Most moral and political theories take agency to have special moral value, and to make the bearers of agency therefore worthy of particular moral concern. To be deprived of agency is to be wronged, and to be considered incapable of agency is to be denied respect. Thus, there is morally a lot at stake in how we conceptualize agency. Standard theories of agency, such as Bratman’s, focus on the individual use of practical reason (...) through intention, planning, and goal-oriented action. On this account there are many lack agency, however, such as, extremely poor persons, mentally disabled persons, and traditional, collectivist cultures. Instead of understanding the core of agency to lie in the use of goal-oriented reasoning, I argue that we should locate it in norm-guided and –guiding behavior. In this paper I sketch such an alternative account. On this picture agency is more of a collective than an individual achievement. Although not all norms and traditions are morally valuable, the ability to behave in norm-guided and –guiding ways is especially valuable because it enables higher order cognitive abilities and moral action. Goal-directed agency can be seen as a special case of basic agency, given norms of rationality and planning. (shrink)

With the release of the latest IPCC report, the urgency to steer the transport sector toward ecological sustainability has been recognized more and more broadly. To better understand, the prerequisites for a transition to sustainable mobility, we argue that interdisciplinary mobility research needs to revisit the interaction between social structures and individual agency by focusing on social norms. While critical sociological approaches stress the structural barriers to sustainable mobility, political discourse over sustainable mobility is still largely dominated by (...) overly individualistic approaches, which focus on individual behavior change neglecting its social embeddedness. With discursive struggles over sustainable mobility intensifying, it becomes more urgent to better understand how structural contexts condition individual travel behavior, while at the same time showing how individuals engage in processes of social change. Against this backdrop, the article seeks to deepen the cooperation between sociological and psychological research in mobility transitions research. Building on a broad body of literature, we revisit recent theoretical approaches, which conceptualize the role of individual agency in sustainability transitions. On this basis, we highlight the role of social norms in mobility transitions as a key concept bridging individual behavior and social structures. Using Strong Structuration Theory as an integrative framework, we focus on the role of individual agency in processes of re-negotiation of social norms. Our main hypothesis is that individuals can contribute to mobility transitions by influencing and re-negotiating social norms, especially in the context of windows of opportunity. We analyze how focusing on the dynamic and conflicted nature of social norms can help to illustrate leverage points for a mobility transition as well as inspire future empirical research in the field. This includes that individuals can influence social norms through changing their own travel behavior as well as through engaging in discourse on transport policies. (shrink)

Due to their consolidated nature, corporate sustainability reports often mask the evolution of organizations’ sustainability initiatives. Thus, to more fully understand the environmental performance of an organization, it is essential to examine the experiences of specific projects and how they relate to corporate sustainability. Based on case studies of green projects in four different organizations, we find that it is difficult to determine the environmental impact of a project a priori, even in cases where environmental considerations are included as part (...) of the initial project scope. Instead, the decision to integrate environmentally favorable elements into projects is a dynamically occurring interaction between competing institutional logics and organizational identities, which create windows of opportunity for individual agency. During these windows, individuals may engage in reinforcing microprocesses that support traditional practices, or invoke enabling microprocesses to facilitate green decision-making, consistent with ecosystem logics. The process model developed in this paper provides a new perspective on the temporal and contextual dimensions of environmental championship behaviors, and sheds light on otherwise puzzling results such as why organizations with strong environmental orientations continue to struggle with delivering projects with strong positive environmental impacts. (shrink)

Is an individual agent constitutive of or constituted by its social interactions? This question is typically not asked in the cognitive sciences, so strong is the consensus that only individual agents have constitutive efficacy. In this article we challenge this methodological solipsism and argue that interindividual relations and social context do not simply arise from the behavior of individual agents, but themselves enable and shape the individual agents on which they depend. For this, we define the (...) notion of autonomy as both a characteristic of individual agents and of social interaction processes. We then propose a number of ways in which interactional autonomy can influence individuals. Then we discuss recent work in modeling on the one hand and psychological investigations on the other that support and illustrate this claim. Finally, we discuss some implications for research on social and individual agency. (shrink)

