This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm went up from the fact that I raised my arm?

A question asked by Ludwig Wittgenstein. He was getting at a notoriously complex issue. What is it for a person, an agent, to will or

intend an action? If I intend to raise my arm and then do so, is this will, this intention, something that happens in a brain, something

that could be physically identified, say, and does this willing, this intending, then

cause my arm to rise.

Jennifer Hornsby of London's Birkbeck College and Oslo's centre of the study of mind in nature

thinks this picture of how human action works is misconceived.

Jennifer Hornsby, welcome to Flach. human action works is misconceived.

Jennifer Hornsby, welcome to Philosophy Pines.

Thank you. Hello.

Now the topic we want to look at today is Human Agency.

For non- philosophers, that's not an obvious topic.

Could you just explain what we mean by human agency?

Yeah, human beings are thought of as agents in so far as they can do things and on a natural understanding of things we do in the world,

to do something is to bring about a change, to cause something to happen or perhaps to prevent it from happening.

So it's human beings in their role as causes that human agency is getting at.

So when we do things we act as agents and there is a standard picture that is dominant in philosophy of how we come to do things.

Could you just elaborate on that little bit?

Yes, according to the dominant picture, when someone does something and there's an

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