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A More Basic Version of Agency? As If!

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From Animals to Animats 14 (SAB 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9825))

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Abstract

At present there is just one definition [2] that attempts to explicitly naturalise the concept of (general, embodied) agency, and it is unapologetically autopoietic-enactivist. This fact constitutes a public challenge to other traditions in cognitive science.

A ‘bare’ problem of defining agency remains, even after paring away hard phenomenological and normative problems by limiting the scope of the problem to describing ‘as-if’ agency (i.e. the external appearance of agency). Building on [2], I identify an extended list of criteria that a theory of agency (whether ‘true’ or ‘as-if’) should meet.

I argue that autopoiesis is the wrong foundation even for ‘bare’ agency, let alone phenomenological and volitional agency; instead, I recommend starting with an ‘as-if’ definition that relates agency to some theory of embodied rationality, effectively providing a generalised version of Dennett’s intentional stance [9], and taking a step towards a rigorous formal definition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Apart from their discussion of the nature of space and time from the agent’s perspective, which is interesting, but not the focus of the current article.

  2. 2.

    At present, there is no scientific consensus on what this represents in physical terms. For the purposes of discussion, we will have to rely on the meaning of the words in ordinary English.

  3. 3.

    Of course, in the long term, the toxin fatally disrupts the bacterium’s locomotive behaviour.

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Acknowledgments

Nathaniel Virgo, Pedro Martínez Mediano, and Paulo De Jesus provided invaluable feedback on early versions of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex, Brighton, England

    Simon McGregor

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  1. Simon McGregor
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Correspondence to Simon McGregor .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

    Elio Tuci

  2. Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

    Alexandros Giagkos

  3. Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

    Myra Wilson

  4. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    John Hallam

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McGregor, S. (2016). A More Basic Version of Agency? As If!. In: Tuci, E., Giagkos, A., Wilson, M., Hallam, J. (eds) From Animals to Animats 14. SAB 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9825. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43488-9_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43488-9_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43487-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43488-9

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