Agency in Machines, Biology, and Humans

A common reductive worldview claims that only atoms and molecules are real, and all causes originate with biochemical reactions. But I think assessments of the kind mentioned above will allow us to claim that there are kinds of structures (and regions of scale) that deserve causal (and therefore ontological) priority in our descriptions. The conclusion will be to establish that the human self (as emergent from physical brain/body states) is a 'real' agent in the world, just as our intuition suggests. I follow Peacocke in that "Real entities have effects and play irreducible causal roles in an adequate explanation of the world". Furthermore, the difference between the trapezoid and the triangle may be the seed from which a logical account of free agency can grow. This is not to suggest that atoms, for example, are not causally effective and real too,just that their status as real should be plotted on the same axis as the human self.

What would a list of systems ordered by 'causal priority' look like? At the bottom would be inanimate matter - a pebble, for example, with no internal degrees of freedom. If a person were included in the scenario, they may use the pebble for some purpose, and any effect the pebble had would be traced back to the human agent, making the pebble a 'tool'. As we add complexity to tools they fall into another category: machines. Machines have moving parts with joints, and the parts can be in various configurations. An example of something in the machine category would be a loom. Beyond tools and machines we might break out 'autonomous machines' such as steam engines, and then 'intelligent machines' such as electronic computers.

Email link | Printer-friendly | Feedback | Contributed by: Adrian Wyard