Wittgenstein once asked, "What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?" What would be left is, presumably, the quality of 'agency,' which differentiates between legitimate actions and mere behaviors. In my dissertation I investigate the way we conceive of this quality and recommend a change of the prevalent model for one that is developed in a more empirically informed way. Most current work in ethics employs a historically acquired and folk-psychology approved notion of agency. On this view, the distinction between actions and behaviors is fairly clear-cut. Actions proper are characteristic of human beings. They are 'rational' in either the deliberative process that preceded it or in terms of their efficacy; they are launched `autonomously' by the agent's self rather than influenced by context, emotion or habit. These, and a few other conditions have to be fulfilled for an act to earn the badge of an action; falling short of that standard disqualifies it, or, at the very least renders it an imperfect, faulty instance of agency. An agent is thus typically viewed as a disembodied, rational source of conduct, who can withhold her desires and choose between different courses of action using some form of deliberation. I submit that this model survives neither due to its empirical adequacy nor because it is otherwise valuable for ethics (or, more generally, for understanding human behavior). Rather, there is (I argue), a certain widespread philosophical attitude that determines its persistence--a general longing for the stability of the self and an orderly, controllable relationship between the agent and the world. I call the proponents of this attitude "tortoises" and offer a critique of their main claims. I conclude that we must alter this model. The empirical results from psychology and neuroscience suggest that an agent is best viewed as a bundle of modules that are governed by different rules. None of them is "more" the agent than another, but all operate to achieve a state of homeostasis between so the different processes within the agent and the environment.

Existing literature provides newly identified responsibilities of the principal supervisor but lacks in information about how districts should strategically spearhead the process of initiating, implementing, and managing the changes to the role of the supervisor. In this study, I examined the behaviors and actions of one school district's executive-level leaders as they shifted the position of the principal supervisor. Findings could contribute to a new area of research in how district leaders may navigate and manage the complicated process of initiating and managing the changes to the principal supervisor's role.

The subject of this thesis is how a suspected criminal has been described in written swedish media. The topic of the articles is the investigation of a man suspected for murder and for dismembering the victim during the winter of 2011. The purpose of this thesis is to try to answer the question of what the newspapers actually write to describe a suspect before he or she has been trialed in court. For the analyse of the articles, published in four of Swedens largest newspapers, critical discourse analysis has been used. The results have been compared with other analyses made on other cases and have been discussed with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of action. Results of the thesis show that there are similarities beetween this study and others, in a number of ways. The descriptions of the suspect are influenced by wich agent is allowed to speak in the text, by the words that are used in the articles and if the agents in the texts are known to the reader or not.

The volitional theory of action has recently been assailed as an outmoded account of human action, while attempts have been made to preserve the theory on grounds which side-step the traditional difficulties. Both approaches to the theory have left it without a coherent expression. This thesis is an attempt to give a coherent theoretical foundation to the theory and to effect its critical evaluation. Preceding a discussion of the theory is a historical appreciation of its tradition, and this is used as a backdrop for viewing two aspects of the theory which serve today as its paradigms. The one is an analysis of human action in terms of a volition which is considered as something which an agent performs, and the other is an analysis of human action in terms of a volition connected causally to an item of behavior, The incompatibility of these aspects is indicated, and an attempt is made to locate them within a wider theoretical structure. This is done by distinguishing between atomic actions and instrumental actions and by attributing to the theory two definitions of an individual human action which preserve these paradigms and which account for both sorts of actions. The final segment of the thesis is concerned with a critical dismissal of the theory. The stock arguments against the theory are first defeated, end it is then argued that one aspect of the theory fails to account for forbearances and that the other aspect does not provide an adequate account of atomic actions. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

In the 21st century, this planet has experienced an explosion of social movements and protests. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement, global protests had become such a prominent feature of the first decade of the new millennium that Time Magazine named the protester as its person of the year in 2011. This project examines the relationship between social theory and political practice in an attempt to gain further insight into contemporary social movements. In particular, it examines the theoretical assumptions underlying the Occupy Movement in the United States and compares these assumptions with 19th century individual and collective anarchist theories, as well as with contemporary theories that have taken the postmodern turn.

