Psychology and the Question of Agency

5. A Theory of Situated, Emergent, and Deliberative Agency

103 Chapter Five A Theory of Situated, Emergent, and Deliberative Agency THE UNDERDETERMINATION and the irreducibility of human agency mean that any adequate account of psychological kinds must make contact with an adequate theory of human agency. Psychological kinds are agentic kinds. They interact with those classifications, practices, and categories employed to describe and inquire into them (Hacking, 1995, 1999) precisely because they have agentic capability. By psychological kinds, we mean human subjectivity, understanding, actions, and experiences, the agentic reality of which we regard as not reducible to sociocultural, biological, or physical levels of reality.We do regard these other levels of reality as requirements for, and constraints on, psychological kinds. However, it is a mistake to identify psychological, agentic kinds with sociocultural, biological, or physical kinds. The natural scientific methods and explanations entirely appropriate to biological and physical kinds (i.e., natural, indifferent kinds) are incomplete and depending on the precise question or concern sometimes inappropriate when applied to the study of psychological kinds (human, interactive kinds). While psychological kinds require and are constrained by physical and biological levels of reality, they not only require and are constrained by, but actually are constituted at, the sociocultural level of reality. Both the existence of psychological kinds and inquiry into them are dependent on human activity (at collective and individual levels). Only the latter is true of biological and physical phenomena. Moreover, at least some of human activity issues from situated, deliberative human agents capable of exercising some degree of self-determination with respect to their choices and actions. 103 104 Psychology and the Question of Agency In this chapter, the various claims that constitute our theory of situated , emergent, and deliberative agency are presented and elaborated.Taken together, these claims explain the emergence, development, interactivity, and status of agency and psychological kinds, as distinct from natural kinds. Our hope and conviction is that with an adequate theory of agency and psychological kinds it will be clear how the subject matter of psychology differs from that of physics, and why the methods and explanations of natural science alone cannot possibly inform psychological studies. Despite disciplinary psychology’s long-standing and continuing commitment to psychology as natural science, such a commitment is a basic error that has impeded, and continues to impede, an adequate understanding of psychological kinds. Our theory of agency is inspired by much of the work we reviewed and summarized previously, especially in chapter 3, but we are not concerned with making our account entirely compatible with any of those other accounts. We want to acknowledge our debt to those symbolic interactionist, social constructionist, sociocultural, developmental, and especially to those hermeneutic lines of work that have influenced our account. Nonetheless, we consider our work in this chapter to have unique features that may or may not be interpreted by readers to fall within the purview of any of these other approaches. Nonetheless, it is clear that much of what we have to say here is at least “hermeneutically inspired.” In the first section of what follows, we explicate a position that we believe helps to establish the reality of sociocultural and psychological phenomena and the relation of these levels of reality to biological and physical levels of reality.With this tiered conception of reality in place, we move on to discuss various existential conditions underlying our theory of agency and briefly elaborate a conception of personhood that includes the kind of agency about which we theorize. We then articulate our developmental theory proper.This leads to a consideration of human care and understanding as these extend possibilities for human being and agency within traditions of living. Finally, we consider the implications of our theory of the developmental emergence of situated, deliberative agency for the understanding of psychological kinds through psychological inquiry. LEVELS OF REALITY BEING-IN-THE-WORLD Heidegger’s (1927/1962, 1982) hermeneutic realism avoids the subjective– objective and mind-dependent–mind-independent turmoil that occurs all too easily when traditional doctrines of realism are applied to human activities in the world. It does this by discarding the ontological assumptions that are built into traditional philosophy from Descartes onward. Heidegger undercuts the idea that we are minds or subjects who somehow happen to A Theory of Situated, Emergent, and Deliberative Agency 105 be in contact with an external world of material objects. For him, beingin -the-world is a unitary phenomenon in...