“Do newborns have a sense of agency?”
Claudia Passos-Ferreira (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)

November 7, 2016, 7:00am - 8:00am
Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York Graduate Center

Room 5409
365 Fifth Ave.
New York 10016
United States

Sponsor(s):

  • Philosophy Department, Graduate Center CUNY
  • The John H. Kornblith Family Chair, Graduate Center CUNY
  • The Committe for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Graduate Center CUNY
  • New York Institute of Philosophy, New York University

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Do newborns have a sense of agency?

I will argue that newborn babies have experiences of agency.  I present evidence from developmental psychology involving four types of behaviors (neonatal imitation, actions oriented to goals, actions toward objects, and actions toward people) and argue that this evidence supports a prima facie case that babies have experiences of agency.  I then address objections.  An important objection is that experiences of agency involve a higher-order attribution of agency generated by a high-level cognitive mechanism, which requires self-consciousness and a self-concept, and that babies lack the capacity for self-consciousness and a self-concept.  In the absence of these capacities, babies can be at best aware of certain actions they perform and not of their own agency in those actions.  I will argue for an intermediate view on which the experience of agency requires nonconceptual self-representation but not a self-concept.  If this view is correct, the lack of conceptual self-consciousness is no obstacle to the claim that babies have agency experience.  I also argue that some actions by newborns involve only action-awareness while others involve agency-awareness, and that consequently some but not all actions in babies involve the experience of agency.

After another talk 1-2pm (by Laura Pérez "Visual Properties and Social Groups") a reception will follow.

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