So, Wing Yi Derek;
(2025)
Naturalistic Foundations of Thompson’s Theory of Agency.
Masters thesis (M.Phil), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The present work is concerned with Thompson’s Aristotelian approach to un- covering the minimal conceptual structure underlying attributions of action (X is doing/did A) and explanations of action (X is doing/did A because. . . ). Aristotelian approaches, which conceive of action attribution as involving a relation between the act/event and the form/essence of the agent X, and which explicitly holds on to a teleological conception of action explanation, have been resurgent in contemporary philosophy. Such attempts however face a schematic dilemma: contemporary philosophers with a broadly natu- ralistic orientation often find the metaphysics involving teleology and form problematic, where teleological explanations are in particular difficult to rec- oncile with current conceptions of naturalistic and causal explanation; yet extricating Aristotle’s insights from the metaphysics often leads to watered down claims that cannot do the work originally envisioned. Michael Thompson has proposed a theory that can potentially overcome this difficulty. I shall present Thompson’s proposal, and argue that, as it stands, it still does not escape the fundamental dilemma. However, as will be shown, one can view Thompson’s ideas from a naturalistic point of view. Borrowing from systems theory, I show that the Aristotelian idea of form can be understood as designating systems with a particular physical organi- sation (displaying ‘closure of constraints’). Further, I claim one can study in this naturalistic framework the deep conceptual structure underlying action attributions and action explanations that Thompson proposed through de- veloping a theory of affordances. As I hope to show, this gives one a precise idea of the relation between teleological explanations and naturalistic, ausal explanations.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil |
| Title: | Naturalistic Foundations of Thompson’s Theory of Agency |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205070 |
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