Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 08:50:57 -0500
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: Agency chez Bhaskar


Hi Tobin,

I will be very interested to hear what other people have to say about this.  

Given that in PON the chapter that is *called* "Agency" is devoted entirely to individual action (and the science that RB takes to have individual action as its proper object, viz., psychology), I would tend to agree with your reading of the position.  At the same time, I don't think that there's a *prohibition* on the concept of collective agency -- it's just (I would say) that it is intentionality that is at the heart of agency, and it is individuals, in PON anyway, whose intentionality is ontologically primary.  I think it would be important to say that while collectivities (may) engage in intentional action, structures do not.  The interesting question is exactly what *collective agency* is, for RB -- exactly *how* the predicate of intentionality gets applied to collectivities (an emergent property of an emergent entity?).     

Why does Archer say what she does, do you think?

Warmly,
Ruth



     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---