The world we live in is unjust. Preventable deprivation and suffering shape the lives of many people, while others enjoy advantages and privileges aplenty. Cosmopolitan responsibility addresses the moral responsibilities of privileged individuals to take action in the face of global structural injustice. Individuals are called upon to complement institutional efforts to respond to global challenges, such as climate change, unfair global trade, or world poverty. Committed to an ideal of relational equality among all human beings, the book discusses the (...) impact of individual action, the challenge of special obligations, and the possibility of moral overdemandingness in order to lay the ground for an action-guiding ethos of cosmopolitan responsibility. This thought-provoking book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about justice and responsibilities in a globalised world. Jan-Christoph Heilinger is a moral and political philosopher. He teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, and at Ecole normale supérieure, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (shrink)

Historical works on Hitler and Stalin or on specific aspects of their regimes reveal how historians differ in their treatment of individual agency. Historians' practices are examined in the light of W. H. Dray's findings about historians' concepts of causation and A. Giddens's structuration theory. Marxist and revisionist historians rejected approaches that endowed Hitler and Stalin with immense power and personal control over events. Works by Isaac Deutscher, A. J. P. Taylor, and J. Arch Getty exhibit historians' methods (...) for reducing or nullifying agential power. Robert C. Tucker's work on Stalin offers a different approach to the problem of the interaction of structure and individual agency. Allan Bullock may be correct in his view that historians are now less likely to exaggerate or underestimate either individual agency or structure when dealing with Hitler and Stalin; and Christopher Lloyd may be correct to say that historians' practices suggest a tacit acceptance of structuration theory in some form, but it does not follow that historians are now more likely to agree about the agential power of individuals. The assessment of agential power still requires interpretation, and it is doubtful that consensus about structuration theory would affect the range of interpretation very much. However, theories of cultural evolution and comparative investigation of the "selection" of political-cultural "genes" at certain historical junctures might provide a useful framework for studying how individuals like Hitler and Stalin acquire an unusual degree of power and authority. (shrink)

I argue that individuals may be as problematic political agents as groups are. In doing so, I draw on theory from economics, philosophy, and computer science and evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and biology. If successful, this argument undermines agency-based justifications for embracing strong notions of individual rights while rejecting the possibility of similar rights for groups. For concreteness, I critique these mistaken views by rebutting arguments given by Chandran Kukathas in his article `Are There Any Cultural Rights?' that (...) groups lack the temporal coherence, political independence, and indivisibility of individuals. I also show how formal critiques of group agency from social science (in particular, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) can be applied as reasonably to individuals as groups. Because these symmetries between groups and individuals undermine common implicit assumptions in political philosophy, I argue that they may have broader implications for liberal political theory, as they emphasize the importance of intrapersonal justice. (shrink)

If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characterized by inaction at all levels? The authors argue there are two complementary explanations for the lack of motivation. First, our moral judgment system appears to be unable to identify climate change as an important moral problem and there are pervasive doubts about the agency of individuals. This explanation, however, is incomplete: Individual emitters can effectively be held morally responsible for their luxury emissions. (...) Second, doubts about individual agency have become overly emphasized and fail to convincingly exonerate individuals from responsibility. This book extends the second explanation for the motivational gap, namely that the arguments for the lack of individual agency do in fact correspond to mechanisms of moral disengagement. The use of these mechanisms enables consumption elites to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions. (shrink)

Kirk Ludwig develops a novel reductive account of plural discourse about collective action and shared intention. Part I develops the event analysis of action sentences, provides an account of the content of individual intentions, and on that basis an analysis of individual intentional action. Part II shows how to extend the account to collective action, intentional and unintentional, and shared intention, expressed in sentences with plural subjects. On the account developed, collective action is a matter of there being (...) multiple agents of an event and it requires no group agents per se. Shared intention is a matter of agents in a group each intending that they bring about some end in accordance with a shared plan. Thus their participatory intentions differ from individual intentions not in their mode but in their content. Joint intentional action then is a matter of a group of individuals successfully executing a shared intention. (shrink)

