Psychology

PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Group

Presenter: Denis Buehler (University of Antwerp)

Title: The varities of human agency

Abstract: Harry Frankfurt identified explicating individuals’ guidance of their behavior as the deepest problem in action theory. He criticized causal theories of action for not explaining how agents are involved in causing, and seeing through the execution of, their actions. Only by explicating individuals’ guidance could we understand the difference between an individual’s being active and one of her states’ causing an event, he maintained. Current versions of the causal theory of action have not fully addressed this task. They tend to either over-intellectualize guidance, or to ignore the explanatory burden. In this paper I attempt to advance our understanding of individuals’ guidance with a case study of active shifts of visual attention. I explicate primates’ guidance of their processes by appeal to a psychological system, the central executive system. Philosophical reflection on this empirically discovered psychological system helps us explain how agents – whole individuals (or selves) – are involved in causing action. Appeal to this system shuns over-intellectualization. I argue that this explication helps us address several difficulties that current action theory faces.

Further information

We are a group of researchers from diverse backgrounds in the above-mentioned groups (and beyond) who aim to gain an interdisciplinary yet deep understanding of the threads that bind the human mind and the world. In particular, this seminar series focuses on the nature of cognition, metacognition and social cognition. We’ll be tackling questions such as, what does it mean to think? What does it mean to think about thinking? And, what does it mean to think about one’s own thinking versus thinking about the thinking of other people? Please come along!

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Contact details

Tillmann Vierkant

Oct 11 2017 -

PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Group

11 Oct 2017: Denis Buehler (University of Antwerp)

Room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD