Michael E. Bratman (2007), Structures of Agency: Essays, New York: Oxford University Press — DOI-10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195187717.001.0001
On the citation. The brief’s details are right: author, title, 2007, a book of essays. Crossref gives the title as “Structures of Agency”; the printed subtitle “Essays” is from the library catalogue.
Key takeaways
Registered from the contents, not a reading. Chapters, with Crossref’s pages:
- Introduction (3–18)
- 1 Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency (20–46)
- 2 Valuing and the Will (47–67)
- 3 Hierarchy, Circularity, and Double Reduction (68–88)
- 4 Two Problems about Human Agency (89–105)
- 5 Nozick on Free Will (106–136)
- 6 A Desire of One’s Own (137–161)
- 7 Autonomy and Hierarchy (162–186)
- 8 Three Forms of Agential Commitment: Reply to Cullity and Gerrans (187–194)
- 9 Planning Agency, Autonomous Agency (195–221)
- 10 Three Theories of Self-Governance (222–253)
- 11 Temptation Revisited (256–282)
- 12 Shared Valuing and Frameworks for Practical Reasoning (283–310)
The chapter numbers are positional, counting from the first essay. The other reader’s filing of “Three Theories of Self-Governance” (LIT-596) calls it chapter 11 of the collection, so the printed numbering was not settled from here.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request. The record now holds two of the
essays’ themes at second hand. Bratman’s 2018 essay (LIT-567) cites
“Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency” for the claim that
plans induce “psychological connectedness and continuity of intention and
plan that are in the spirit of broadly Lockean models of personal identity”
(pp. 28–33). That is why the book carries personhood. It cites “Three
Theories” for self-governing policies, and “Temptation Revisited” for an
earlier view of willpower that it now thinks will not “apply in a
sufficiently general way”. Korsgaard (LIT-587) cites “Reflection,
Planning” and “Two Problems about Human Agency” for Bratman’s Lockean view of
identity, and measures her normative account against it. The IEP survey
(LIT-297) cites the book for the claim that plans partly constitute
identity.
Deferred because it was not read. The owner allows a book to be replaced by
a shorter lawful work by the same author. For this book that work is the
2018 essay, which states where these essays led. “Three Theories” is filed
separately by another reader. The two essays most worth reading next are
“Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency”, for the Lockean
claim, and “Autonomy and Hierarchy”, for THEORY-029.
No anthology topic holds it, and it carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.