The concept of agency is of crucial importance in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and it is often used as an intuitive and rather uncontroversial term, in contrast to more abstract and theoretically heavy-weighted terms like “intentionality”, “rationality” or “mind”. However, most of the available definitions of agency are either too loose or unspecific to allow for a progressive scientific program. They implicitly and unproblematically assume the features that characterize agents, thus obscuring the full potential and challenge of (...) modeling agency. We identify three conditions that a system must meet in order to be considered as a genuine agent: a) a system must define its own individuality, b) it must be the active source of activity in its environment (interactionalasymmetry) and c) it must regulate this activity in relation to certain norms (normativity). We find that even minimal forms of proto-celular systems can already provide a paradigmatic example of genuine agency. By abstracting away some specific details of minimal models of living agency we define the kind of organization that is capable to meet the required conditions for agency (which is not restricted to living organisms). On this basis, we define agency as an autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence. We find that spatiality and temporality are the two fundamental domains in which agency spans at different scales. We conclude by giving an outlook to the road that lies ahead in the pursuit to understand, model and synthesis agents. (shrink)

In this article, I challenge the dominant view of the importance of the debate over action-individuation. On the dominant view, it is held that the conclusions we reach about action-individuation make little or no difference for other debates in the philosophy of action, much less in other areas of philosophy. As a means of showing that the dominant view is mistaken, I consider the implications of accepting a given theory of action-individuation for thinking about doxastic agency. In particular, I (...) am interested in the implications for thinking about the variety of evaluative control we can exercise over the formation of our doxastic attitudes. I show that our assumptions about how to individuate actions matters for how we think about doxastic agency and, hence, the conclusions we reach about action-individuation are of greater significance than some have thought. (shrink)

According to Kirk Ludwig, only primitive actions are actions in a primary and non-derivative sense of the term ‘action’. Ludwig takes this to imply that the notion of collective action is a façon de parler – useful perhaps, but secondary and derivative. I argue that, on the contrary, collective actions are actions in the primary and non-derivative sense. First, this is because some primitive actions are collective actions. Secondly, individual and collective composites of primitive actions are also actions in (...) the primary and non-derivative sense. Hence, individual action and collective action are ontologically on a par. Ludwig also exaggerates the contrast between individual and collective action by introducing a “sole agency requirement” in his account of the semantics of singular action sentences. However, sole agency is merely typically pragmatically implicated by singular action sentences, not entailed by them. If I say, “I turned on the light”, after we each flipped one of two switches that together turned on the light, then I might be misleading the audience, but what I say is true. Finally, I argue that, contra Ludwig, individuals often have “I-intentions” to bring about an event that can be satisfied even if there are co-agents who bring about the event in the same way. (shrink)

This book expands our understanding of a growing, yet largely unstudied phenomenon: the flow of children across borders through intercountry adoption. What explains the spread of intercountry adoption through the international system over time? McBride investigates the interconnected networks of states, individuals, and adoption agencies that have collaborated to develop the practice of intercountry adoption we see today. This book tells the story of how adoption agencies mediate between individuals and states in two ways: first by teaching states about intercountry (...) adoption as a policy, and second by helping states implement intercountry adoption as a practice. McBride argues that this process of states learning about intercountry adoption from adoption agencies has facilitated the global development of the practice in the past seventy years. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: J'examine ici trois façons de défendre l'idée que les personnes ont individuellement une valeur. Je pars de la thèse selon laquelle la valeur des individus tient à la valeur de leurs qualités particulières. Je m'arrête alors sur l'objection que pour comprendre ce qui fait la valeur individuelle des personnes, il nous faut accorder une place distinctive à leurs conceptions d'elles-mêmes. L'approche par la conception de soi qui résulte de ces considérations se révèle problématique à l'examen, mais elle nous oriente (...) vers une façon «kantienne», plus satisfaisante, de rendre compte de la valeur des individus. L'explication en question développe la doctrine des «deux points de vue» avancée par Christine Korsgaard et fait reposer ma valeur en tant qu'individu sur la dignité qui est la mienne en tant que maître d'œuvre de ma propre vie, un titre que personne d'autre ne peut avoir. (shrink)

