Agency, Causality, and Meaning

Abstract

Although the concept of human agency is central to our everyday understanding and explanation of human action, it is often held to be anathemic to a properly scientific study of human action (Sheldon, 1982). The scientific psychologist treats human agency as, at best, a prescientific superstition (Skinner, 1974), and at worst, an objectionable piece of metaphysics. The hermeneutical psychologist does little to discourage this conception by appearing to remove the question of agency from the domain of legitimate empirical enquiry.