nucleation

TERM-048: willed agent

1 min read

Properties4
StatusActive
Tagsagency, self-governance
Linedistributed-agency
Used byCLAIM-155 — Willed agency is a kind between agency and selfhood: a control system whose behaviour is governed by a will-organization over several regimes is more than an agent and closer to a self, in the self-governing sense, without thereby being a subject, CLAIM-159 — The record's rival accounts of will are claims about drive profiles in different cells: Ainslie's interests are aggregate or emergent, the expected value of control is top-down, and will-organization is the maintained organization that governs how the drive profile changes, CLAIM-170 — The agents in a system are a factorization of it relative to a level of description and a target; agents in general are identified by adaptation, and willed agents are individuated by their will-organization: a willed agent is the jurisdiction of a will-organization, CLAIM-174 — A candidate factor is an agent at a level when it is one system there, when a goal-directed description beats a device description by more than the Occam cost, and when its policy would adapt if its actions' consequences changed; it is a willed agent when, further, a will-organization over several regimes describes it better than none, and what passes that is the jurisdiction of a will-organization

Graph View

Definition

A willed agent, at a level and for a target, is an agent (TERM-044) that also passes a fourth test:

  1. Will. Its behaviour is better described with a will-organization (TERM-023) than without one. That means a maintained organization over more than one action-generating regime (TERM-019), deciding which regime acts: accessibility, precedence, persistence, jurisdiction, suspension, transformation (CLAIM-027).

It is individuated as that organization’s jurisdiction (TERM-047): the regimes whose efficacy it governs.

The tiers nest. Every willed agent is an agent, and every agent is a control system. The reverse inclusions fail.

What it is not

  • Not a self. A willed agent has something like the self-governance unity of ADR-024: standards that decide among its own regimes. Nothing in the definition gives it the subject unity, a point of view. A firm can plausibly be willed without being a subject (CLAIM-155).
  • Not a system with an operative will only. Operative will is whichever regime acts now, and every agent has one. A willed agent has governance over which one acts.
  • Not a thermostat, even with a goal. One regime gives nothing to govern.

Backlinks