Title: Human agency | Psychology Wiki | Fandom
Headings: Human agency
Human agency
Content: Human agency | Psychology Wiki | Fandom
Human agency
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Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It is normally contrasted to natural forces, which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this it is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined. Human agency entails the uncontroversial, lower claim that humans . do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world. How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is not at issue. Human agency invests a moral component into a given situation. If a situation is the consequence of human decision making, persons may be under a duty to apply value judgements to the consequences of their decisions, and held to be responsible for those decisions. Human agency entitles the observer to ask should this have occurred?