Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Agency and self-knowledge

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This isn't a long paper, and it will reward a reasonably careful reading. It discusses the concept of agency as it relates to self-knowledge. As Brie Gertler notes, these are two sides of the epistemic coin: "Agency typically involves affecting some object or phenomenon, whereas knowledge typically involves being affected by some object or phenomenon." The paper looks at how we come to have the agency we do - how do we imagine what we imnagine, and how do we come to believe the things we do, either for reasons, or for no good reason at all. Gertler argues, "The well-established fact that attitudes are often shaped by non-rational factors challenges the epistemic basis of rational agency accounts of self-knowledge." Note that this link is to a 13 page MS-Word document.

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