SELFHOOD, NORMATIVITY, AND CONTROL
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
May 10-11, 2007
Keynote speakers: David Velleman and Susan Hurley
It is a basic folk intuition that genuine agency can be distinguished from mere bodily movement in virtue of an agent’s capacity to be in control of their behaviour. This intuition is also central to many traditional philosophical accounts of human agency, no matter how diverse they may be in other respects. Central features such as agential authority, or selfhood, and acting for a reason, or normativity, are often thought to imply some important kind of control. An agent’s actions are considered to be hers in virtue of the agent’s being in control of her actions. And an action is done for a reason in virtue of the agent’s capacity to bring her behaviour under normative constraints. Recent developments in experimental psychology, however, raise questions about this intuition. Experimental work suggests that for at least some types of behaviour, our trusted notion of conscious control does not do any explanatory work. These new results force philosophers and psychologists alike to rethink the traditional picture of human agency with its key notions of selfhood, normativity, and (indeed) control. In particular, do we need the concept of control to make sense of selfhood and normativity, or can we do without? If we can’t do without it, which revisions of the traditional idea of control do we need?
We invite those who would wish to contribute to the conference to send an abstract of their paper before October 1, 2006 to