A Pragmatic Approach to Agency in Group Activity:

A Pragmatic Approach to Agency in Group Activity builds towards an action theory that explains how new forms agency develop in group activity. The approach starts from practical insights about group activity and develops a new understanding of agency from there.This study shows how practical interac...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Witzel, Herman (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Berlin ; Boston De Gruyter [2019]
Series:Practical Philosophy 23
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-858
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-355
DE-706
DE-739
Volltext
Summary:A Pragmatic Approach to Agency in Group Activity builds towards an action theory that explains how new forms agency develop in group activity. The approach starts from practical insights about group activity and develops a new understanding of agency from there.This study shows how practical interactions and structures in group activity disrupt individual agency. It is concluded that important features of agency can be realized on a group level. Different types of group activities are analyzed in order to better understand these mechanisms and, consequently, revisit our understanding of agency. It is argued that "intentionality," the key concept in individual action theory, merely serves as a pseudo-explanatory connection between specific features of agency and their realization in humans. This is contrasted with empirical research showing that how humans act is far from the idealized concept of intentionality. Consequently, intentionality as a key explanatory concept is rejected and replaced by a diverse set of features of agency for a similarly diverse set of kinds of agency. In this view, groups display new forms agency beyond individual agency without making the groups agents themselves. Such is the nature of group agency
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)
Physical Description:1 online resource (VIII, 173 pages)
ISBN:9783110628623
DOI:10.1515/9783110628623

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