AGENCY

The first volume of the HUMANITY series. A rigorous exploration of moral choice, responsibility, and the systems that make them possible. We often ask whether a decision was right or wrong. Far less often do we ask what makes a decision a Moral Choice at all. In AGENCY, Paul Pence investigates the foundations of moral responsibility, arguing that Moral Choice rests upon three essential elements: Self, Uncertainty, and Consequence. From these simple principles emerges a framework for understanding responsibility, accountability, justice, virtue, and the preservation of human Agency itself. Moving beyond individual ethics, AGENCY introduces the concept of Moral Systems Engineering: the evaluation and improvement of the institutions, cultures, technologies, and social structures that shape our ability to make responsible choices. It explores how moral systems strengthen or sabotage Agency, and how societies can better preserve the conditions upon which responsibility depends. Intellectually ambitious, but clear and accessible for the lay reader, AGENCY offers not another moral doctrine, but a framework for understanding how moral responsibility functions, how moral systems succeed or fail, and how both can be improved in an uncertain world.