Adrian Piper. Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception
2008, APRA Foundation Berlin
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Added by: Sara PeppePublisher’s Note:
Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain.
Comment : Best discussed alongside Kantian and Humean texts. In particular, the work considered requires prior knowledge of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Hume's conception of the self.Brancazio, Nick. Gender and the senses of agency2018, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18, pp. 425-440-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
This paper details the ways that gender structures our senses of agency on an enactive framework. While it is common to discuss how gender influences higher, narrative levels of cognition, as with the formulation of goals and in considerations about our identities, it is less clear how gender structures our more immediate, embodied processes, such as the minimal sense of agency. While enactivists often acknowledge that gender and other aspects of our socio-cultural situatedness shape our cognitive processes, there is little work on how this shaping takes place. In order to provide such an account, I will first look at the minimal and narrative senses of agency (Gallagher in New Ideas in Psychology, 30(1), 15-31, 2012), a distinction that draws from work on minimal and narrative selves (Zahavi 2010). Next I will explain the influence of the narrative sense of agency on the minimal sense of agency through work on intention-formation (Pacherie in Psyche, 13(1), 1-30, 2007). After a discussion of the role of gender in the narrative sense of agency, I'll expand on work by Haslanger (2012) and Young (1990) to offer three ways in which gender influences the minimal sense of agency, showing the effect that gender has on how we perceive our possibilities for interaction in a phenomenologically immediate, pre-reflective manner.Comment : available in this BlueprintDawn M Wilson. Facing the Camera: Self-portraits of Photographers as Artists2012, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70(1): 56-66.-
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Added by: Hans Maes
Introduction: Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography - a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is radically different from previous visual arts.In Section I, I explain why self-portraiture offers a way to address the apparent conflict between automatism and agency that is debated in the philosophy of art. In Section II, I explain why mirrors play an important function in the production of a traditional self-portrait. In Sections III and IV, I discuss how photographers may create self-portraits with and without the use of mirrors to show how photography offers unique and important new forms of self-portraiture.Comment : Argues that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is radically different from previous visual arts. Demonstrates that automatism need not stand in competition or conflict with artistic agency.Artworks to use with this text:
Ilse Bing, Self-portrait with Leica (1931)
It is usual for portraits to show a person's head either in profile or in a frontal position, but this self-portrait shows both alternatives simultaneously. It also depicts the presence of two mirrors in such a way that we are in a position to judge that the camera has recorded its own reflection. Thus, we see both the face of the artist and the "face" of the camera: it is a double self-portrait. Argues that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is radically different from previous visual arts. Demonstrates that automatism need not stand in competition or conflict with artistic agency.
Artworks to use with this text:
Ilse Bing, Self-portrait with Leica (1931)
It is usual for portraits to show a person's head either in profile or in a frontal position, but this self-portrait shows both alternatives simultaneously. It also depicts the presence of two mirrors in such a way that we are in a position to judge that the camera has recorded its own reflection. Thus, we see both the face of the artist and the "face" of the camera: it is a double self-portrait.
Kuhse, Helga. Critical Notice: Why Killing Is Not Always Worse – and Is Sometimes Better – Than Letting Die1998, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (4):371-374.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: The philosophical debate over the moral difference between killing and letting die has obvious relevance for the contemporary public debate over voluntary euthanasia. Winston Nesbitt claims to have shown that killing someone is, other things being equal, always worse than allowing someone to die. But this conclusion is illegitimate. While Nesbitt is correct when he suggests that killing is sometimes worse than letting die, this is not always the case. In this article, I argue that there are occasions when it is better to kill than to let dieLynch, Kate E.. Heritability and causal reasoning2017, Biology & Philosophy 32: 25–49.-
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Added by: Björn Freter, Contributed by: Hannah Rubin
Abstract: Gene–environment (G–E) covariance is the phenomenon whereby genetic differences bias variation in developmental environment, and is particularly problematic for assigning genetic and environmental causation in a heritability analysis. The interpretation of these cases has differed amongst biologists and philosophers, leading some to reject the utility of heritability estimates altogether. This paper examines the factors that influence causal reasoning when G–E covariance is present, leading to interpretive disagreement between scholars. It argues that the causal intuitions elicited are influenced by concepts of agency and blame-worthiness, and are intimately tied with the conceptual understanding of the phenotype under investigation. By considering a phenotype-specific approach, I provide an account as to why causal ascriptions can differ depending on the interpreter. Phenotypes like intelligence, which have been the primary focus of this debate, are more likely