emphasize the role of agency in the good life. Mark LeBar, for example, characterizes his own eudaimonist view this way: “It is agentist, not patientist, because it emphasizes that our lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens, to us or otherwise”. Nicholas Wolterstorff, however, has argued that this prioritizing of agency over patiency is a fatal flaw in eudaimonist accounts of well-being. Eudaimonism must be rejected, Wolterstorff argues, because many life-goods (...) are “passivities” that are out of a person’s hands, including how she is treated by others. In this paper, I defend eudaimonism against this passivities objection. I argue that eudaimonism can maintain its agentist character while also capturing the element of truth in the passivities objection—namely, that human well-being is vulnerable and social. I also argue that eudaimonists should avail themselves of the notion of receptivity to capture important aspects of the good life. (shrink)

In our philosophical tradition and our wider culture, we tend to think of persons as agents. This agential conception is flattering, but in this paper I will argue that it conceals a more complex truth about what persons are. In 1. I set the issues in context. In 2. I critically explore four features commonly presented as fundamental to personhood in versions of the agential conception: action, capability, choice and independence. In 3. I argue that each of these agential (...) features presupposes a non-agential feature: agency presupposes patiency, capability presupposes incapability, choice presupposes necessity and independence presupposes dependency. In 4. I argue that such non-agential features, as well as being implicit within the agential conception, are as apt to be constitutive of personhood as agential features, and in 5. I conclude. (shrink)

Fallibilism is the philosophical view that reconciles our ability to have knowledge with our constant vulnerability to error: we know even though our basis for knowledge might have failed to be adequate. In the central chapter, I trace a parallel between fallibilism and compatibilism. Recent work in the philosophy of free agency has drawn attention to a connection between freedom and personhood . I suggest that a similar connection is crucial in epistemology: only persons can know, and knowledge must (...) be connected with what constitutes a subject as a cognitive person. Fallibilism and compatibilism offer what I call world-involving theories of personhood: what constitutes one as a person essentially involves how one is connected to the world. These world-involving theories face difficulties in showing how a person can be properly related to the thing known or to an action . I argue that fallibilism and compatibilism are incapable of resolving these problems and, hence, that world-involving theories of personhood are fundamentally flawed. Other chapters develop closely related themes: the proper analysis of fallibilism, the importance of the intellectual virtues and their role in epistemic agency, the kinds of accidentality that may undermine knowledge, and disjunctivism as a response to skepticism. Disjunctivism is a view that attempts to combine fallibilism with the ability to have a direct awareness of the truth . I examine this view as it is developed both in current epistemology and by the ancient Stoics. (shrink)

Modern tradition takes a person to be a rational (and moral) agent, namely an agent capable of acting on the basis of reasons – often desire-independent reasons, and particularly moral reasons. So, agency and freedom are involved in the definition of personhood. But what about the embodiment of persons? What about their rootedness in the particular circumstances of a human life – time, space, community of origin, material, and axiological culture? What about the individual identity of persons, their irreducible (...) individuality? The phenomenological notion of intentionality has a widely neglected richness of content, making it a key conceptual tool, capable of explaining not only consciousness but also rational agency, that is personhood, right from the level of the most basic and embodied instances of consciousness: perception, emotion, and spontaneous action. These should be considered as acts, rather than as states, and the discussion of the specific intentionality of these acts and their motivational relations purports to be an original contribution to a genetic phenomenology of embodied, individualized personhood and rational agency. (shrink)

This article introduces readers to the special issue on Selected Issues in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. In this paper, I make a case for a wider outlook on the ethics of AI. So far, much of the engagements with the subject have come from Euro-American scholars with obvious influences from Western epistemic traditions. I demonstrate that socio-cultural features influence our conceptions of ethics and in this case the ethics of AI. The goal of this special issue is to entertain (...) more diverse views, particularly those from Africa; it brings together six articles addressing pertinent issues in the ethics of AI. These articles address topics around artificial moral agency, patiency, personhood, social robotics, and the principle of explicability. These works offer unique contributions for and from an African perspective. I contend that a wider engagement with the ethics of AI is worthwhile as we anticipate a global deployment of artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Carol Rovan, The Bounds of Agency.

