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Browsing Philosophy by Subject "Agency"
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Item Open Access Autonomy, Automaticity, and Attention: Why Empirical Research on Consciousness Matters to Autonomous Agency(2015-08-28) Fenton, Brandon Daniel; Dimock, SusanThis dissertation addresses the question: what is personal autonomy? It begins by examining the main theoretical accounts of autonomous agency currently on offer. Although each of the available approaches faces significant criticism, I defend a revised internalist (and functionalist) account of autonomous agency which draws primarily upon the work of Frankfurt, Dworkin, and Bratman. Next, I show that recent work in scientific psychology (viz. research on automaticity) reveals new dangers for any account of autonomous agency (including my own newly revised internalist account). My response to the identified threat of automaticity draws upon research in the psychology of attention and, more extensively, on theorizing upon the unity of consciousness. I use a number of insights gleaned from these areas of research to then construct a more robust theoretical understanding of autonomous agency—one that addresses the worries generated by automaticity by proposing new and additional necessary and sufficient conditions for autonomy. What these new conditions entail is that individuals must possess a particular form of unified consciousness across time in order to have acted autonomously.Item Open Access Becoming to Belong: An Essay on Agency and Democratic Rights(2017-07-27) Mcmanus, Matthew Allan; Jacobs, Lesley AlanMy project develops what I call a dignity oriented model of human agency, and a related approach to human rights; especially democratic rights. I also juxtapose my model of agency against those offered by the liberal and post-modern approaches, and the political positions which flow from these approaches. In the first Chapter, I characterize our dignity as flowing from an individuals agency to engage in self-authorship by defining themselves through redefining the socio-historical boundaries within which they exist. The socio-historical boundaries are those which can be changed through the applications of what I refer to as individuals expressive capabilities. These expressive capabilities can be amplified or constrained depending on the innate capacity of the individuals in question and the particular socio-historical boundaries which constrain them. My argument is that the more ones expressive capabilities are amplified the more individuals can be said to have lived a dignified life. In the next Chapter, I argue that amplifying human dignity would involve realizing two human rights. The first is a right to participate in the democratic authorship of political and legal institutions, and the laws which flow from these. The second is a right for all individuals to enjoy an equality of expressive capabilities, except where inequalities flow from their morally significant choices. These rights would enable us to lead lives of dignified self-authorship. In Chapter Three, I deepen my philosophical account of agency by trying to illustrate how the innate human capacity to develop novel statements in semantic communities is one of the most prominent expressive capabilities which enable us to redefine the boundaries which constrain us. In Chapter Four and Chapter Five, I develop criticisms of the liberal and post-modern approaches to agency. I suggest that both of them offer unique and important insights that can help us understand what is required to amplify human dignity. None the less, I claim neither approach can satisfy our contemporary need for a model of agency and politics which is both philosophically generalizable, and yet sensitive to the actual constraints facing individuals. Finally, in Chapters Six through Eight, I critically analyze several major theoretical traditions and decisions in the Canadian, American, and European legal systems. I suggest that we should adopt my dignity oriented approach to agency as a normative guide for how to best reach a just outcome in cases involving democratic rights: including the Sauv, Williams, and Hirst decisions. In particular, I suggest we should adopt a two step test when determining how to decide a case involving democratic rights. The first is to ask how best to amplify the dignity of the individuals involved. The second is to ask how to ascribe equal value to the democratic rights of the individuals involved. Finally, I conclude by summarizing my argument and offering some suggestions for the future. In particular, I account for why I devote so little attention to realizing the second of the rights I argue for: the right to equality of expressive capabilities.Item Open Access Minimizing Stigma, Improving Care: An Investigation into Empathy and Narrative for Understanding the Lived Experience of Schizophrenia(2022-08-08) Molas, Andrew; Boran, Idil; Reaume, GeoffreyThis dissertation explores a phenomenological account of empathy and narrative-based medicine. Its objective is to offer a sustained critical discussion of the benefits of a phenomenological account of empathy and narrative-based medicine for understanding the experiences of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, improving