 So okay, thank you very much So we have this like not the last session. We have one more to go in June but so I'm very happy to have you here so that my my personal that the way I came across Huk's work was to One book chapter Contributed in a volume was also contributing to a couple of years ago Yeah, paper with people man, which it was really it was very interesting because it depends on in my opinion a very controversial and unconventional approach to organismal agency and The people it was a fun people so it was brilliant something that was so I the first time I I I Saw your work. I thought you were just a philosopher of biology, but then Charles organized a Conference and you were speaking about something absolutely different which was more about social epistemology and So it's a very and this is something I usually am no no interested in no no interest in but Found the talk as well. So it's a very Yes, a very broad Set of interest in food bio bioethics human nature Social epistemology and is a practice in violence, right? Yeah Very very impressive character and so I'm very very excited to hear him talk about organismal agency Please Be able to meet them But it's to I after I mean I'm plus for biology mainly, but I spent a couple of years in an ethics center Out of choice. I wanted to broaden interest somewhat, but it's influenced my thinking as well and it'll actually Come up in this talk today. So topic is agency Some of you might know that there's a bit of a resurgence in this concept in among philosophers of biology and biologists So I want to mainly sketch an intuition of the different way of thinking about Organismic agency or agency in organisms Kind of changing the the paradigm form of agency from intentionality to Describe this deliberation But in this being Friday afternoon as well I just want to kind of talk a bit more broadly Well, what's that state concerning agency and kind of predestined to able so the current concern for agency in a historical context? Not only history of evolutionary biology, but even history of science as such and As a preparation for Introducing this idea of deliberation. I'll then try to narrow down some of the main philosophical problems concerning agency in philosophy biology and how the current accounts bear So what's agency? You know in the broader context, of course a concept that's used in feminist discourse a lot think about empowerment, disempowerment, the agency that's being respected and so on and whether coincidence or not the term has seeped into Biology an ethology the study of animal behavior in particular And so what people have in mind when they talk about agency is a type of Gold-directedness type of teleology. So Stags lock antlers in order to gain access to mates Ecolized with a gradient nutrient gradients to get at the source Even metabolic structures have certain gold-directedness, right? So the iron metabolism has as its goal Storing of iron within the organism So of course this this covers a huge range of phenomena from, you know, something that's Recognizably cognitive and that you might think okay, perhaps perhaps some agency to something that would almost seem Prevented to describe that as a gem show So within philosophy biology, there's been a long Tradition of attention for functional explanations. So just to contrast that so agent agential explanations are also teleological Goals are an exponents in the explanation But the difference is that The goal is attached to the whole organism set it apart. So Darwin's finches the beaks have a function and The the process of adaptation of course is shaped The shape of the beak that to the type of seed That it's supposed to be able to peck at But an agential type of language would then be talking about the finch as a whole organism So there's kind of give you kind of a causal overview of what's going on. So Mainly the paradigmatic examples of agential Phenomenal concern behavior, even though that can be generalized. And so the organism is thought to be the cause of that behavior And of course, you know, is that The most detailed explanation you can give well, of course, you can go back further the causal tree point to external processes Constitutive processes within the organism that are also responsible for the behavior So what agential explanation does is kind of screens off those other sources of causal explanation. So it tries to Present the organism as a whole as a kind of a primitive causal experiments So that's that's what's going on an essential explanation Of course, the the challenge then is to make sense of why that why that type of explanatory structure Makes sense. Why why in one or what conditions? Can can you kind of screen off those those other causal processes and the main competitor is selection explanation, so Of course, if you think of the stag behavior You could explain the stag behavior by referring to certain cognitive mechanisms that were shaped by a history of natural selection that these cognitive mechanisms Contribute to reproductive success and they're triggered under certain conditions and that's why the stags exhibit this behavior An agential explanation will refer them to the organism as a whole. So they are kind of competing at at some level And the question is Can the one be converted into the other without any additional cost So that's that's kind of the other big difference with functional explanation. It's kind of Consensus that you can translate functional explanations into selections terms without losing anything real you know the function of the heart is Upon blood that's the the toy example. That's