The Metaphysics of Agency - Lecture II. Predication, Propositions, Events, Situations, Et Cetera!

Jennifer Hornsby (Birkbeck College, University of London, All Souls College, Oxford University)

The Metaphysics of Agency

[Abstract]

There is agency, one might say, when something does something. A something that does things—an agent—may be a person, a non-human animal, or an inanimate object. Things that may be done by something are many and various (exactly the range of do-able things evidently depends upon the sort of agent in question). In the course of these lectures I introduce, and attempt to answer, a variety of inter-related metaphysical questions that arise in connection with agency – whether, human, animal or inanimate. I suggest that a correct philosophy of mind requires a correct understanding of causality, and that this is an understanding best brought to the fore by considering what agency itself (in any of its varieties) involves.

Lecture II. Predication, Propositions, Events, Situations, Et Cetera!

3 November (Friday) 15:30 p.m. 

[Abstract]

I ask how we should understand “things that are done”; and I consider notions of event (/action) and of process (/activity), and how they relate to one another. Turning specifically to the question of human agency, I reflect on the question what sort of “contents” of mental states are needed in understanding it. I mean to cast doubt on the extent to which the idea of a proposition can provide a satisfactory conception of “content” in general. And I argue specifically against the widespread idea that such mental states as occur in explanations of action all have propositional contents.