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Commitment as Motivation: Amartya Sen’s Theory of Agency and the Explanation of Behavior
Cudd, Ann E.
Cudd, Ann E.
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Abstract
This paper presents Sen's theory of agency, focusing on the role of commitment in this theory as both problematic and potentially illuminating. His account of some commitments as goal-displacing gives rise to a dilemma given the standard philosophical theory of agency. Either commitment-motivated actions are externally motivated, in which case they are not expressions of agency, or such actions are internally motivated, in which case the commitment is not goal-displacing. I resolve this dilemma and accommodate his view of commitment as motivation by developing a broader descriptive theory of agency, which recognizes both agent goal-directed and goal-displacing commitments. I propose a type of goal-displacing commitment, which I call ‘tacit commitment’, that can be seen to fit between the horns. Tacit commitments regulate behaviour without being made conscious and explicit. This resolution suggests a means of bridging the normative/descriptive gap in social-scientific explanation.
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This is the author's accepted manuscript.The original publication is available at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9186646&fileId=S0266267114000030.
Date
2014-03-04
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Cambridge University Press
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Cudd, Ann E. (2014). "Amartya Sen’s Theory of Agency and the Explanation of Behavior." Economics and Philosophy, 30(SI1)35-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266267114000030.