that's always used But it's more of a real question whether that same type of translation can be done with the potential explanations without Additional cost. So yeah, this behavior can can can be can be given a selectionist explanation So the question then is well Is the agential explanation doing any additional work? Why talk about agency at all? And so this is this is broadening the problem somewhat so Why are we even talking about agency? What motivates Naturalists to even invoke this concept one Very intuitive case. That's not always mentioned But that's kind of that's kind of in the background is that's well in in the details of how Ethologists interact with with animals. So then perhaps details alone don't always make it into the causal models that are published In papers, but there is kind of a strong intuition among ethologists that Yeah, you can't explain all aspects of animal behavior simply in terms of for instance fitness maximization so that's Jane Goodall and So the thing that ship is picking up fleas or attempting to which is of course the sign of affection or social bonding Pet owners, I guess very attached to their pets. They have Close contact with their pets Every day, I don't have pets They're saying So You know a dog owner is a very attached to the dog It's most likely not going to experience the dog's reaction. I saw well. This is just a manifestation of Kind of a long process of artificial selection from the European wolf It doesn't really care about me this unconditional love. I think that I'm receiving it's not really about me It's just about the satisfaction of some kind of disposition. Of course, yeah I haven't come across a dog owner who's so detached from their dog in that way There's seems to be strong intuitions that that Organisms are agents in some sense Now, of course, that's that's anecdotal There's also Stronger empirical case. And so this is where How agency has Become an become an issue within philosophy of biology and And it goes back to What you do with noise? That's caused by variation and environmental so We'll come back to the history of evolutionary biology in a second, but one poor type of experiment done since 1930s, I guess called common garden experiments So you you keep in it's in the same garden You keep the environmental factors constant But you have different variants and then you observe the different phenotypes that develop from that And why is that crucial? Of course, then you can make the right choices of, you know, which variants are the more desirable and have an effective process of artificial selection So, you know, if you have two causal inputs to the phenotype environment genotype common garden experiment kind of process of that but in a common garden This concept that even even a garden is a totally homogenous environment is of course an idealization Even a real gardens You know grass will grow in different ways different types of grass different kind of microcondition conditions and It was standard for a lot of Definitely between the 1930s and let's say 1970s to dismiss all of that as noise and this is actually an old Complaint Contrace it back to 1965 the Bradshaw complaining that That the stability indicates lack of adaptation which you in in this context you could phrase as well if varying phenotypes without clear Environmental differences so without clear factors to which these variants are adaptive you just dismiss that as a voice and That was criticized as I mean Describing that as noise is more a sign of the shortcomings of the model rather than its actual true noise. So you know, just a just a rough distinction along the way like This type of noise is it's not like white noise Like a sound that is produced by all frequencies at the same time There's actually a pattern there It's It was explanatory noise. So a phenomenon that can be predicted by an idealized model, but In the case of phenotypic plasticity that was so much the worst than for the model. So what's so in what sense can't we avoid agency here and there are a lot of phenomena developmental phenomena Plants but also Details of individual behavior of animals that Kind of readily be explained as adaptive But yes difficult to write off as noise or else they're adaptive but selection can't So, you know example of the second Not seemingly adaptive, but yes difficult to write off as noise. I don't know a Pig swimming and it's not particularly the environment in which they were selected for but they seem to enjoy it nonetheless You know, it's difficult to write it off as noise Problem-solving this is not called mass sponging Chimps or bonobos Take mass to dip into little water pools in order to Obviously adaptive to Environmental factor, but it's not something that was necessarily directly selected for in the past. So that's as a general sketch of What we or I at least have in mind when talking about agency And why it's not It's not it's not something that just comes out of the blue if there are some How to deal with with noise how to deal with behavior that's Not adaptive or that can't be fully explained by selection That's those are the type of phenomena where agency That becomes relevant. So you can ask different type of questions about agency More on logical question like what what is agency now precisely? Spread it out down How does it feature in scientific explanations? and then perhaps kind of the broadest is Well What is it scientific status? Because you know it might my agency might come across as Kind of a subject of this projection on to animals and of course, that's that's kind of One of the core