Agency - philosophy and why it is important for Identity (digital)

define: Agency [the ability to shape the context of one’s life]

define: Purpose [the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters]

define: Belonging [the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn]

define: Power [practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context]

define: Agree [time gives experience which concludes I accept or understand]


Run (life)

TIME = 0

REPEAT Agency AND (Purpose, Belonging, Power) = TRUE;

TIME = TIME + 1

UNTIL Agree;

THEN Print ("I am therefore I now have Identity")

End

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Start here on the Stanford Site talking about Plato

In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. 

The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intentionality of action in terms of causation by the agent’s mental states and events. 

From this, we obtain a standard conception and a standard theory of agency. 

Debates about the nature of agency have flourished over the past few decades in philosophy and in other areas of research