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Detached agency: how to go through the motions

Présentation de Jules Salomone-Sehr dans le cadre des rencontres de la chaire de recherche du Canada sur l’injustice et l’agentivité épistémiques d’Amandine Catala, le 30 novembre 2021, de 15h30 à 17h00.

Les participant.es doivent avoir lu l’article à l’avance. Pour obtenir le papier ainsi que le lien zoom, nous suggérons aux personnes intéressées de contacter Jules directement sur cette adresse courriel : jules.salomone@mcgill.ca

Résumé

Suppose Φ is a feasible course of behavior. How might you Φ at will? Here is an obvious answer: you form the intention to Φ, and then enact that intention. Ordinary intentional agency, however, is not the only mechanism through which you might Φ at will. In this paper, I highlight a more circuitous mechanism, one that dispenses with the intention to Φ, hence that enables to Φ by going through the motions. I call this mechanism detached agency. Detached agency, roughly, involves coming up with a plan designed to Φ, and intending to enact that plan, while not intending to Φ. Although paradoxical, detached agency, I argue, neither collapses into ordinary intentional agency, nor breaks any requirements of practical rationality. This account of detached agency illuminates agency under non-ideal circumstances. It explains how, when pressured to Φ, we might get ourselves to Φ while not intending to Φ.