problems in talking about agency that well, does it does it not boil down to that something like that in the end? And actually it has it has a kind of a problematic Connection with with science. So this talk will mainly focus on the first question How can we kind of nail down what agency is in a more satisfactory way? Want to talk that much about other features in scientific explanations. Yeah, the The resolution isn't great, isn't it? These are just two papers that I have on that topic But I just want to before I get to the first question, which is a bit more technical. I want to sketch the broader context of agency because I think that's important to Keep in mind what's really at stake because I'd say Like philosophers we want to nail down the meaning of the concept but Then get very confused because we have different intuitions But yeah, keeping some historical context in consideration helps Reminding us what it's at stake. So agency comes across as a kind of a subjective as projection. That's kind of That's not a coincidence if you had that intuition because Agency genuinely does sit a bit on easily with science Pository behavior is driven by the kind of let's say has if intentions or values you know, it does smack of an Aristotelian framework and very much Elate ease with I just called here causal Mechanistic metaphysics And of course, you know Descartes is describing kind of quasi Agential phenomena here in mechanistic terms. No, why is it that we feel pain? when Fire and then he has like this Mechanistic explanation with animal spirits, of course through the nerves and Descartes and often connected to the life sciences, but of course that causal mechanistic picture of the world It did take some time to really get Manifested in the life sciences, but it eventually did and with huge effect. So Agency is does try to avoid some type of reductionist tendencies and the life sciences, but It's also important to remember that well, there's nothing necessary wrong with a causal mechanistic explanation itself because Renaissance gave us germ theory with Society changing consequences So germ theory was developed over a period of some decades that's a 1860s 1890s and then That's 1930 so I guess it took a while before hospitals Had a more specific knowledge of Infection and so on to implement that and in program calls and so on but Yeah Maternal mortality infant mortality goes down really spectacularly from 1940 here So I titled that slide the Masters and Possessors of Nature because of course 300 years before Descartes It's an envisioned considerative predictor, but he envisaged envisaged that This type of causal mechanistic type explanation would have yeah huge consequences for medicine The other thing I'd like to highlight is the modern synthesis, which takes together natural selection and heredity in a statistical framework and If you want to point to just like one Society changing consequence that that had then you probably should point to crop yields Which for the new it allowed for new plant breeding techniques some genetic engineering And so that I think that's I remember that's the yields in France and And of course the yields don't increase for all All crops equally but you take maize corn that increases like seven or eight fold so This talk will will be a bit critical I guess of a causal mechanistic approach to organisms, but you know I'm just mentioning this because we should be balanced as well at the same time because sometimes mechanism and reductionism become become bad words and You know there are some failures of course attached to let's say the causal mechanistic metaphysics if you try to especially explain human behavior in Simple mechanistic way. That's of course associated with some of the worst excesses of Science inspired policy. Let's say so if you think skull shapes are a dominant causal exponents of behavior, right? get phrenology and then of course even more and dramatically Eugenics was based on this idea that genes are the dominant cause of behavior So it's that's of course the dark side of control I Had a historical aside about Fisher. I'll skip that Fisher is somebody who combines all these aspects Founding figure of modern synthesis. He actually started out working on mobiles You know invented analysis of variants along the way And was also major eugenicist. So agency is to be situated in kind of a long tradition of Intellectual reaction against say a mechanistic approach to organisms and I mean the mechanistic approach to organisms it really does follow some of the let's say Galilean explanatory strategies of idealization and Isolation of the certain causal pathway You know the inclined plane Idealizes or it's abstracts away from friction in the same way Early illusionary biologists abstracted away from the environment It allows allows for causal control of phenotypes Right cause control of human body. That's that is an incident that's an animal's agriculture but the difference of course with the relatively innocent case of In inclined plane is that if you have these idealized models of the causes of human behavior and You abstract away from certain crucial Sources of cause complexity. Well, that's how you end up with with models where skulls and genes play outside rule so agency Can be situated on this parallel trajectory that's run alongside The life life mechanistic life sciences pretty much since the 18th century started in the 18th century Why doesn't itself have maybe a bit of a heyday late 19th century Well, it's closely linked to what's also called the Organicism which is a bit more of a just a It's kind of a