Definition
The concept of agency implies an active organism, one who desires, makes plans, and carries out actions. The sense of agency plays a pivotal role in cognitive development, including the first stage of self-awareness (or pre-theoretical experience of one's own mentality), which scaffolds theory of mind capacities. Indeed, the ability to recognize oneself as the agent of a behavior is the way the self builds as an entity independent from the external world. The sense of agency and its scientific study has important implications in social cognition, moral reasoning, and psychopathology. The conceptual distinction between SA and SO was defined by philosopher and phenomenologist Shaun Gallagher. Using a different terminology, essentially the same distinction has been made by John Campbell and Lynn Stephens & George Graham.
Read more about this topic: Sense Of Agency
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals—just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
“No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this—”devoted and obedient.” This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.”
—Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)