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. (...) It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach. (shrink)

In her paper titled “The End of Personhood,” Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) takes a swipe at the functionalist account of personhood. The problem with the functionalist view of personhood is that...

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. (...) It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach. 1 An earlier, and fuller, version of this paper was presented at the international conference “Supervenience, Causality, Mind and Action”, Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1), Aix-en-Provence, 9-11 May 1999. I would like to thank Thorsteinn Gylfason, Logi Gunnarsson, Torfi Sigurdsson, Andri Björnsson and Lynne Rudder Baker for their helpful comments and criticisms. My research on causality and explanation, which forms the background for this paper, has been supported by the Icelandic Council of Science and the Research Fund of the University of Iceland. (shrink)

Much has been written about what corporations owe society and whether it is appropriate to hold them responsible. In contrast, little has been written about whether anything is owed to corporations apart from what is owed to their members. And when this question has been addressed, the answer has always been that corporations are not worthy of any distinct moral consideration. This is even claimed by proponents of corporate agency. In this paper, I argue that proponents of corporate agency should (...) recognize corporations as worthy of moral consideration. Though particular views of moral status are often taken for granted in the literature, corporations can satisfy many views of moral status given the capacities often ascribed to them. They can even meet the conditions of the views assumed. I conclude by suggesting that recognizing the moral status of corporations may not be as drastic or harmful as we might imagine. (shrink)

In her paper Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism, Martha Nussbaum argues that Nietzsche’s philosophical project can be seen in part as an attempt to ‘bring about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-transformation’. She argues that, to his detriment, Nietzsche’s ‘Sovereign Individual’ epitomises a kind of stoic ideal of inner strength and self-sufficiency that ‘goes beyond Stoicism’ in its valorisation of radical self emancipation from the contingencies of life and from our own human vulnerability. Nussbaum thus urges us (...) to question whether the picture of strength in Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is really a picture of human strength at which we would be willing to, or at which we ought to, aim. In this paper I take up Nussbaum’s challenge, arguing that Nietzsche’s Sovereign Individual is both less stoical and provides us with a far more attractive picture of personhood than Nussbaum suggests. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – (...) in modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

Personhood argument is important in moral philosophy specially to determine the moral status of a being (human or non-human) and organism. Justifying moral status of these is significant and necessary because without knowing whether those substances have moral status, it is difficult to sketch a moral considering framework for moral action towards them. There are a number of standards e.g. sentience, higher cognitive capacities, the capacity to flourish, sociability, the possession of life, viability, personhood etc, to determine moral (...) status of human beings, non-human beings and organisms. In biomedical ethics it is widely discussed whether the abnormal and marginal human beings, animals and foetus are moral agents. The beings and organisms which qualify the test for moral status are considered as moral agents and the society has moral obligations to ensure their moral rights. Personhood is one of the criteria to determine a being or organism as a moral agent. In this article I will examine whether the argument of personhood is acceptable in justifying the agency of different kinds of beings and organisms. It is because the personhood requirement for the moral status is too demanding as claimed by contemporary ethicists who work for animal rights and the rights of the foetus to flourish. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – (...) in modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that much of human behavior is unconscious and automatic. This has led some philosophers to be skeptical of responsible agency or personhood in the moral sense. I present two arguments defending agency from these skeptical concerns. My first argument, the “margin of error” argument, is that the empirical evidence is consistent with the possibility that our automatic behavior deviates only slightly from what we would do if we were in full conscious control. Responsible agency requires only (...) that our actions more or less express our conscious goals and values. My second argument is a non-realist defense of moral agency. If we are willing to reject metaethical realism about agents, then there may be good reasons why we should retain the concept of agency in our moralizing, even if automaticity undermines the belief that we are really in conscious control of our behavior. We can do this by adopting a “reactive attitudes” approach to moral responsibility. On this view, agency is determined not by actual features of human psychology but by the attitudes and practices that we ought to adopt in response to the actions and motivations of individuals. (shrink)

