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Agency in Humans and in Artifacts: A Contested Discourse

2013; Springer Nature (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-007-7914-3_2

1879-7210

Carl Mitcham,

Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics

Philosophical discourse on agency and artifacts is part of a long effort to assess the complexities of human making and using. Appreciation of some historico-philosophical aspects of the discussion begins with a sketch of pre-philosophical appraisals; then, given common assumptions about the importance of intentionality in agency, ventures a brief review of the debate about intentions in recent analytic philosophy. Against this dual background, contemporary reflection more specifically on agency and artifacts is distinguished into three waves. A first wave is exemplified by the work of Alvin Weinberg and Langdon Winner, both of whom argue that artifacts can extend human political agency. A second wave is led by Bruno Latour, who contests the implicit primacy of the human and argues instead for the primacy of a network in which humans and artifacts behave as ontological equals. A third wave is initiated in critical works by Albert Borgmann and by Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz, who argue for deploying first and second wave insights to reaffirm human ethical agency interacting with agent-like artifacts. A conclusion considers how these three waves of discourse might benefit from engagement with such historico-philosophical studies of human agency as found in the work of Hannah Arendt.