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Self-agency, also known as the phenomenal will, is the sense that actions are self-generated. Scientist Benjamin Libet was the first to study it, concluding that brain activity predicts the action before one even has conscious awareness of his or her intention to act upon that action (see Neuroscience of free will ).
Part of a series on: Agency; In different fields; Philosophy; Psychology; Social science; Theories; Action theory; Self-determination theory; Belief–desire–intention model
Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined.
The concept of agency implies an active organism, one who desires, makes plans, and carries out actions. [5] The sense of agency plays a pivotal role in cognitive development, including the first stage of self-awareness (or pre-theoretical experience of one's own mentality), which scaffolds theory of mind capacities.
When human beings become agents through reflexive self-awareness, they express their agency by having reasons for acting, to which they assign weights. Choosing the dimensions of one's identity is a special case, in which the assigning of weight to a dimension is partly self-constitutive.
In psychology, agency signifies the concept of a person's ability to initiate and control their actions, and the feeling they have of being in charge of their actions. The topic of agency can be divided into two topical domains. The first half of the topic of agency deals with the behavioral sense, or outward expressive evidence thereof.
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Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral choices based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. [1] A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong."