Commitment as Motivation: Amartya Sen’s Theory of Agency and the Explanation of Behavior
Issue Date
2014-03-04Author
Cudd, Ann E.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
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.
Description
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.
ISSN
0266-2671Collections
Citation
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.
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