The question of whether AI systems such as robots can or should be afforded moral agency or patiency is not one amenable either to discovery or simple reasoning, because we as societies constantly reconstruct our artefacts, including our ethical systems. Consequently, the place of AI systems in society is a matter of normative, not descriptive ethics. Here I start from a functionalist assumption, that ethics is the set of behaviour that maintains a society. This assumption allows me to exploit (...) the theoretical biology of sociality and autonomy to explain our moral intuitions. From this grounding I extend to consider possible ethics for maintaining either human- or of artefact-centred societies. I conclude that while constructing AI systems as either moral agents or patients is possible, neither is desirable. In particular, I argue that we are unlikely to construct a coherent ethics in which it it is ethical to afford AI moral subjectivity. We are therefore obliged not to build AI we are obliged to. (shrink)

Mobile health devices pose novel questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology. Many such applications not only collect sensitive data, but also aim at persuading users to change their lifestyle for the better. A major concern is that persuasion is paternalistic as it intentionally aims at changing the agent’s actions, chipping away at their autonomy. This worry roots in the philosophical conviction that perhaps the most salient feature of living autonomous lives is displayed via agency as opposed to (...) class='Hi'>patiency—our lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens to us. Being persuaded by a device telling us how to conduct our lives seemingly renders the agent passive, an inert recipient of technological commands. This agential bias, however, has led to a marginalization of patiential characteristics that are just as much part of our lives as are agential characteristics. To appreciate the inherent interlocking of acting and being acted upon, it is vital to acknowledge that agency and patiency are correlates, not mutually exclusive opposites. Furthermore, it is unclear whether an action can only count as agential so long as its causes are internal. Drawing on the extended mind and extended will framework, I argue that mHealth applications merely serve as volitional aids to the agent’s internal cognition. Autonomously set goals can be achieved more effectively via technology. To be persuaded by an mHealth device does not mainly—let alone exclusively—emphasize patiency; on the contrary, it can be an effective tool for technologically enhancing agency. (shrink)

The aim of this exploratory paper is to review an under-appreciated parallel between group agency and artificial intelligence. As both phenomena involve non-human goal-directed agents that can make a difference to the social world, they raise some similar moral and regulatory challenges, which require us to rethink some of our anthropocentric moral assumptions. Are humans always responsible for those entities’ actions, or could the entities bear responsibility themselves? Could the entities engage in normative reasoning? Could they even have rights and (...) a moral status? I will tentatively defend the (increasingly widely held) view that, under certain conditions, artificial intelligent systems, like corporate entities, might qualify as responsible moral agents and as holders of limited rights and legal personhood. I will further suggest that regulators should permit the use of autonomous artificial systems in high-stakes settings only if they are engineered to function as moral (not just intentional) agents and/or there is some liability-transfer arrangement in place. I will finally raise the possibility that if artificial systems ever became phenomenally conscious, there might be a case for extending a stronger moral status to them, but argue that, as of now, this remains very hypothetical. (shrink)

Alfred Gell puts forward a new anthropological theory of visual art, seen as a form of instrumental action: the making of things as a means of influencing the thoughts and actions of others. He shows how art objects embody complex intentionalities and mediate social agency, and he explores the psychology of patterns and perceptions, art and personhood, the control of knowledge, and the interpretation of meaning, drawing upon a diversity of artistic traditions--European, Indian, Polynesian, Melanesian, and Australian. Art and (...) Agency was completed just before Alfred Gell's death at the age of 51 in January 1997. It embodies the intellectual bravura, lively wit, vigour, and erudition for which he was admired, and will stand as an enduring testament to one of the most gifted anthropologists of his generation. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Carol Rovan, The Bounds of Agency.