The sense of agency has received much attention in the context of individual action but not in the context of joint action. We investigated how the sense of agency developed during individual and dyadic performance while people learned a haptic coordination task. The sense of agency increased with better performance in all groups. Individuals and dyads showed a differential sense of agency after initial task learning, with dyads showing a minimal increase. The sense of (...) agency depended on the context in which the task was first learnt, as transfer from joint to individual performance resulted in an illusory boost in the sense of agency. Whereas the quality of performance related to the sense of agency, the generated forces to achieve the task did not. Our findings are consistent with a predictive model account at the perceptual level, such that the sense of agency relies most strongly on sharable perceptual information. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: A move to sympoiesis entails a conceptual overhaul of autopoiesis, a key facet of the enactive approach to cognition. In this commentary, I invite more systematic thinking about the concept of autopoiesis and enactivist commitments to it, given the inconsistencies regarding individuality raised in the target article.

Theories of collective intentionality and theories of relational autonomy share a common interest in analyzing the social dynamics of agency. However, whereas theories of collective intentionality conceive of social groups primarily as intentional and voluntarily willed, theories of relational autonomy claim that autonomous agency is both scaffolded and constrained by social forces and structures, including the constraints imposed by nonvoluntary group membership. The question raised by this difference in view is whether social theorizing that overlooks the effects of (...) nonvoluntary social group membership on individual and joint agency overlooks crucial aspects of the social dynamics of agency. To explore this question, this article first evaluates Michael Bratman's planning analysis of individual agency from the perspective of relational autonomy theory and compares it with a narrative self‐constitution account of temporally extended agency. It then evaluates Bratman's analysis of shared agency and discusses Shaun Gallagher and Deborah Tollefsen's concept of we‐narratives, which extends the notion of narrative construction to shared agency. Overall, the argument aims to show that if we are interested in understanding the social dynamics of agency, it is critical to attend to the way that agents exercise their intentional agency in relation to internalized and external social constraints. (shrink)

This essay develops its idiosyncrasy by concentrating primarily on the trend of body hacking. The practitioners, self-defined as body hackers, self-made cyborgs or grinders, work in different ways to develop functional and physiological modifications through the contributions of technology. Their goal is to develop by themselves an empirically man-technique fusion. These dynamic “scientific” subcultures are producing astonishing innovations. From pocket-sized kits that sample human DNA, microchip implants that keep tabs on our internal organs, blood sugar levels or moods, and even (...) 3D printers that produce tailored hip replacements, the technical innovations of the body hacking trend are beginning to filter into mainstream use, and the repertoire increases every day. These physical transformations with intersecting techniques actively challenge long-held normative beliefs about what bodies do, what they should look like and how they should behave. They provide an alternative discourse on man’s correlation with the world and its biocenosis. Sculpting oneself has become an existential data. Medical technoscience crystallizes the effectiveness of new powers over the organism. Scientific temptation to recreate and enhance the human according to its normative principles has brought up experimental practices that have become the edge of a radical activism operating in the core of western societies, which will be the theme of this paper. (shrink)

Understanding how individual agency and group agency relate is of great importance for a range of philosophical and practical concerns, including responsibility ascription and institutional design. This article discusses the relation between corporate and individual responsibility in agency—in particular, the relation between corporate and individual control of actions. First, I criticize Christian List and Philip Pettit’s causal account of combined corporate and individual control. Second, I develop an alternative account in terms of structural (...) control, and I show how this gives a better grasp of the issue. Third, I argue for an act-dualism that complements my account of control and sheds further light on the relation between corporate and individual agency and responsibility. (shrink)

