Agent-causation

Bishop, John

doi:10.1093/mind/xcii.365.61

Cited by 110 publications

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“…ademds de los trabajos ya citados tambidn BISHOP (1989). * N. T.: los tdrminos ingleses son "agent causation" y "origination of action".…”

Section: La Actividad Como Principio De Una Identidad Sustancial De Cunclassified

Los fundamentos de la libertad

Buchheim¹

2013

Tópicos

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Deben distinguirse tres condiciones para la libertad humana: (1) la realidad de la actividad de vivir de los individuos, (2) la relevancia causal de los estados mentales y (3) un irreductible aspecto subjetivo en vivir las cosas. Estas condiciones proveen una manera de describir la relación entre el cuerpo y el alma, tal que las condiciones se cumplen: primero, la realidad de la actividad implícitamente asume la identidad sustancial del cuerpo y el alma en cada actividad individual que existe como cuerpo. Segundo, existen, sin embargo, diferencias formales fundamentales entre los estados mentales y los estados físicos de tales cuerpos, de manera que la dualidad de los estados poseídos por un individuo viviente tienen que ser reconocidos junto con la identidad sustancial de su cuerpo y alma. De ahí que la relevancia causal de los estados mentales para la ocurrencia de ciertas acciones pueda actuar como la marca peculiar de la libertad. Finalmente, la distinción entre la existencia objetivamente reconocible de estados y la posesión subjetiva de los mismos es la razón de que ciertas acciones no sean deducidas del conocimiento objetivo de la realidad, por muy completos que sean. Este argumento muestra que las acciones no pueden verse como la consecuencia lógica de los estados precedentes del mundo, aún si las acciones en cuestión fueron determinadas causal y completamente. Tal visión de las acciones es, no obstante, la justificación estándar de que la libertad sea incompatible con el determinismo.

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“…ademds de los trabajos ya citados tambidn BISHOP (1989). * N. T.: los tdrminos ingleses son "agent causation" y "origination of action".…”

Section: La Actividad Como Principio De Una Identidad Sustancial De Cunclassified

Los fundamentos de la libertad

Buchheim¹

2013

Tópicos

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“…We thus note merely that ascriptions of agency and purpose represent a standard language game (in a loosely Wittgensteinian sense) in accounts of human behavior. Humans regularly offer teleological or 'means-ends' explanations in which reasons appear as causes of behavior (von Wright 1971;Chisholm 1976;Bishop 1983;O'Connor 1995). If human action, reasons, motives, intents, and purposes do not offer an adequate vocabulary and framework for the attribution of teleological explanations, nothing does.…”

Section: Human Agency and Teleologymentioning

confidence: 99%

On emergence, agency, and organization

2006

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Ultimately we will only understand biological agency when we have developed a theory of the organization of biological processes, and science is still a long way from attaining that goal. It may be possible nonetheless to develop a list of necessary conditions for the emergence of minimal biological agency. The authors offer a model of molecular autonomous agents which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary (and, we believe, conjointly sufficient) for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construction; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison. When combined with the arguments from preadaptation and multiple realizability, the existence of these agents is sufficient to establish ontological emergence as against what one might call Weinbergian reductionism. Minimal biological agents are emphatically not conscious agents, and accepting their existence does not commit one to any robust theory of human agency. Nor is there anything mystical, dualistic, or non-empirical about the emergence of agency in the biosphere. Hence the emergence of molecular autonomous agents, and indeed ontological emergence in general, is not a negation of or limitation on careful biological study but simply one of its implications.An organized being is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organizes them, in fact, and this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion. (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment [1987]: 221)

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“…Two earlier examples can be found in Bach (, p. 119) and Bishop (). Whereas Alvarez and Hyman think that actions belong to a sui generis category, Bach and Bishop view actions as relations between agents and events.…”

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“…For discussion of some of these cases, seeHursthouse, 1991, Chan, 1995, Betzler, 2009, and Steward, 2009 One way of responding to this oddity is to deny that moving one's hand and moving the stone are not two distinct events and, therefore, cannot be causally related. This position, mostly associated to Davidson, will be discussed below.3 Two earlier examples can be found inBach (1980, p. 119) andBishop (1983). Whereas Alvarez and Hyman think that actions belong to a sui generis category, Bach and Bishop view actions as relations between agents and events.…”

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“…In a representative passage, Bishop makes the point clear: “Many intentional actions are ‘non‐basic’: that is, the agent does them by doing something else directly within his control. Here, the agent typically exploits event‐causal relations between bodily movements and ‘remoter’ events whose occurrence he desires” (Bishop , p. 62). The adverb “typically” in the quotation is meant to make room for cases in which a basic action (e.g., moving one's arm) conventionally results in a different action (e.g., signaling a left turn).…”

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Basic actions reloaded

Amaya

2017

Philosophy Compass

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In this article, I examine recent debates concerning the existence and the nature of basic actions. The discussion is structured around four theses, with which Arthur Danto introduced basic actions to contemporary theorists. The theses concern (a) the relationship between agency and causality, (b) the distinction between basic and complex actions, (c) the regress argument for basic actions, and (d) the structure of practical knowledge in the light these actions.

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Agent-causation

Cited by 110 publications

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Los fundamentos de la libertad

Los fundamentos de la libertad

On emergence, agency, and organization

Basic actions reloaded

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