This essay examines the goals of care and the exercise of guardianship authority in the long-term care of persons with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of chronic, progressive dementia. It counters philosophical views that deny both agency and personhood to individuals with Alzheimer's on definitional or analytic conceptual grounds. It develops a specific conception of the quality of life and offers a critique of hedonic conceptions of quality of life and models of guardianship that are based on a hedonic (...) legal standard of “best interests.” As an alternative, it proposes a conception of quality of life based on the notions of “semantic agency” and “memorial personhood.”. (shrink)

Should artificial intelligences ever be included as co-authors of democratic decisions? According to the conventional view in democratic theory, the answer depends on the relationship between the political unit and the entity that is either affected or subjected to its decisions. The relational conditions for inclusion as stipulated by the all-affected and all-subjected principles determine the spatial extension of democratic inclusion. Thus, AI qualifies for democratic inclusion if and only if AI is either affected or subjected to decisions by the (...) political unit in relevant ways. This paper argues that the conventional view is too simple; that it neglects democratic reasons to recognize only agents and/or moral patients as participants in decision-making. The claim defended is that AAP and ASP implicitly affirm requirements for agency and patiency. In ASP, the entity included must be an agent understood either in terms of legal status, capacity to comply with the law or ability to recognize legitimate authority. In AAP, the entity included must be a patient, understood either in terms of capacity for sentience or consciousness. Thus, the idea here is to explore the potential democratic inclusion of artificial intelligences by an updated account of the relevant conditions of agency and patiency that are implicit in democratic theory. Although conceivable that AI is or will be either affected or subjected in relevant ways to decisions made by political units, it is far less clear that AI will ever be agents or patients in the sense required for democratic inclusion. (shrink)

Article Title: ‘Being and Becoming in the Theory of Group Agency’This paper explores a bootstrapping puzzle which appears to afflict Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency. Pettit claims that the corporate persons recognised by his theory come about when a set of individuals ‘gets its act together’ by undertaking to reason at the collective level. But this is puzzling, because it is hard to see how the step such a collective must take to become a group agent – the collectivisation (...) of reason – can be taken without them already being an agent. I explore this puzzle by recounting Pettit’s account of the emergence of group agents. According to Pettit this process has two stages: a first stage in which a collective incurs the distinctive pressure exemplified by the Doctrinal Paradox, and a second in which the collective responds to that pressure by instituting decision-making mechanisms designed to secure collective rationality. After arguing that this second, response stage in Pettit’s account is not coherent, I conclude with the tentative suggestion that the personhood of groups should be seen as depending not only on the efforts of group members but also on the recognitive attitudes of other persons in a wider discursive community. (shrink)

Law, Human Agency and Autonomic Computing interrogates the legal implications of the notion and experience of human agency implied by the emerging paradigm of autonomic computing, and the socio-technical infrastructures it supports. The development of autonomic computing and ambient intelligence âe" self-governing systems âe" challenge traditional philosophical conceptions of human self-constitution and agency, with significant consequences for the theory and practice of constitutional self-government. Ideas of identity, subjectivity, agency, personhood, intentionality, and embodiment are all central to the functioning of (...) modern legal systems. But once artificial entities become more autonomic, and less dependent on deliberate human intervention, criteria like agency, intentionality and self-determination, become too fragile to serve as defining criteria for human subjectivity, personality or identity, and for characterizing the processes through which individual citizens become moral and legal subjects. Are autonomic âe" yet artificial âe" systems shrinking the distance between (acting) subjects and (acted upon) objects? How âe~distinctively humanâe(tm) will agency be in a world of autonomic computing? Or, alternatively, does autonomic computing merely disclose that we were never, in this sense, âe~humanâe(tm) anyway? A dialogue between philosophers of technology and philosophers of law, this book addresses these questions, as it takes up the unprecedented opportunity that autonomic computing and ambient intelligence offer for a reassessment of the most basic concepts of law. (shrink)