therapeutic relationships, minimizing the stigma of mental illness, and supporting people with schizophrenia in their recovery. Part one of this dissertation critically examines the nature of empathy and highlights the challenges that impede our ability to understand the experiences of persons with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has historically been viewed as a condition which defies empathic understanding. This view, endorsed by Karl Jaspers, has been influential in shaping current depictions of schizophrenia in Anglo-American medical literature and informing how clinicians interact with those who are diagnosed with this condition. The dissertation makes the argument that Jaspers' approach is limited and sets the theoretical basis for a more robust account of empathy in the conceptualization of relations with persons with schizophrenia. Part two of this dissertation defends a phenomenological account of empathy, developed by Edith Stein, and presents it as an alternative to simulation theories of empathy. Simulation theories of empathy involve using one's own cognitive resources to replicate the experiences and mental states of others by imagining being in their situation. But one problem with this approach is that it runs the risk of co-opting their experiences and substituting our own, which is morally problematic. In response, Stein's theory offers a solution by recognizing that empathy involves appreciating someones experiences as it is for them and thus it avoids the assimilation of the experiences of others. Part three of this dissertation explores applications of Stein's theory of empathy and examines narrative-based medicine as a model of therapy. The narratives of persons with schizophrenia offer crucial insight into their lived experience of illness. By engaging with the lived experiences and narratives of others, caregivers can learn improved ways of understanding and supporting people diagnosed with schizophrenia as they restore a sense of self that has been harmed due to the effects of stigma that portray mental illness negatively.Item Open Access Normative Primitivism and the Possibility of Practical Thought(2022-12-14) Steadman, Samuel David; Myers, RobertReasons are essentially addressed to agents. Many contemporary efforts to illuminate this feature of reasons effectively reduce them to features of agents, e.g., to rationally-pruned desires, plans, or roles. Such reductive accounts neglect a second feature of reasons, namely, their capacity to transcend agential nature. They also neglect a feature of agents, namely, their orientation to normative entities as entities that transcend—and thus, that can guide and give shape to—agential nature. This dissertation offers a conception of the relation running from reasons to agents that captures both the transcendent character of reasons and the transcended character of agents. I synthesize two strains of thought about reasons. The first captures their formal dependence on agency, which is manifested in each reason’s being essentially a reason for some agent to do or think something. The second captures their substantive independence from agency, which is manifested in the fact that reasons needn’t answer to what agents are like. These two strains of thought can be united in a single conception, but only if the elaboration of the formal features of reasons isn’t taken to license the reduction of reasons to features of agents. In fact, unifying the two in a single conception requires that the relevant agential features be themselves depicted as formally dependent on features of reasons, so that the explanatory landscape for the philosophy of reasons and agents is properly represented in terms of the symmetric relations of a circle, rather than the asymmetric relations of reduction. This refusal to reduce is best framed by primitivism about reasons, i.e., the view that characterizes the idea of reason as primitive. But such a primitivism must nevertheless supply the materials for an account of the practical thought by which agents can receive reasons as addressed to them. I seek to demonstrate how an idea can be primitive while at the same time supplying those materials, and thereby explaining the possibility of practical thought.Item Open Access The Moral Agency of Animals: Responsible in Practice(2015-08-28) Ring, Rebecca Lynn; Andrews, Kristin A.Mark Rowlands argues some non-human animals can be moral subjects that can act for moral reasons, but cannot be moral agents because they lack sufficient understanding for responsibility. I argue Rowlands’ mere moral subjects are responding to, not acting for, moral reasons. Action for moral reasons is necessarily normative and the actor must be able to track the moral reason. I argue Rowlands’ conflation of moral agency and moral autonomy results in falsely denying responsibility to animals. Moral autonomy is an ideal to which some humans can aim. Responsibility is not contingent on this ability, but on the cognitive and volitional capacities of the individual and her normative social practices. Some animals can be moral agents in virtue of their normative social practices that involve harm to others and sharing resources. Moral agency and responsibility can be ascribed to some animals in terms of their intentional agency within such practices.