Is Agency a Matter of Choice and Decision or Behavioural Control?
Abstract: Human agency is overwhelmingly concerned with behaviour – that is, with physical movement. The kind of complex behaviour produced by humans and many other animals is already an enormous achievement. A simple action like biting an apple is in fact an articulated temporally-extended sequence of movements, coordinating muscles of the fingers, arm, jaw, and tongue, as well as postural muscles in the trunk. Behavioural actions unfold in a way that is continuously sensitive to threats and opportunities in the environment, and the changing needs and values of the organism. Reflecting on the evolution, in animals, of the fundamental capacity for complex behavioural control – on basic aspects of the way these mechanisms have evolved to function – offers a valuable perspective, complementary to dominant models of agency in terms of decision-making.
This perspective suggests a significant re-orientation of where we should focus in order to understand agency, away from a moment of choice and towards a temporally-extended episode of behaviour. Being an agent, at least of the human kind, is a matter of the way behavioural episodes unfold, integrated with, and rapidly responsive to, needs and values that change continuously. This perspective also highlights a deep difference between the ‘agentic’ capacities of increasingly intelligent AI systems, focused as they are on the most cognitive and intellectual aspects of agency, and the kind of enactive agency exercised by humans.
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