reaction against mechanism It states that well if you want to order to understand organisms, it can't be done in a merely mechanistic way So of course vitalism remains a tainted Of course, I never want to say that agency is kind of a neo vitalistic Concepts because yeah, you can't fight those associations But it's vitalism is often understood as some type of causal vitalism, right? There's this causal prints like life force as if it's a type of mechanism. So You could argue that the the the version of vitalism that's kind of still But taboo is in this tainted. It's not just pseudo scientific, but it also goes in against well the core the core assumptions of vitalism explanatory vitalism in that sense never really died and you know this this was of course a very provocative paper meleka vitalism which I have Of course with the title like that you can't not cite something like that organisms not equal to machines And so that that tradition It'll aside here connecting this to the modern synthesis so that a lot of There's a lot of critique of the modern synthesis like the Fisherian style and In many ways, it's pointing to the role of the organism in in evolution, so that's Kind of what's at stake So it can seem like an intellectual fashion that people are suddenly talking about agency now But it actually is rooted in a long tradition of some of the most important questions of thinking about Life and organisms and and situating the life sciences also within the larger Scientific project. So onto the the question. I want to focus on so what is it? What what is the agency? How can we give some kind of more positive characterization of it and Of course when we ask what is agency We're still working within basic causal mechanism So that's in the end. That's not that's not questioned. There are some who you know, you have Neo heres the TV and especially neo-tomists Who Who would reject this possible mechanistic? But but I'm not going to do that because well, it's it's not really I Mean just the scientific community is too large And and if I say that the causal mechanistic metaphysics is bound Then of course, you know, if you think about Newton's action at a distance. Well Sure, he he did depart from it, but it was always An anomaly. It was always an experiment. What does it really mean this action at a distance? And so, you know, the There was a sense of closure then finally, okay, I explain what it actually meant this action at a distance So asking what is agency The the basic terms Of analysis still are, you know, the ones that we know in love of causes processes and mechanisms And it's a very confusing Domain because it's so interdisciplinary you have Psychologists theoretical psychologists thinking about these type of issues Computer scientists cybernetizens you have biologists you have neuroscientists So this is obviously a simplification. I guess I've been being led by which ways of thinking have been taken up already by philosophers and So number one on the list is behavioral ecology. That's some year of cash as recent book and he So that model I won't be going to the But that model Understands organismic agency as a type of fitness maximization So why do stags lock antlers? It's because that behavior maximizes fear. So it's a it's a model where quasi the model of the economic agents utility maximizing agent is is applied then to the organism And why does that make sense? Of course because in many cases natural selection will have you know Ensured that these behaviors are fitness maximizing. So I know kasha is concerned then Okay, well under what conditions can we say that organisms are fitness maximizing? And so on and the if use if use agency basically as a heuristic as a handy heuristic to to Analyze and describe Our local basis is another Basic idea is that organisms act in order to maintain Organization the internal organizations of the the word also poesises Making There's a whole Technical apparatus around that call this ecological psychology Mainly associated with Dennis Walsh And he Reconceptualizes the the organism environment Somehow unified We actually turns it turns the relation between natural selection and organisms on its head So if you're familiar with this work on statisticalism Natural selection is actually not another real causal principle through just a statistical summary of what's happening on the ground with individual organisms The organisms are like agents Responding to opportunities that they perceive in the environment. So it's it's kind of That's it's a redescription of the phenomena Yeah, and there's I mean that's that's like the main representation We have in our little domain of philosophy of science, but of course that's It's it's pretty huge And activism is pretty huge psychologists this idea that The organism is embodied and that experiences reflect this embodiment of these the needs of the organism and Finally, I added Activism because it's very popular in Belgium I Think my comment was more a Comment on the quantity of publication. Okay, because you're asking of course about the conceptual development, which is of course Different issue and It's a very active field of research. It's a very active field of research and and There's a lot of skepticism towards that as there is skepticism towards otopoasis and a growing skepticism skepticism towards the free energy principle which is Which is proposed associated with Caerophryston And it's also proposed as this grand unifying scheme That explains human behavior, but goes much further explains all animal behavior too, and it uses some kind of core concepts from