On the importance of a human-scale breadth of view: Reading Tallis’ Freedom

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F22%3A73615587" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/22:73615587 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/humaff-2022-0038/html" target="_blank" >https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/humaff-2022-0038/html</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2022-0038" target="_blank" >10.1515/humaff-2022-0038</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

On the importance of a human-scale breadth of view: Reading Tallis’ Freedom

Original language description

This paper is my commentary on Raymond Tallis’ book Freedom: An Impossible Reality (2021). Tallis argues that the laws described by science are dependent on human agency which extracts them from nature. Consequently, human agency cannot be explained as an effect of natural laws. I agree with Tallis’ main argument and I appreciate that he helps us understand the systematic importance of a human-scale breadth of view regarding any theoretical investigation. In the main part of the paper, I critically comment on Tallis’ interpretation of several more loosely associated topics from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, I reconsider Tallis’ account of intentionality as a factor that opens a distance between the cognizer and the world. Whereas Tallis emphasizes that agency requisitions aspects of the world to achieve its goals, I point out that agency does not determine the meaning of things unidirectionally and independently of all context. A self-controlled agency is provisionally reached through a process of ‘deindexicalization’ of our passive intentional capacities, that is, by creating and maintaining new, different worldly contexts. Subsequently, I analyze Tallis’ description of our intentional relation to spatiotemporally distant possibilities. In my view, Tallis underestimates the extent to which our intentional relation to possibilities is pre-reflexive and pre-predicative and hence independent of propositional attitudes. Finally, I consider Tallis’ interpretation of nature and show that it is deeply influenced by the sciences of nature. In contrast, I argue that agency can be properly described only if we understand it as an intervention in a lifeworld already imbued with sense, not merely a physical or material nature.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Human Affairs-Postdisciplinary Humanities &amp; Social Sciences Quarterly

ISSN

1210-3055

e-ISSN

1337-401X

Volume of the periodical

32

Issue of the periodical within the volume

4

Country of publishing house

SK - SLOVAKIA

Number of pages

14

Pages from-to

439-452

UT code for WoS article

000877751300009

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85141983294