Law, Human Agency and Autonomic Computing interrogates the legal implications of the notion and experience of human agency implied by the emerging paradigm of autonomic computing, and the socio-technical infrastructures it supports. The development of autonomic computing and ambient intelligence âe" self-governing systems âe" challenge traditional philosophical conceptions of human self-constitution and agency, with significant consequences for the theory and practice of constitutional self-government. Ideas of identity, subjectivity, agency, personhood, intentionality, and embodiment are all central to the functioning of (...) modern legal systems. But once artificial entities become more autonomic, and less dependent on deliberate human intervention, criteria like agency, intentionality and self-determination, become too fragile to serve as defining criteria for human subjectivity, personality or identity, and for characterizing the processes through which individual citizens become moral and legal subjects. Are autonomic âe" yet artificial âe" systems shrinking the distance between (acting) subjects and (acted upon) objects? How âe~distinctively humanâe(tm) will agency be in a world of autonomic computing? Or, alternatively, does autonomic computing merely disclose that we were never, in this sense, âe~humanâe(tm) anyway? A dialogue between philosophers of technology and philosophers of law, this book addresses these questions, as it takes up the unprecedented opportunity that autonomic computing and ambient intelligence offer for a reassessment of the most basic concepts of law. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bioethics in a New Key Relationship and Recognition in Dementia Care Quality of Life and Agency References.

There has been much debate whether computers can be responsible. This question is usually discussed in terms of personhood and personal characteristics, which a computer may or may not possess. If a computer fulfils the conditions required for agency or personhood, then it can be responsible; otherwise not. This paper suggests a different approach. An analysis of the concept of responsibility shows that it is a social construct of ascription which is only viable in certain social contexts and (...) which serves particular social aims. If this is the main aspect of responsibility then the question whether computers can be responsible no longer hinges on the difficult problem of agency but on the possibly simpler question whether responsibility ascriptions to computers can fulfil social goals. The suggested solution to the question whether computers can be subjects of responsibility is the introduction of a new concept, called “quasi-responsibility” which will emphasise the social aim of responsibility ascription and which can be applied to computers. (shrink)

This paper adds another argument to the rising tide of panic about robots and AI. The argument is intended to have broad civilization-level significance, but to involve less fanciful speculation about the likely future intelligence of machines than is common among many AI-doomsayers. The argument claims that the rise of the robots will create a crisis of moral patiency. That is to say, it will reduce the ability and willingness of humans to act in the world as responsible moral (...) agents, and thereby reduce them to moral patients. Since that ability and willingness is central to the value system in modern liberal democratic states, the crisis of moral patiency has a broad civilization-level significance: it threatens something that is foundational to and presupposed in much contemporary moral and political discourse. I defend this argument in three parts. I start with a brief analysis of an analogous argument made in pop culture. Though those arguments turn out to be hyperbolic and satirical, they do prove instructive as they illustrates a way in which the rise of robots could impact upon civilization, even when the robots themselves are neither malicious nor powerful enough to bring about our doom. I then introduce the argument from the crisis of moral patiency, defend its main premises and address objections. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-consciousness and moral agency depend crucially on both embodied and social aspects of human existence, and that the capacity for practical wisdom, phronesis, is central to moral personhood. The nature of practical wisdom is elucidated by drawing on rival analyses of expertise. Although ethical expertise and practical wisdom differ importantly, they are alike in that we can acquire them only in interaction with other persons and through habituation. The analysis of moral agency and practical wisdom (...) is framed by Dennett's proposal that moral personhood requires satisfaction of six conditions, including self-consciousness. (shrink)

Over the coming century, the accelerating advance of bioenhancement technologies, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) may significantly broaden the qualitative range of sentient and intelligent beings. This article proposes a taxonomy of such beings, ranging from modified animals to bioenhanced humans to advanced forms of robots and AI. It divides these diverse beings into three moral and legal categories—animals, persons, and presumed persons—describing the moral attributes and legal rights of each category. In so doing, the article sets forth a framework (...) for extending the concept of personhood well beyond its current boundaries, assigning moral standing to a variety of biological and nonbiological beings. The author concludes that six of the eight subgroups of such beings deserve to be treated as persons or as if they were persons, with full consideration for their presumed interests, rights, obligations, and capabilities for ethically significant agency and patiency. (shrink)

Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's writings on social and political issues have attracted wide audiences. Section 2 introduces his contributions on: how people reason as agents within society; social determinants of people's (lack of) access to goods and of the effective freedoms and agency they enjoy or lack; and associated advocacy of self-specification of identity and high expectations for ‘voice’ and reasoning democracy. Section 3 considers his relation to social theory, his tools for theorizing action in society, and his limited degree of (...) attention to work by sociologists and to capitalism and power structures. Section 4 characterizes a style marked by conceptual refinement, emphases on complexity and individuality, including personal individuality, and reformist optimism. Section 5 shows the features from Sections 3 and 4 at work in his conception of personhood that advocates freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. Similarly, Section 6 addresses his conception of public reasoning and neglect of the sociology of democracy. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features in many countries. Sen's programmes for critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics play, nevertheless, a normic role, while his analytical formats help investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice, and democratic participation. (shrink)

This chapter, contrary to moderate, radical and limited communitarians’ attempts to include and defend human rights in African political thought, shifts our attention to the primacy of needs in African political thought. It does so by appeal primarily to the ethical concept of personhood in African philosophy. It offers an interpretation of the relationship between ethics and politics inherent in the normative concept of personhood, which has tended to be construed to entail the politics of human rights. To (...) unfold a novel interpretation of politics in relation to the ethical notion of personhood, it relies on Menkiti’s philosophical writings that points us to the politics of duties. It proceeds to explain the importance of duties in the political thought associated with Afro-communitarianism in terms of the primacy of needs. The basic insight that emerges in this chapter is that the provision of basic needs is indispensable for the kind of agency required for the achievement of personhood. (shrink)

I consider whether there is a plausible conception of personal identity that can accommodate the ‘Multiplicity Thesis’ (MT), the thesis that some ways of creating and deploying multiple distinct online personae can bring about the existence of multiple persons where before there was only one. I argue that an influential Kantian line of thought, according to which a person is a unified locus of rational agency, is well placed to accommodate the thesis. I set out such a line of thought (...) as developed by Carol Rovane, and consider the conditions that would have to be in place for the possibility identified by MT to be realised. Finally I briefly consider the prospects for MT according to neo-Lockean and animalist views of personhood. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Caesar Alimsinya Atuire’s essay “African Perspectives of Moral Status: A Framework for Evaluating Global Bioethical Issues”. Atuire’s essay aims to contribute to global ethical discourse by articulating a systematic account of an African ethical perspective, specifically focusing on the themes of personhood, moral status and the legal question of abortion. We make three objections against Atuire’s essay. Firstly, we argue that a plausible approach to African personhood must consider both its individualistic and relational features, rather (...) than merely emphasize the relational component. The second objection focuses on the theory of moral status, and it has two parts: (a) we insist that a correct understanding of the concept of moral status must construe it as a moral patiency rather than a moral agency term. We believe that Atuire’s view errs in regarding it as the latter. (b) we argue that contrary to Atuire’s assertions, Thaddeus Metz’s friendliness theory of moral status does a better job than Atuire’s object moral status (OMS) and subject moral status (SMS) views of moral status. The final objection is that maybe before we reflect on the legal status of abortion, as ethicists, we should begin by considering the ethical status of abortion in light of African axiological resources. In the final analysis, the paper appreciates Atuire’s contribution to African ethical theory, but it argues that much work still needs to be done before it can be suitable to provide a global framework for evaluating global bioethical issues. (shrink)

Some habits are vital to who we are in that they shape both our self-perception and how we are seen by others. This is so, I argue, because there is a constitutive link between what I shall call ‘identity-shaping habits’ and narrative agency. Identity-shaping habits are paradigmatically acquired and performed by persons. The ontology of personhood involves both synchronic and diachronic dimensions which are structurally analogous to the synchronic acquisition and the diachronic performance of habits, and makes persons distinctly (...) suitable to being shaped by habits. Since habits differ vastly in their scope, I develop a conceptualization that carves out defining features of identity-shaping habits. Such habits, I venture, fundamentally alter a person’s embodiment such that the alterations to their psychological and physiological make-up vitally inform their persistence—if not metaphysically, then at least practically by crucially shaping one’s narrative agency. (shrink)

