I'm thinking of making a list of words falsely reified by modern philosophical practise. Having argued that 'normativity' is one, I've come to suspect that 'agency' is another.
This is one of those words that carries such importance in moral philosophy that to raise questions about it might almost seem heretical, but really, why should any of us be called upon to explain 'agency'?
I am familiar, first-personally, with action and with occasional deliberation about action. I have acquaintance with motivations and with principles that I sometimes use to deliberate. I have a keen sense of needing to reach out into the world and to see myself reflected in it, and I understand that I have a sense of the importance of perceived states of affairs.
Third-personally, I am familiar with the action of others, and I hear a great deal about their own experiences of deliberation, and I understand that their own judgments and feelings of importance will differ from mine.
I am most certainly not familiar with any phenomenon or property called 'agency'.
Note: this is not a positivist-inspired rejection of things I can't point to, for my net is far wider than that older one. I am completely willing to accept the existence of all kinds of objects and properties, and if science can't find the phenomenal character of my emotions or of your deliberation, then tough goddamned cookies for science.
If 'agency' is just a signpost-word, something we use to indicate the presence of an entitity that can act, then no questions are begged. In fact, before 1950, the word was almost exclusively used in just this way: 'an agency of social change', which does not reify the term but merely points to an entity's ability to act. In 1973, however, Gary Watson's "Free Agency" appeared, and the title alone indicates that a shift towards our current situation was beginning. Watson repetaedly used the term as a substantive noun to which we could attach adjectives and qualifiers. In a closely related field, psychologists were suddenly arguing for things like 'the centrality of a self-efficacy mechanism in human agency'... not only was agency a thing, now it had parts.
As is the case with the term 'normativity', this is no harmless reification. Rather, various important views pride themselves on being able to make sense of agency, and some even consider the state of being an agent as having a kind of ultimate value. For example, arch-Kantian Christine Korsgaard (2009) is clear: to act contrary to the Categorical Imperative isn't just to act immorally, as old Kant would have said. It's something more profound: it's to lose your agency.
Oh, NO! Not my agency! What will I ever do without that?
Answer: exactly what I have always done.
This is one of those words that carries such importance in moral philosophy that to raise questions about it might almost seem heretical, but really, why should any of us be called upon to explain 'agency'?
I am familiar, first-personally, with action and with occasional deliberation about action. I have acquaintance with motivations and with principles that I sometimes use to deliberate. I have a keen sense of needing to reach out into the world and to see myself reflected in it, and I understand that I have a sense of the importance of perceived states of affairs.
Third-personally, I am familiar with the action of others, and I hear a great deal about their own experiences of deliberation, and I understand that their own judgments and feelings of importance will differ from mine.
I am most certainly not familiar with any phenomenon or property called 'agency'.
Note: this is not a positivist-inspired rejection of things I can't point to, for my net is far wider than that older one. I am completely willing to accept the existence of all kinds of objects and properties, and if science can't find the phenomenal character of my emotions or of your deliberation, then tough goddamned cookies for science.
If 'agency' is just a signpost-word, something we use to indicate the presence of an entitity that can act, then no questions are begged. In fact, before 1950, the word was almost exclusively used in just this way: 'an agency of social change', which does not reify the term but merely points to an entity's ability to act. In 1973, however, Gary Watson's "Free Agency" appeared, and the title alone indicates that a shift towards our current situation was beginning. Watson repetaedly used the term as a substantive noun to which we could attach adjectives and qualifiers. In a closely related field, psychologists were suddenly arguing for things like 'the centrality of a self-efficacy mechanism in human agency'... not only was agency a thing, now it had parts.
As is the case with the term 'normativity', this is no harmless reification. Rather, various important views pride themselves on being able to make sense of agency, and some even consider the state of being an agent as having a kind of ultimate value. For example, arch-Kantian Christine Korsgaard (2009) is clear: to act contrary to the Categorical Imperative isn't just to act immorally, as old Kant would have said. It's something more profound: it's to lose your agency.
Oh, NO! Not my agency! What will I ever do without that?
Answer: exactly what I have always done.
4 comments:
Please add "consciousness" to the list. Ta.
An interesting suggestion. I'm not entirely convinced, but I definitely see where you're coming from on that one.
Agent was a common expression in moral philosophy prior to 1950. In fact, agent appears prominently in Hobbes' Leviathan as contrasted against its opposite "accident." Agent comes from agere in Latin meaning to do and so it arises especially in discussions of determinism and human freedom. It is not simply a post 1950s phenomenon but one that occurs in our history.
Anonymous, I was fairly explicit in naming my target in this post, and it wasn't the word "agent".
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