Agency

Norm-Based versus Instrumental Rationality

We can define action as a contemporary event embedded in an environment informed by the past and oriented to the future. In such a definition, we give credit to the causal aspects of agency: that is, the past is implicated in current agency, either through rational calculation or causal determination, and we give credit to the fact that acts are directed at changing the world in some sense. They are future-oriented.

Historically, a great deal of debate about agency is normative in the sense that what constitutes agency is thought to define human agency. Some argue that human agency needs to be seen as rational will driven by norms of appropriate behavior. Others argue that agency is best seen as instrumental rationality where people rationally choose their actions given the information they have about the world. The first sees certain goals as being rational; the second does not question the goals that people might have: rational action is only concerned with the best way of attaining those goals.

The former approach can be traced to a Kantian idea that freedom is normatively grounded within the human will governed by categorical imperatives. Agents choose to act based on their will within a rationalized moral framework; they do not act out of material necessity. On the other side, some see freedom as individuals rationally choosing actions based on their desires and goals. Such instrumental rationality is often seen in purely self-interested or material terms, though modern accounts of instrumental rationality deny the distinction and suggest that goals can be equally value-based as self-interested. This distinction between norm-based and instrumental rationality should not be confused with habitual versus autonomous action.

...