This paper consists of brief critical comments on Chapter 8, “Personifying Group Agents”, of Christian List’s and Philip Pettit’s book Group Agency (2011). A first set of objections concerns the chapter’s history of ideas. List and Pettit present the history of the idea of corporate personhood as divided between “intrinsicist” and “performative” conceptions. I argue that this distinction does not fit with the historical record and that it makes important political and legal divides and battles invisible. A second set (...) of criticisms builds on perspectives provided by the sociology of knowledge and by John Dewey. My guiding thought here is that “person”, at least when the term is applied to groups, is what political scientists call an “essentially contested concept”. My third set of comments targets the rudimentary political philosophy of List’s and Pettit’s book. I suggest that List’s and Pettit’s corporate personhood theory turns out to be normatively irrelevant; that their concept of “respect” is marred by an ambiguity; and that it remains unclear how their work constitutes progress in guarding against corporate power. (shrink)

Explores the benefits and consequences of archaeological theorizing on and interpretation of the social agency of nonhumans as relational beings capable of producing change in the world. Cross-examines traditional understanding of agency and personhood, presenting a globally diverse set of case studies that cover a range of cultural, geographical, and historical contexts"--Provided by publisher.

So-called ‘new materialism’ enables feminist theorists to emphasize the agential quality of matter, thereby challenging the notion that matter, particularly the biological body, is passive and inert – a notion that is gendered given the traditional association of passive matter with the feminine. While appreciating the materialist turn increasingly evident in feminist theory, Claire Colebrook warns feminist thinkers against an uncritical appeal to the vitalist tradition, which continues to privilege action, creativity and productivity over that materiality which remains unactualized potential. (...) After outlining the new materialist re-conception of matter, this paper considers the idea of a ‘passive vitalism’, which Colebrook develops in light of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's co-authored works. This paper shares Colebrook's contention that the new materialist emphasis on the agency of matter simply extends the model of the human person to the rest of nature. However, the final part of this paper begins to indicate how a theological materialism is able to affirm both the agency and patiency of matter in ways that challenge the view that the avowal of divine transcendence is inevitably opposed to the integrity of material immanence. (shrink)

Paget Henry’s (1997; 2000) narratives about the domains of existence in relation to human/social agency raise interesting issues about the theory and praxis of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. In it, even when the relationships between agency and the material, social and spiritual domains of existence were thematized differently according to the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought, the problematic of agency among the three domains raises similar questions across the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophy in relation to the theory and praxis (...) of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. The problem here relates to the charge whether enslaved and colonized people could be credited with cognitive, ethical and social agency in the face of a structure that presents different existential challenges to the ability of the Caribbean people to realise their personhood and live a worthwhile life. This paper argues that the existential issues raised by causal determinism—whether scientific, social or spiritual, rear their ugly heads across the three domains of existence and also through the historical and analytical phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought. The thesis supported in this paper is that, contrary to western scholarship, the Caribbean people have always possessed agency and have used this to overcome existential challenges at different phases of their history. The question whether they have always succeeded in doing this is a different question. (shrink)

Today we consider ourselves to be free and equal persons, capable of acting rationally and autonomously in both practical and theoretical contexts. The essays in this volume show how this conception was first articulated in a fully systematic fashion by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Twelve leading scholars shed new light on Kant's philosophy, with each devoting particular attention to at least one of three aspects of this conception: autonomy, freedom, and personhood. Some focus on clarifying the philosophical (...) content of Kant's position, while others consider how his views on these issues cohere with his other distinctive doctrines, and yet others focus on the historical impact that these doctrines had on his immediate successors and on our present thought. Their essays offer important new perspectives on some of the most fundamental issues that we continue to confront in modern society. (shrink)

