The brewer, the yeast, and the boundaries of human agency | Psyche Ideasis professor of philosophy and co-director of the cognitive science programme at Marist College in New York. He is the co-editor of the collections Causing Human Actions: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action (2010) and Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine (2016).
‘Brewers make wort. Yeast makes beer.’ This is an adage among those who brew beer, including both amateur homebrewers (such as the present author) and professional brewers. I am uncertain as to its source. It is probably of relatively recent origin, historically, since prior to the 19th century there was little understanding of the role of yeast in fermentation. It is most likely a platitude. But it is a platitude that presupposes that what we do is limited to what we do with our bodies. Our intentional agency, on this view, does not extend into the world outside of our bodies. This is a very restrictive theory of agency. It fails to take into account how our agency is both structured by our environment and also extends into the world outside our bodies in various ways.
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