RSSBook: Agent, Person, Subject, Self
Jan 26
Title: Agent, Person, Subject, Self
Subtitle: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure
Publication Year: 2013
Publisher: Oxford University Press
http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Mind/?view=usa&ci=9780199926985
Author: Paul Kockelman
Hardback: ISBN: 9780199926985 Pages: 256 Price: U.S. $ 74.00
Abstract:
This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and
meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive
theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and
theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and
conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood
as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive
capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant
on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best
understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional
stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning
and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as
embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular,
while this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also
offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves
in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this
theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by
theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such (often
erroneously) individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but
generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between
people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or
in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include
mediation at any degree of remove).
Recent Comments