Mental agency and rational subjectivity
Mental agency and rational subjectivity
Philosophy is witnessing an “Agential Turn,” characterised by the thought that explaining certain distinctive features of human mentality requires conceiving of many mental phenomena as acts, and of subjects as their agents. We raise a challenge for three central explanatory appeals to mental agency––agentialism about doxastic responsibility, agentialism about doxastic self-knowledge, and an agentialist explanation of the delusion of thought insertion: agentialists either commit themselves to implausibly strong claims about the kind of agency involved in the relevant phenomena, or make appeals to agency which seem explanatorily redundant. The agentialist literature does not contain a clear answer to this Agentialist Dilemma, and we put it forward here as a core challenge for the Agential Turn. But we also accept the fundamental motivation behind the Agential Turn, its critique and rejection of a purely passivist and spectatorial conception of the human mind. We close by urging the recognition of a broader category of rational subjectivity, a category which includes states which are neither active nor passive, but nevertheless form part of a subject's rational point of view on the world.
Campbell, Lucy
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Greenberg, Alexander
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Campbell, Lucy
a5133d14-0a41-4256-b356-e6cc52f757bc
Greenberg, Alexander
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Campbell, Lucy and Greenberg, Alexander
(2023)
Mental agency and rational subjectivity.
European Journal of Philosophy.
(doi:10.1111/ejop.12867).
Abstract
Philosophy is witnessing an “Agential Turn,” characterised by the thought that explaining certain distinctive features of human mentality requires conceiving of many mental phenomena as acts, and of subjects as their agents. We raise a challenge for three central explanatory appeals to mental agency––agentialism about doxastic responsibility, agentialism about doxastic self-knowledge, and an agentialist explanation of the delusion of thought insertion: agentialists either commit themselves to implausibly strong claims about the kind of agency involved in the relevant phenomena, or make appeals to agency which seem explanatorily redundant. The agentialist literature does not contain a clear answer to this Agentialist Dilemma, and we put it forward here as a core challenge for the Agential Turn. But we also accept the fundamental motivation behind the Agential Turn, its critique and rejection of a purely passivist and spectatorial conception of the human mind. We close by urging the recognition of a broader category of rational subjectivity, a category which includes states which are neither active nor passive, but nevertheless form part of a subject's rational point of view on the world.
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European J of Philosophy - 2023 - Campbell - Mental agency and rational subjectivity
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Accepted/In Press date: 21 April 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 May 2023
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For discussion and feedback on earlier drafts, we thank Rachel Achs, Sophie Archer, Anita Avramides, Tom Crowther, Sandy Diehl, Naomi Eilan, Anil Gomes, Sophie Keeling, Hemdat Lerman, Conor McHugh, Oded Na'aman, Ram Neta, David Owens, Eylem Özaltun, Johannes Roessler, Antonia Peacocke, Matt Soteriou, Barney Walker, Jonathan Way, Daniel Whiting, Simon Wimmer, and anonymous reviewers for this and other journals. We also thank audiences in Oxford, Warwick, Tel Aviv, and Dortmund. This work was supported by two Early Career Fellowships funded by the Leverhulme Trust (grant numbers: ECF‐2018‐075 (Campbell); ECF‐2019‐ 406 (Greenberg)). 2
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Local EPrints ID: 478520
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/478520
ISSN: 0966-8373
PURE UUID: 40a0d868-7c87-4374-ac39-0b83a796d94f
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2023 17:44
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:55
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Lucy Campbell
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