The case
A thermostat compares room temperature with a setpoint and switches heating. Its whole repertoire is one regime with two states. Nothing in it changes which regime governs, and it would keep the same rule if heating stopped warming the room.
What it can show
It is the test case any admission test for agency must handle:
- Model comparison alone leaves it on the edge. Orseau et al. (LIT-911) find the agent and device descriptions of comparable simplicity.
- The adaptation test refuses it, but not its makers. On Kenton et al.’s criterion (LIT-909), its rule would not adapt if its action’s effect on the world changed. They find instead that “the thermostat with its creation process is an agent”, because the designers would redesign it.
- The jurisdiction reading refuses it alone and agrees about its makers. There is no organization over regimes, only one regime, so the bare thermostat governs nothing. Its regime does lie inside its designers’ will-organization (TERM-023) (TERM-047), so the agent is the designers’ jurisdiction, and the thermostat is part of it.
On the will paper’s terms, the permissiveness objection (CLAIM-010) said every control system would have a will. The thermostat is where that is tested.
It is stipulated, a standard idealization. Real thermostats with schedules, learning or occupancy sensing move toward the other side, and are a variant worth filing if one is needed.