information theoretical thermodynamics minimizing surprise and surprises to find this well Unexpected states for the organism, which then is Equated with high entropy And plus surprise is is defined in a balanced way. So organisms always expect what's good for them so yeah There's some nervousness about how these concepts are being used here especially the broad claims that are being made and It's unclear what new predictions are being generated And that of course would be Yeah, there'll be a whole different discussion. It's almost yeah my speculation is almost that It's almost indicative of agencies problematic relationship with science that when people try to Grasp in some way what agency is they're kind of veering off But well once anymore before a But so these are these are for models with a lot of adherence love skeptical voices as well Or at least quizzical. It's not unclear where it's precisely leading a lot of promises being made with But the good news is I'm going to sidestep all of that so So I'm only going to take What a what is of interest to me is kind of a common theme and all of these and It's as if that there are all kind of attempts to naturalize intention Intentionality What's an intention? For our purposes, let's just say it's a conscious mental representation of a future state of affairs so you know Future state of affairs using a cookie The baby Seems to be quite intent on grabbing the cookie the young kids There might be some obstacles placed in between, you know their intention and the The state of affairs that they desire and so they'll find a way around those obstacles so it's intentional action as there's it's goal directed But there are multiple pathways in which this goal can be realized and And so my suggestion is going to be that well a lot of these models adopt this basic type of explanatory framework This basic type of relation between the goal and the possible action Now just a short aside so intentionality is of course a huge concept or let's say very very Present in many domains of science of the narrow one philosophy of biology philosophy of action. It's central So there there's basically only interest in intentional action so Intentionality is the core concept for philosophy of action Their central problem is how can you distinguish between genuine action and mere happening? So, you know, I move my leg That seems to be intentional, but if somebody kicks my leg with the back and it moves That's a mere happening Intention is the difference maker And that's that's kind of their their starting point from which then How all literatures is generated because there are a lot of great cases, of course But for the context of philosophy biology That type of Conscious mental representation is not very I mean it's not directly useful because most organisms under consideration Don't have a comment of apparatus. They don't have consciousness at least According to how those concepts are ordinarily understood Of course one response is that you start stretching those concepts So Table might be conscious in some way And then for sure then E. Coli bacteria But let's say among clusters of science more common response has been to decouple Agency and intentionality So my point is that It's it's been decoupled. It's an intentionality is kind of be naturalized But the basic explanatory signature kind of remains intentionality still retains its kind of paradigmatic status as a gentle behavior the translation itself is not Nothing mysterious necessarily going on with this type of goal-directedness different types of action you know The end state is the exponents, but that doesn't mean that doesn't entail retro causation, of course, right? Optimization or lack of sensitivity to initial conditions path independence basins of attraction there's all sorts of Conceptual resources in dynamics to make make sense of these type of teleological explanations and Yeah, because I mentioned that because sometimes it's problematized, but Now this is over 1983 I think was one of the first to introduce those types of explanatory structures of lack of sensitivity to initial conditions, so How does this then apply to like the models I mentioned? So say the behavior is an organism bacteria moves from low nutritional density to high nutritional density So the the different models will refer to different type of goals to explain that behavior So in order to maximize fitness in order to maintain internal organization because Well, if the bacteria remains in the low nutritional environment In order to respond to a perceived opportunity and so In the end, I think that the the current models are not satisfactory because They don't really show they don't they don't really Add anything That natural selection can't already do so this is in the end them the most fundamental challenge for any understanding of agency is that well, you know natural selection is No, and natural section is a pretty important The theory that was precisely introduced to explain apparent design apparent purpose of this in the think of Paley's Watch that's been found in the sand That it seems to indicate some agent that's made it Paley thought it was a divine agent natural selection shows that while actually just a purely Causal process leading up to that And so all these models of agency in the end, they don't really address that problem and they don't really Characterize agency in such a way that well, they that the essential behavior can't be equally well explained by a process of selection another two responses to that I mean I've tried to Respond to that in another papers that to look