ABSTRACT
According to the Aristotelian tradition, rationality is the exclusive possession of human beings. One way of defending this view is to argue that the practical and theoretical capacities of humans constitute a distinctive form of agency: rational agency. But what would a rational form of agency be? This entry sketches an answer. To amount to a form of agency, the exercise of these capacities would have to be the central element in a distinctive kind of change, distinct in the way that, for example, growth and self-movement are distinct kinds of change. To be a form of rational agency, this distinctive kind of change must be tied essentially to the agent’s rational sensitivity to reasons: the capacity to make up one’s mind to do x or to believe p on the basis of considerations. The essential tie is then explained as follows: exercises of that capacity constitute the causal connection between an action or belief and the reason on which it rests. For a subject to accuse the butler of doing it because the butler lacked an alibi or to believe that the butler did it because the butler lacked an alibi is, on this view, nothing over and above the subject’s viewing the action of accusing the butler as to be done or the proposition that the butler did it as to be believed in light of his lacking an alibi. Rational agency, then, is the power to decide normative questions in a manner so as to constitute facts about the causes of certain events and states.
