Special Powers (original) (raw)

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1988

Does having the power to do something require having a reason to exercise that power? Does it require the psychological possibility that one would want to exercise that power? Suppose that a man truly loves his wife and thus finds himself in the following situation: Not only does he have no reason to murder her; he has every reason not .to do so. Does it follow, as some libertarians would insist, that it is therefore not within his power to murder her? In this paper, I should like to present an incompatibilist con ception ot free agency trom which no such consequence follows; one that implies a clear distinction between having the power to do something and having reasons to exercise that power; one that would enable us plausibly to say, contrary to what Peter van Inwagen has recently argued, that most of us are genuinely free most of the time. I shall divide the discussion into three sections. In section I, I shall concede to the compatibilists that having the power to do something in no way entails the psychological possibility that one would want to exercise that power; in section II, I shall examine (and criticize) Peter van Inwagen's claim* that no consistent incompatibilist can make such a concession to compatibilism, and I shall try to show how the incompatibilist, no less than the compatibilist, can do justice to our paradigms of free action; and finally, in section III, I shall argue that, even if we were to grant an important part of the standard compatibilist analysis of power, we would still have good reasons for thinking that free will and determinism are incompatible. But first a preliminary matter. In this paper, I shall speak of what is psychologically possible and psychologically impossible for an agent to do on a given occasion, and I need to give some explanation of what I mean by such descriptions. Let us call, among other things, the beliefs, desires, wants, and attitudes of a person "states of that person," and let us call the predicates which ascribe such states "PC-predicates." Like Strawson's P

Property, Authority, and the (im)possibility of Unilateral Acquisistion

This paper develops an objection to unilateral acquisition of private property, and thus to the sorts of natural property rights that are often offered up as constraints on ‘redistribution’ taxation. I begin by clarifying the prima facie problem with unilateral acquisition, arguing that it is first and foremost a moral problem about the arrogation of authority, rather than a metaphysical problem about the ‘transformation’ of moral reality. But, I argue, no account of authority in the political case allows it to be arrogated without authorizing practices. Among other reasons: absent social practices, there is no way for putative subjects of complex authority relations to know that these relations are in place. Without this knowledge, subjects of putative authority relations are not obligated to obey, after all. This epistemic point, I argue, presses against ‘natural’ authority in property as well, whether we try to justify it in terms of general utility, individual interests, or fundamental rights.

The “Logic” of Power. How my Power Becomes his Power

We analyze how the power of an agent creates social power over the other agents; how an agent acquires new powers, and a given power becomes a different power; how a power is transferred from one agent to another one and accumulated; how co-powers require coordination. What is power ‘alienation’ and ‘subjection’, and a power 'capital'.

The Micro-Macro Constitution of Power

The focus of this work is the complex and dialectic relationship between personal, social, and institutional powers. This distinction is not new, it is even obvious or commonsensical. However, first, this multi-layered nature of power is not acknowledged in all the disciplines (for instance sociology typically rejects the idea of a connection between the personal powers and the social ones); second, in our view there is not a good analytic theory of the personal and interpersonal layers of power and of their – not so obvious – relationships with the power that we prefer to call “institutional” (where the “legal” one is just a sub-case based not simply on conventions, traditions, and social norms but on a system of laws). For example, the notion of “physical power” is a bit reductive, since in fact one not only needs strength, skills, and a working body, but the appropriate action plan and the relevant information, i.e. knowledge, and also the required mental abilities and conditions (motives, awareness, confidence, and so on). We have developed an extended theory of personal and interpersonal forms of power and – on such a basis – of the relationships of “dependence” and “autonomy”. We will present here this ontology and theory, and we will also attempt to connect it to the theory of institutional actions and of institu- tional powers and empowerment.

P. Theodorou, P. Alves, A. Baka (eds). Phenomenology of Law and Normativity (Springer 2024)

2024

This collective volume fills an important scholarly gap against the widespread, mainstream take on the philosophy of law and the sphere of social acts and social realities. It revisits and reinvigorates the phenomenological account of some of the major questions and themes of jurisprudence such as the nature and structure of social acts and social realities, the texture of the sphere of praxis, the foundations of law, ethics, and economics, and the fundamental issue of the normativity of positive law. This volume argues that wherever there is a demand for grounding law and aspects of its context, the phenomenological method can provide a priori—albeit corrigible in their application—access to essential truths about the corresponding elements of interest. The present work reflects upon the place in and potential impact on the theory of law and its context of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl—largely overlooked by legal philosophers and legal theorists. Further coverage contains those who have built upon these ideas of Husserl, such as Alfred Schutz, Edith Stein, Emmanuel Levinas, and Adolf Reinach. The contributions address new issues and questions from the general perspective of the phenomenology of law, of normativity, and of the sphere of social acts and social realities. It is a response to the received view of legal positivism by presenting informed arguments in support of the view that phenomenology has the potential to achieve a deeper grasp of legal normative concepts such as rights, claims, obligations, promises, and apologies. Boundaries between law and morality as well as legal and social ontologies are also approached from a phenomenological perspective. The present volume appeals to students, researchers, and professionals working in phenomenology, ethics, legal philosophy, and human rights theory and practice.

A model of normative power

2010

Abstract A power describes the ability of an agent to act in some way. While this notion of power is critical in the context of organisational dynamics, and has been studied by others in this light, it must be constrained so as to be useful in any practical application. In particular, we are concerned with how power may be used by agents to govern the imposition and management of norms, and how agents may dynamically assign norms to other agents within a multi-agent system.

Phenomenology of Law and Normativity, P. Theodorou, P. Alves, A. Baka (eds)

Springer, 2024