The capability approach is one of the main contenders in the field of theorizing social justice. Each citizen is entitled to a set of basic capabilities. But which are these? Martha Nussbaum formulated a set of ten central capabilities. Amartya Sen argued they should be selected in a process of public reasoning. Critics object that the Nussbaum-approach is too perfectionist and the Sen-approach is too proceduralist. This paper presents a third alternative: a substantive but non-perfectionist capability theory of justice. It (...) presents a two-level concept of individual agency as connected to social practices. It then argues basic capabilities are those necessary to for the agency necessary to navigate freely and autonomously between different social practices. (shrink)

Taking debates about the roles of structure and agency in health as a lens, this essay asks how Critical Realist and Feminist Intersectional approaches might inform health interventions research. Despite recognition of multiple determinants of health, health problems are often thought of as individual and interventions, in turn, target risky individual behaviours. Such approaches are rooted in a liberal model of personhood. This paper critiques enduring individualist assumptions linked to Western liberal underpinnings embedded in health interventions. It (...) posits the need to include a robust conception of the social world in which change depends on shifting power relations, and individual agency is shaped by power as well as individual will. We propose preliminary steps for undertaking critical realist intersectional interventions research. (shrink)

Pregnancy presents some interesting challenges for the philosophy of embodied cognition. Mother and fetus are generally considered to be passive during pregnancy, both individually and in their relation. In this paper, we use the enactive operational concepts of autonomy, agency, individuation, and participation to examine the relation between mother and fetus in utero. Based on biological, physiological, and phenomenological research, we explore the emergence of agentive capacities in embryo and fetus, as well as how maternal agency changes as (...) pregnancy advances. We show that qualitatively different kinds of agency have their beginnings already in utero, and to what extent fetal and maternal movement modulate affectivity and individuation in pregnancy. We thus propose that mother and fetus are both agents who participate in pregnancy. Pregnancy then emerges as a relational developmental organization that anchors and holds its developing participants. We end the paper with reflections on ethical implications of this proposal, and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Kirk Ludwig presents a philosophical account of institutional action, such as action by corporations and nation states. He argues that it can be fully understood in terms of the agency of individuals, and concepts derived from our understanding of individual action. He thus argues for a strong form of methodological individualism.

This dissertation develops a reading of Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of agency and autonomy that centers on the notion of the acquired character. I argue for a non-homuncular functionalist reading of Schopenhauerian self-government. On my reading, to be self-governing in Schopenhauer’s sense is just for a certain organizational structure to obtain between one’s individual character and one’s motivation. This structure is put in place through the hard-fought achievement of acquiring genuine self-knowledge of one’s characteristic patterns of acting, evaluative commitments, (...) and, most importantly, one’s volitional necessities. This is the achievement of what he calls the 'acquired character'. My reading also stresses the importance of the phenomena of self-expression and sublimation for Schopenhauer's view of autonomy. I also explore the overlap between Schopenhauer's views and contemporary non-homuncular models of agency, particularly Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical model of agency, on the one hand, and Michael E. Bratman’s planning theory of autonomous self-governance, on the other. Whereas others have been skeptical of the very idea of Schopenhauerian autonomy, I argue that these reservations rest on a failure to recognize the non-homuncular option. An exploration of contemporary philosophical work on agency helps make this point stick. In the final chapter, I propose that we can see Nietzsche's famous prescription that we ‘give style' to our character as carrying forward certain elements of Schopenhauer's view of autonomy, particularly its aesthetic dimensions. This accomplishes two things. First, it shows that Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche goes deeper into the latter's ethical thought than many tend to think. Second, it points towards an elaboration of the view of Schopenhauerian autonomy that I establish earlier on. With the aesthetic dimensions of agency in view, acquired character can be seen as a process through which an agent develops an individual style of acting; it is a process through which one comes to fully act within themselves by embodying their character, just as the best stage and screen actors do. (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)

A moral agent is an individual who is capable of choosing and acting in accordance with judgments about what is right, wrong, good, bad, worthy, or unworthy. Such individuals are thought to be free and hence responsible for what they do. The obstacles to freedom and responsibility raise philosophical problems in regard to moral agency.

