Ep. 326: Guest Michael Tomasello on the Evolution of Agency (Part One)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On The Evolution of Agency (2022), with the author, and guest panelist Chris Heath.

What is human agency? How would we determine whether an animal is a legitimate agent, as opposed to just acting automatically? Tomasello investigates this by thinking about what capabilities and behaviors constitute agency and the degree to which near-human animals have these.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to The Partial Exam in Life, a podcast by some guys who are at one
0:12.0	point set on doing philosophy for living, but then thought better of it.
0:16.0	Our question for episode 325 is something like, how did agency evolve?
0:21.1	And today we'll talk to Michael Tomasello about his book, The Evolution of Agency, published
0:26.3	in 2022.
0:28.0	This is Wes Allwyn, not just an eye and a knee, but part of the collective we that
0:33.0	is Cambridge, Massachusetts.
0:35.0	This is Seth Pasquin in Austin, Texas.
0:37.5	This is Dylan Casey in conversation with my homunculus, but not in a bad way in Madison,
0:43.5	Wisconsin.
0:44.5	This is Chris to for Heath, jointly self-regulating in Los Angeles, California.
0:49.4	This is Mike Tomasello in Durham, North Carolina.
0:53.9	Welcome Mike.
0:54.9	Thank you very much for coming on.
0:55.9	Yes.
0:56.9	We needed an episode on your book, Constructing a Language.
1:01.2	That's a while back, but okay.
1:03.4	Yeah.
1:04.4	Chris and I have delved into a lot of your work, a lot of your books, and I've found it
1:10.6	absolutely fascinating and really informative.
1:14.3	We're used to reading philosophy and so we're weaker on this type of subject matter.
1:20.2	And so for instance, when addressing a question like that of agency, I think we're used to
	...

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