Agency

The 'metaphysics' of a mechanical reality don't seem to leave room for 'free will' - the ability to choose.

On the other hand, we must attribute free will to honest and competent interlocutors - people with whom we can have a conversation. This is because we have to regard them as choosing what to say. We cannot have conversations with machines.

This is a puzzle - not least because it is only within real human conversations that we can explore any metaphysical theories, including mechanistic ones!

Apart from contributing to my feeling that we only find ourselves doing metaphysics when we've made some kind of mistake, this puzzle tells us something important about agency in a counselling context.

When I think about the objects of counselling - in so far as these can be formulated without presumption - I think of  the restoration of agency and of the possibility of constructive relationships. And these are not two separate things: it is within our conversations with one another that we attribute and experience agency. Where these conversations go dark, become infected with emotional manipulation, our experience of agency is similarly corrupted.

These is where semantic and emotional conceptions of 'meaning' converge - where the link between being able to talk to one another, and living meaningfully, becomes viscerally apparent.