In spite of the fact that climate change is one of the most important threats of our time, the last twenty years have been marked by inaction at all levels. At the individual level in particular, t...

Social learning plays a prominent role in shaping individual preferences. The vicarious approach-avoidance effect consists of developing a preference for attitudinal objects that have been approached over objects that have been avoided by another person (model). In two experiments (N = 448 participants), we explored how the vicarious approach-avoidance effect is affected by agency (model’s voluntary choice) and identification with the model. The results consistently revealed vicarious approach-avoidance effects in preference, as indicated by the semantic differential and the (...) Implicit Association Test. Agency increased the size of the preference assessed through the semantic differential but did not significantly impact preference in the Implicit Association Test. Identification with the model had no significant impact on the vicarious approach-avoidance effect. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. (shrink)

Actions within organizational contexts should be understood differently as compared with actions performed outside of such contexts. This is the case due to the agentic shift, as discussed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, and the role that systemic factors play in shaping the available alternatives from which individuals acting within institutions choose. The analysis stemming from Milgram’s experiments suggests not simply that individuals temporarily abdicate their moral agency on occasion, but that there is an erosion of agency within (...) organizations. The point about the erosion of agency is deepened in the discussion of a case study which illustrates the difficulty of identifying even the bare “ownership” of actions within organizations. While this is the case, explicating these reasons suggests that both individual actors and firms can bear ethical responsibility within organizational contexts. As part of the effort to present the whole picture, business ethics courses should introduce students to the relevant insights from social psychology and human factors research. (shrink)

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the (...) social sciences. Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Teacher action and change is a complex and nuanced phenomenon that has been theorized across diverse literature in terms of identity, agency, and power. Drawing on this literature, this article offers specific articulations of teacher identity as interpretive framework, power as legitimate action, and agency as moral coherence. We posit a model of teacher agency understood in the interplay of individual beliefs, values, and ideals with institutional roles, authority, and institutional action, producing (or not producing) authentic (...) action. This model draws a distinction between agency and power, and highlights dynamics of equilibrium and discord that may emerge between who teachers are and what they do. The agentive triad model serves as a theoretical tool for guiding or supporting teacher growth and agentive action, and for understanding the dynamics between institutionally legitimized roles and teacher identities. (shrink)

Plotinus criticizes the view that individual human souls are parts of the world-soul arguing that they would lack individual agency since their alleged actions would have to be attributed to the whole they are parts of (iii.1.4). He nevertheless holds that individual souls are parts of a larger whole, the so-called hypostasis soul, a soul that does not ensoul any body but encompasses and produces all individual souls including the world-soul (iv.3.4.14–21; iv.8.36–12; iv.9.5). In this (...) paper, I ask whether Plotinus, in the face of his own arguments, can consistently attribute agency to individual souls and hold that they are parts of the hypostasis soul. I argue that Plotinus’ model of intelligible mereology (vi.2.20) allows individual souls to depend on the hypostasis soul as parts in a way that grounds their agency by providing them with the capacity for rational thought. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new interpretation of non-cooperative games that shows why the unilateralism of best-reply reasoning fails to capture the mutuality of strategic interdependence. Drawing on an intersubjective approach to theorizing individual agency in shared context, including a non-individualistic model of common belief without infinite regress, the paper develops a general model of a 2 × 2 simultaneous one-shot non-cooperative game and applies it to games including Hi-Lo, Stag Hunt, Prisoners’ Dilemma, Chicken, BoS and Matching Pennies. Results (...) include High as the rational choice in Hi-Lo, and Cooperate as a possible rational choice in the Prisoners’ Dilemma. (shrink)

