The Assumption of Agency Theory: A Realist Theory of the Production of Agency

ISBN-13: 9781138797970 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 170 str.

Kate Forbes-Pitt;¬Abar;¬Abar

Opis

This text characterizes a non-human agent that shows itself in interaction but is distinct from human agency: an agent acting with us in our ongoing reproduction and transformation of structure.

Recenzje

'...succeeds in producing a firm argument that leads towards a step that is long overdue: to incorporate the presence of intelligent, ‘behaving’ machines directly into theories of the social (and human) sciences.'
-Kathrine Elizabeth Anker in the Journal of Critical Realism, vol 11 no 4

Spis treści

Introduction  Chapter 1: Philosophical Assumptions  Section 1: Self-knowledge and the Assumption of Agency  Chapter 2: Problem of Other Minds: the importance of first-order concepts  Chapter 3: What it Means to be Minded: intentionality  Chapter 4: Reasons and Causes  Chapter 5: Preliminary Statements About Agency  Section 2: Interaction, Maintenance of Agency and the Unexplained Act  Chapter 6: The Ego Agent and Structure  Chapter 7: Maintenance of Agency: first order concepts through interaction  Chapter 8: Satisfying the Conditions of Agency: using the action-mind chain  Chapter 9: The Unexplained Act: arriving at the evinced agent  Section 3: Technology as Agent  Chapter 10: Technology as Evinced Agent: disappearing the machine  Chapter 11: Disappearing the Machine into the Ego Agent: 3D interaction and its implications for agency and reality  Conclusion

O autorze

Kate Forbes-Pitt left a career in IT to read Sociology at the London School of Economics before earning her PhD in Philosophy of Social Science at Lancaster University. Kate currently holds a post-doctoral position at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, pursuing a philosophy of virtual worlds.