Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Philosophers Index Abstract

This essay is a defense of the pragmatist thesis that agency is a necessary condition of perceptions with objective content. Two arguments for this are given. (i) A third person argument that it is only possible to ascribe objective perception to a being that is capable of action, since the capacity for perceptions with objective contents implies a capacity for similar beliefs and this latter capacity requires the possibility of action. (ii) A first person argument that one can only regard one's own perceptions as objective if one regards their contents as an element of their cause and that the experience of agency is a necessary condition of a grasp of causation¹.