Applying evidence from recently available public information on Enron, I defined Enron’s culture as one rooted in agency theory by asserting that Enron’s members were predominantly agency-reasoning individuals. I then identified conditions present at Enron’s collapse: a strong agency culture with collectively non-compliant norms, a munificent rare-failure environment, and new hires with little business ethics training. Turning to four possible antidotes (selection, objectivist integrity, integrity capacity, and stewardship reasoning) to an agency culture under these conditions, I (...) argued that the currently available ethics literature would have made little difference toward averting Enron’s collapse if any of the recommendations from the relevant ethics literature had been implemented. I conclude by identifying new directions for business ethics literature in order to make it more implementable under the conditions identified at Enron. Essentially, we need a way to clearly determine (1) the difference between connivance and commitment, (2) what is meant by balance with regard to the multiple dimensions of ethics and legal theories, and (3) the proper balance between agency and stewardship reasoning. (shrink)

Can groups be rational agents over and above their individual members? We argue that group agents are distinguished by their capacity to mimic the way in which individual agents act and that this capacity must 'supervene' on the group members' contributions. But what is the nature of this supervenience relation? Focusing on group judgments, we argue that, for a group to be rational, its judgment on a particular proposition cannot generally be a function of the members' individual (...) judgments on that proposition. Rather, it must be a function of their individual sets of judgments across many propositions. So, knowing what the group members individually think about some proposition does not generally tell us how the group collectively adjudicates that proposition: the supervenience relation must be 'set-wise', not 'proposition-wise'. Our account preserves the individualistic view that group agency is nothing mysterious, but also suggests that a group agent may hold judgments that are not directly continuous with its members' corresponding individual judgments. (shrink)

This paper offers a detailed account of Foucaults ethical and political notion of individuality as presented in his late work, and discusses its relationship to the feminist project of the theory of sexual difference. I argue that Foucaults elaboration of the classical ethos of care for the self opens the way for regarding the I-woman as an ethical, political and aesthetic self-creation. However, it has significant limitations that cannot be ignored. I elaborate on two aspects of Foucaults avoidance of sexual (...) difference as a relevant category for an account of political and ethical individuality, which thus implicitly associates individual agency with men. I argue that Foucault implicitly assumes the existence of an ontological desire to become engaged in political self-creation. However, the ethical position of self-knowledge and desire should be understood as a contingent option that depends on material and historical conditions for its realization. Hence, I argue that a feminist reworking of Foucaults notion of political individuality should add a substantial ethical condition to the imperative of self-knowledge and self-creation – making possible the desiring woman subject. (shrink)

The origin of moral agency is a much-debated issue. While rationalists or Kantians have argued that moral agency is rooted in reason, sentimentalists or Humeans have ascribed its origin to empathic feelings. This debate between rationalists and sentimentalists still stands with respect to persons with mental disorders, such as individuals diagnosed with mild forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, without intellectual impairment. Individuals with ASD are typically regarded as moral agents, however their ability for empathy remains debated. The goal (...) of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms of moral actions in people with ASD, by finding arguments for the origin of their moral actions, supporting either the sentimentalist or the rationalist view of the dispute. We propose to revisit the debate using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to study the autobiographies of individuals with High-Functioning Autism and Asperger Syndrome. While conducting the systematic analysis of 10 autobiographies, we re-examined both the rationalist and the sentimentalist positions, considering the links between empathic feelings and moral agency. The investigation of the temporal dimensions of emotional experiences, an aspect overlooked by previous research, indicated that individuals with ASD empathize with others, but in different ways as compared to neurotypicals. A relationship between emotional experience and the type of moral agency exhibited by individuals with forms of ASD was established. As a consequence, our analyses support the sentimentalist stance on moral action. (shrink)

Human beings act together in characteristic ways that matter to us a great deal. This book explores the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of such sociality. It argues that appeal to the planning structures involved in our individual, temporally extended agency provides substantial resources for understanding these foundations of our sociality.