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The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics?
In this article, I take off from some central issues in Paul Katsafanas’ recent book Agency and the Foundations of Ethics. I argue that Katsafanas’ alleged aims of action fail to do the work he requires them to do. First, his approach to activity or control is deeply problematic in the light of coun...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6100012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30158724 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9702-2 |
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author | Leffler, Olof |
author_facet | Leffler, Olof |
author_sort | Leffler, Olof |
collection | PubMed |
description | In this article, I take off from some central issues in Paul Katsafanas’ recent book Agency and the Foundations of Ethics. I argue that Katsafanas’ alleged aims of action fail to do the work he requires them to do. First, his approach to activity or control is deeply problematic in the light of counterexamples. More importantly, the view of activity or control he needs to get his argument going is most likely false, as it requires our values to do work that they are too fickle to do. Second, I take issue with the Nietzschean drive psychology underlying the second agential aim, viz. power. I argue that ordinary desires better describe a number of phenomena that Katsafanas uses drives to explain, and that some actions can aim in the opposite direction. As only drive-motivated actions aim at power, action does not, therefore, constitutively aim at power. Finally, I sketch a Humean approach to constitutivism, and argue that it both explains the desiderata that Katsafanas posits as well as solves the problems for his view. The Humean view is preferable, and should be developed further. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6100012 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61000122018-08-27 The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? Leffler, Olof Philosophia (Ramat Gan) Article In this article, I take off from some central issues in Paul Katsafanas’ recent book Agency and the Foundations of Ethics. I argue that Katsafanas’ alleged aims of action fail to do the work he requires them to do. First, his approach to activity or control is deeply problematic in the light of counterexamples. More importantly, the view of activity or control he needs to get his argument going is most likely false, as it requires our values to do work that they are too fickle to do. Second, I take issue with the Nietzschean drive psychology underlying the second agential aim, viz. power. I argue that ordinary desires better describe a number of phenomena that Katsafanas uses drives to explain, and that some actions can aim in the opposite direction. As only drive-motivated actions aim at power, action does not, therefore, constitutively aim at power. Finally, I sketch a Humean approach to constitutivism, and argue that it both explains the desiderata that Katsafanas posits as well as solves the problems for his view. The Humean view is preferable, and should be developed further. Springer Netherlands 2016-04-10 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC6100012/ /pubmed/30158724 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9702-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Article Leffler, Olof The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title | The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title_full | The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title_fullStr | The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title_full_unstemmed | The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title_short | The Foundations of Agency – and Ethics? |
title_sort | foundations of agency – and ethics? |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6100012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30158724 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9702-2 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT lefflerolof thefoundationsofagencyandethics AT lefflerolof foundationsofagencyandethics |