to spark disagreement for the interpretation of G–E covariance cases because the concept and ideas about its ‘normal development’ relatively ill-defined and are a subject of debate. I contend that philosophical disagreement about causal attributions in G–E covariance cases are in essence disagreements regarding how a phenotype should be defined and understood. This moves the debate from one of an ontological flavour concerning objective causal claims, to one concerning the conceptual, normative and semantic dependencies.Comment : This paper discusses difficulties for determining whether traits like intelligence are heritable, drawing on philosophical work regarding causal intuitions. It's accessible enough to use in a lower-level undergraduate course, but also generates good discussion in a graduate level course. It could be used to further a discussion about the nature of genes or in a discussion of philosophy of race/gender from a biological perspective.Mackenzie, Catriona (ed.), Stoljar, Natalie (ed.). Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Automony, Agency, and the Social Self2000, Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa
Publisher's Note: This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essays analyze the complex ways in which oppression can impair an agent's capacity for autonomy, and investigate connections, neglected by standard accounts, between autonomy and other aspects of the agent, including self-conception, self-worth, memory, and the imagination.Comment : All but one of the papers in this volume are writtn by underrepresented authors.McIntosh, Esther. John Macmurray’s Religious Philosophy: What It Means to Be a Person2011, Routledge.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Esther McIntosh
Publisher's Note: Recent dissatisfaction with individualism and the problems of religious pluralism make this an opportune time to reassess the way in which we define ourselves and conduct our relationships with others. The philosophical writings of John Macmurray are a useful resource for performing this examination, and recent interest in Macmurray's work has been growing steadily. A full-scale critical examination of Macmurray's religious philosophy has not been published and this work fills this gap, sharing his insistence that we define ourselves through action and through person-to-person relationships, while critiquing his account of the ensuing political and religious issues. The key themes in this work are the concept of the person and the ethics of personal relations.Comment : There are hardly any women working on the concept of the person or on Macmurray's philosophy. As well as being of use for modules on personhood, this book is useful for philosophy of religion, philosophy of education, feminist ethics and theology.Nida-Rümelin, Martine. Freedom and the Phenomenology of Agency2018, Erkenntnis 83 (1):61-87.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Nora Heinzelmann
Abstract: Free action and microphysical determination are incompatible but this is so only in virtue of a genuine conflict between microphysical determination with any active behavior. I introduce active behavior as the veridicality condition of agentive experiences and of perceptual experiences and argue that these veridicality conditions are fulfilled in many everyday cases of human and non-human behavior and that they imply the incompatibility of active behavior with microphysical determination. The main purpose of the paper is to show that the view proposed about active behavior leads to a natural compromise between libertarianism and compatibilism, which avoids the flaws of both positions while preserving their central insights.Reader, Soran. The Other Side of Agency2007, Philosophy 82 (4):579-604-
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Abstract:
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.
Comment : This text offers an unique perspective of personhood which aims to push against the prevailing norm, in both contemporary analytic philosophy and broader culture, of viewing persons as agent. As Reader points out, this norm has led to the embedding of unchallenged assumptions that a person as agent is one who matters, who counts, while a person as patient is one who does not. "When I am passive, incapable, constrained, dependent, I am less a person, I count less." In challenging this underlying assumption, Reader addresses common political, ethical, conceptual and metaphysical questions about the self in a new way. However, she also offers a clear and straightforward outline of the conception of person as agent, including four features which she deems as central to the conception: action, capability, freedom and independence. For this reason, the text would be useful first, in clarifying the existing agential perpsective, but also as an alternative, or a direct counter, to this perspective and the more traditional 20th century approaches to investigating the self. For example, it might be useful in a political philosophy course as a counter weight to Rawls, Taylor, Nussbaum, and their conceptions of the person as citizen.Steward, Helen. A Metaphysics for Freedom2012, Oxford: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Emily Paul
Publisher's note: A metaphysics for freedom argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. It offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.Comment : Specific chapters (e.g. 1 and 4) would be useful for an advanced philosophy of mind/action course, but also it could be really nice to read the whole book in a dedicated Masters course - reading and discussing one chapter per seminar. Chapter 1 is especially useful because it outlines Steward's position, 'agency incompatibilism' which it could be useful to have students discuss and compare with classical compatibilism and incompatibilism. Chapter 4 is also a great one to use because it discusses animal agency - this could perhaps come towards the end of an intermediate philosophy of mind course - once students have already learned something about agency when considered in relation to humans.- 1
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