Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Mechanisms that respond to reasons : an Aristotelian approach to agency
    (Notre Dame University Press, 2012-12)
    Are there any mechanisms in the natural world that respond to reasons – that are sensitive to considerations about what they should do? I think that the answer is that there are approximately 6.6 billion of them on this planet alone. This is not to say that there is nothing more to being a person than being a rational agent – a reasons-responder. My claim is just that to the extent that we are agents we are mechanisms that respond to reasons.
      201
  • Publication
    Two ways to understand causality in agency
    (De Gruyter, 2007-11)
    I want to argue for a causal approach to agency based on an Aristotelian model of causal processes rather than on the more familiar model of a network of causal links.1 Processes in this Aristotelian model are the realisations of potentialities. I will talk of mechanisms as the things that have potentialities; so processes can also be thought of as the workings of mechanisms
      413