This qualitative study explored the perceptions and practices of elementary school administrators regarding parental involvement in three urban elementary schools. Particular attention was given to understanding the connection between the beliefs that school leaders shared about parental involvement and its role in school improvement (i.e., their espoused theories) and to how they supported parental involvement in their school community (i.e., their theories in use). Using Argyris and Schön’s (1978) theories of action framework, face-to face interview data and school and district documents were collected and analyzed to explore how well administrators’ practices relative to parental involvement (theory-in-use) aligned with their beliefs and perceptions (espoused theory). As such, data analysis focused on understanding both what administrators believe and what they do to use parental involvement to support school improvement efforts. / text

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L '« action » est un mot clé dans la pensée de Kojève. Selon lui, l'être est l'action, l'être est la négativité. Toute l'histoire humaine est une histoire des luttes entre les esclaves et les maîtres. L'interprétation de Kojève sur Hegel a reflété l'angoisse existentialiste des intellectuels français entre les deux guerres, et a en même temps satisfait leurs curiosités à l'égard du marxisme après la révolution russe. En suivant Hegel, Kojève refuse une simple dichotomie entre l'action et la pensée. Il croit que le concept est le temps, la vérité se déroule au cours de l'histoire et ne peut pas s'achever sans action. Pour lui, le bien le plus supérieur est le savoir absolu qui peut s'apparaître automatiquement à la fin de l'histoire. L'aspect politique de la théorie de l'action de Kojève est plus marxiste dans un certain sens, et il est une extension naturelle de sa philosophie de l'action. Puisque la vérité ne peut pas s'accomplir d'un seul coup, Kojève a modifié sa théorie dans ses pratiques philosophiques et politiques. Par exemple, il a hésité plusieurs fois entre l'Orient et l'Occident en prévoyant l'orientation du développement de l'histoire humaine. Un autre exemple, son jugement pour la décolonisation politique de la France a changé considérablement. L'insistance de Kojève sur la négativité ne le guide pas à « la négativité éternelle » de Bataille. Son « savoir absolu » diffère évidemment de « la finité de l'objectivité historique » d'Aron. Mais tous ces conflits nous aideraient à mieux comprendre les débats sur la pratique dans l'intelligentsia française après la guerre. / "Action" is a key word in Kojève's thought. According to him, being is action, being is negativity. And the whole human history is a history of struggle between masters and slaves. Kojève's interpretation of Hegel has embodied also the existential anxieties in the French intelligentsia in the 1930s between the two world wars and catered for the curiosities of the French elites about the Marxism after the Russian revolution, thus produced profound influences. Following Hegel, Kojève refuses the simple dichotomy of the action and the thinking. He believes that the concept equals the time, the verity develops in the history and cannot be achieved without action. For Kojève, the most superior good is the absolute knowledge, or wisdom, or the sum of all the verities, and can appear automatically in the end of the history. This adds such a meaning of essentialism for Kojève's philosophy of action. The political aspect of Kojève's theory of action is a natural extension of his philosophy of action, and it seems more Marxist in a sense. Since the verity cannot be attained at one stroke, Kojève has corrected his theories in his philosophical and political practices. For example, he has swinged several times between the west and the east in anticipating the orientation of the historical development, and has discovered in Japan a development road differing from the Americanization. Another example, his judgment to the political decolonization in France has changed greatly. Here reflects the practical wisdom which is more directly related to the action. Kojève's assertion of the negativity doesn't le ad him to Bataille's "eternal negativity". His "absolute knowledge" clashes essentially with Aron's "finiteness of the objectivity of history». But these conflicts will also help us to better understand the debates concerning the practice in the French intelligentsia after the war.

No description available.

O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar a teoria da ação humana presente na Ética Nicomaqueia de Aristóteles e, em particular, os elementos que constituem os critérios para a determinação da noção de responsabilidade do agente moral e identificar se tais critérios se encontram presentes na teoria sobre a imitação da ação humana na tragédia grega, apresentada na Poética. Para ilustrar essa possível relação, utilizar-se-á o mito de Édipo, paradigma da discussão sobre a virtude na ação heroica, presente na tragédia de Sófocles, Édipo-Rei. / The aim of this master degree dissertation is to investigate the theory of human action available in Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics. The aim is particularly to investigate the elements that constitute the criteria to determining the notion of responsibility of the agent and to identify if these criteria can be found in the theory about the imitation of human action in Greek tragedy available in Aristotles Poetics. In order to ilustrate this possible relation, it will be used Oedipus myth, as a paradigm of the discussion about virtue in heroic action, available in Sophocles tragedy, Oedipus-Rex.