[FRIAM] What is an agent [was: Philosophy and Science}

[glen]

EricS gives what looks a bit like a derivation of "closure to efficient cause" from first principles. 8^D And Dave's reference to autopoesis is perfectly apt. (There's a lot of hemming and hawing about whether Rosen's M-R Systems are a particular instance of autopoiesis.) But Eric's more traditional build-up from control systems and information theory is probably better, less prone to woo/mysticism.

No, I see no *essential* [⛧] difference between the solar-battery-powered garden light versus the flashlight equipped with a sensor and a robotic arm (presumably with a battery that powers the arm and the light ... a battery that could be charged with a solar panel). But it is slightly different. To see how, forget the flashlight and compare the garden light to something like a mercury mechanism thermostat. The "inner life" of the garden light lies in the circuit architecture and the battery. Cf Eric's discussion of simulation, the circuitry of the garden light is (just a tiny bit) virtualized/simulated. The mercury mechanism thermostat is a mechanical computer, whereas the circuitry in the garden light is an electrical computer. Were we alien anthropologists, from which do we think it would be easier to agnostically *infer* the purpose/intention of the computer?

I argue it would be easier to infer the purpose of the electrical computer than the mechanical one because of the virtualization. Virtualization is directly proportional to expressibility. Hence, again cf Conant & Ashby (or Shannon), if the controller is more expressive than the system being controlled, then given *one* purpose/intention, it's more reasonable that the maker of the artifact intended it to do that one thing. The anthropologist might think to herself "Of all the things I might do with this controller, *this* is what they chose to do with it?"

Personally, I think the antikythera <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism> is an excellent foil for resolving one's thoughts on agency (both passthrough/open and sticky/closed).


[⛧] I use "essential" as a slur. Details are not merely important. They're crucial. But I realize most people are essentialist. So I have to talk this way a lot and might give the impression I like talking this way.


On 7/14/23 16:28, Russ Abbott wrote:
> I'm not sure what "closure to efficient cause" means. I considered using as an example an outdoor light that charges itself (and stays off) during the day and goes on at night. In what important way is that different from a flashlight? They both have energy storage systems (batteries). Does it really matter that the garden light "recharges itself" rather than relying on a more direct outside force to change its batteries? And they both have on-off switches. The flashlight's is more conventional whereas the garden light's is a light sensor. Does that really matter? They are both tripped by outside forces.
> 
> BTW, congratulations on your phrase /epistemological trespassing/!
> _
> _
> __-- Russ
> 
> On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 1:47 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     I'm still attracted to Rosen's closure to efficient cause. Your flashlight example is classified as non-agent (or non-living ... tomayto tomahto) because the efficient cause is open. Now, attach sensor and effector to the flashlight so that it can flick it*self* on when it gets dark and off when it gets bright, then that (partially) closes it. Maybe we merely kicked the can down the road a bit. But then we can talk about decoupling and hierarchies of scale. From the armchair, there is no such thing as a (pure) agent just like there is no such thing as free will. But for practical purposes, you can draw the boundary somewhere and call it a day.
> 
>     On 7/14/23 12:01, Russ Abbott wrote:
>      > I was recently wondering about the informal distinction we make between things that are agents and things that aren't.
>      >
>      > For example, I would consider most living things to be agents. I would also consider many computer programs when in operation as agents. The most obvious examples (for me) are programs that play games like chess.
>      >
>      > I would not consider a rock an agent -- mainly because it doesn't do anything, especially on its own. But a boulder crashnng down a hill and destroying something at the bottom is reasonably called "an agent of destruction." Perhaps this is just playing with words: "agent" can have multiple meanings.  A writer's agent represents the writer in negotiations with publishers. Perhaps that's just another meaning.
>      >
>      > My tentative definition is that an agent must have access to energy, and it must use that energy to interact with the world. It must also have some internal logic that determines how it interacts with the world. This final condition rules out boulders rolling down a hill.
>      >
>      > But I doubt that I would call a flashlight (with an on-off switch) an agent even though it satisfies my definition.  Does this suggest that an agent must manifest a certain minimal level of complexity in its interactions? If so, I don't have a suggestion about what that minimal level of complexity might be.
>      >
>      > I'm writing all this because in my search for a characterization of agents I looked at the article on Agency <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/agency/ <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/agency/>> in the /Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy./ I found that article almost a parody of the "armchair philosopher." Here are the first few sentences from the article overview.
>      >
>      >     In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intentionality of action in terms of causation by the agent’s mental states and events.
>      >
>      > _
>      > _
>      > That seems to me to raise more questions than it answers. At the same time, it seems to limit the notion of /agent/ to things that can have intentions and mental models.  (To be fair, the article does consider the possibility that there can be agents without these properties. But those discussions seem relatively tangential.)
>      >
>      > Apologies for going on so long. Thanks, Frank, for opening this can of worms. And thanks to the others who replied so far.
>      >
>      > __-- Russ Abbott
>      > Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
>      > California State University, Los Angeles
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 8:33 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com> <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>      >
>      >     Joe Ramsey, who took over my job.in <http://job.in> <http://job.in <http://job.in>> the Philosophy Department at Carnegie Mellon, posted the following on Facebook:
>      >
>      >     I like Neil DeGrasse Tyson a lot, but I saw him give a spirited defense of science in which he oddly gave no credit to philosophers at all. His straw man philosopher is a dedicated *armchair* philosopher who spins theories without paying attention to scientific practice and contributes nothing to scientific understanding. He misses that scientists themselves are constantly raising obviously philosophical questions and are often ill-equipped to think about them clearly. What is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics? What is the right way to think about reductionism? Is reductionism the right way to think about science? What is the nature of consciousness? Can you explain consciousness in terms of neuroscience? Are biological kinds real? What does it even mean to be real? Or is realism a red herring; should we be pragmatists instead? Scientists raise all kinds of philosophical questions and have ill-informed opinions about them. But *philosophers* try to answer
>      >     them, and scientists do pay attention to the controversies. At least the smart ones do.


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