In this essay, I use the theological anthropology of the apostle Paul as a diagnostic lens in order to bring into focus some implicit assumptions about human personhood in the goals and methods of treatment with psychotropic medications. I argue that Paul views the body as a mode of participation in larger relational matrices in both vulnerable and vital ways. He thus sees the self as constituted relationally rather than as fundamentally isolated and self-determining. Such an understanding of (...) class='Hi'>personhood yields an account of human agency as co-constituted and freedom as interpersonally mediated and sustained. From this perspective, the proper goal for psychiatric medication is the removal of barriers to life-giving human connections; methods of care for persons in psychological distress may include medication, but they also require embodied personal encounter. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Neither of the seemingly straightforward approaches of retaining the human at the top of the hierarchy of beings and of flattening human personhood solves the question of non-human personhood. But the concept of personhood does have the resources to address this issue, if we take it as a kind of moral agency. The way that humans develop moral agency through their temporality, historicity and community must be mapped onto the (...) class='Hi'>personhood of animals, but this is extremely difficult and must await more scientific knowledge and wiser and more empathetic human understanding. It is in our hands, rather than the commandment of a non-human reality. (shrink)

Neither of the seemingly straightforward approaches of retaining the human at the top of the hierarchy of beings and of flattening human personhood solves the question of non-human personhood. But the concept of personhood does have the resources to address this issue, if we take it as a kind of moral agency. The way that humans develop moral agency through their temporality, historicity and community must be mapped onto the personhood of animals, but this is extremely (...) difficult and must await more scientific knowledge and wiser and more empathetic human understanding. It is in our hands, rather than the commandment of a non-human reality. (shrink)

We need an account of corporate agency that is temporally robust – one that will help future people to cope with challenges posed by corporate groups in a range of credible futures. In particular, we need to bequeath moral resources that enable future people to avoid futures dominated by corporate groups that have no regard for human beings. This paper asks how future philosophers living in broken or digital futures might re-imagine contemporary debates about corporate agency. It argues that the (...) only temporally robust account is moralised extreme collectivism, where full moral personhood is accorded to those corporate groups that are reliably disposed to respond appropriately to moral reasons. (shrink)

In contemporary human and social sciences, it has become almost a commonplace to attribute to objects and artefacts the features of personhood and subjectivity. In the last decades, significant attempts have been made, in different disciplines, to show how things and material realities have the power to act upon the world and to transform human cognition as well as social processes. In order to describe the transformative power of things, scholars have then recurred to the semantic sphere of action (...) and will, to stop seeing agency anthropocentrically as a solely human property, by recognizing to inanimate entities, if not intention and desire, at least the role of social «agents» or «actors». By focusing on the recourse to the notion of «agency», I will single out some of the internal tensions that still inhabit this scientific trend, and, by drawing on the notion of «performativity», introduced by J.L. Austin and developed by Judith Butler, I will suggest a way to develop further the entanglement between material culture and the construction of identity. (shrink)

Basic Questions The following are among the basic questions discussed in this essay: (1) What is the concept of a person? (2) What properties make something a person? (3) Is personhood a matter of degree? (4) Is potential personhood morally significant? (5) Is species membership morally significant? (6) Why is the concept of a person important? Important Arguments The important arguments that are examined include the following: (1) Counterexample arguments: (a) Whole brain death and upper brain death. (b) (...) Brain transplants. (c) Currently irreparable damage versus impossibility of resuscitation. (2) The reprogramming argument. (3) The generalized potentialities argument. (4) Potentialities and comas: active versus passive. (5) Anti-speciesism and the common sense generality of the concept of a person: deities, angels, disembodied souls, extraterrestrials. Important Positions Among the important positions considered are the following: (1) Consciousness is sufficient for personhood. (2) Self-consciousness is necessary for personhood. (3) The capacity for thought is necessary for personhood. (4) Moral agency is necessary for personhood. (shrink)