at the conditions of ethic ability for selectionist explanations so Okay, where should we look for? Areas where agency is actually doing real or distinctive explanatory work. Okay. Well, let's look at phenomena where selectionist explanations don't apply and in particular at Environmental novelty a header to be so kind of new circumstances that that can't have Don't being present in the selectionist history But it's my motivation for talking about deliberation And this talk is some dissatisfaction with that because it's a negative Characterization it's kind of filling the gaps Wherever, you know selection can't explain the apparent purposiveness. Okay. Well, then we're allowed to Talk about agency, but it still doesn't really give much It's not very informative of what is the agency You have to get there Because we're waiting It's a big problem Yeah, so So my solution So the proposal is that Intentional action instead of having one goal involved Deliberative action involves multiple goals And the process of optimization is not directed at a particular state of affairs, but as Or well, okay, just a negative characterization. It's not directed at a particular state of affairs. So the toy example goal cookies The deliberative Approach would be weighing different goals Here I said enjoyment and avoiding parents anger Of course And yeah, so when the action is to realize the goal Here the action is more result of a talk of war There's certainty there about what is the desired state of affairs here. There's uncertainty what I do it But I'm not doing But the end result is that here and the genuine decision is actually made So of course the child might say well Weighing the different factors here still the enjoyment of the cookie Ways more heavily than any potential downsides I might experience And that that would of course be then a deliberative action Now what I have in mind is more powerful examples of paradigmatic deliberation are more in context of ethics law So like the ethical dilemma You know that the curie Curie a customer walks in Give signs of being addicted to the pain medication what you do you just you give it the prescription While you have a series of non-optimal options Each has each has downsides you refuse medication but risk patronizing them you give them medication But then you risk being complicit Or do you go behind our back and talk to the physician who prescribed the medication first place? So that's kind of an ethical dilemma. There's really no Clear course of action. That's That's the best we need to be obeying of the course of action according to different values and if you do know what to do beforehand without kind of weighing the specifics of the situation then that would be a Case of a bias The judge another paradigmatic case of deliberation So the role of the judges Determining the sanction so not not to determine guilt. That's you know the jury of the prosecutor What is the sanction and of course many factors weigh? The response of the law mandates recommends the character of the defendant Whether they're showing genuine remorse. These are all things that can be Mitigating or aggravating circumstances And so the not only Does the judges take those specifics into consideration what they're expected to take those specifics into consideration because You know just only doing what the law mandates will usually laws are not written precisely enough for that But even if they would just try to do that without kind of sensitivity to the particulars that would be a form of bias and would lead to Decisions so the Deliberate and it's interesting that the the symbol of justice kind of Brings together some of the core properties of deliberation where you're you're weighing There's Lady Justice is blind. There's no foregone conclusion and then the sword means that in the end the decision is made and In that respect Deliberation is is a much older concept and intention actually Whatever there's some optimization going on here, but whatever is being optimized is definitely not something that Represents a particular So the deliberating agent is not Acting in order to realize a future state of affairs and a good metaphor here is Drug addiction Is drug addiction? It can be the result of intentional action. You know the drug addict intends to use the choice drug But yet at the same time it is paradigmatically unfree Even though there's no external coercion, but it's not a sort of free action. So from the perspective of deliberation It's there's basically no real deliberation going on Should I take the potion or not well in the end it's a it's a bit of a foregone conclusion and This addiction is Can be a metaphor kind of an inclusion way of thinking about how natural selection kind of upends that deliberation so for instance, I don't think necessarily that stags competing is Kind of deliberative necessarily that that can be a Understood as this kind of just a simple kind of intentional action What no, sorry as if intentional But it has kind of been determined by by natural selection. I should wrap up here How to naturalize so Unlike so they let's say then the basic naturalistic picture of Intention intentional action is some type of optimization The the best Metaphor or comparison I think for what's going on causally here is a type of symmetry breaking or phase transition So there's a deliberation Different factors involved the symmetries are the possible courses of action and then the decision is one or the other so examples of courses transition from Paramagnetism to ferromagnetism as temperatures is lowered and All the magnets are oriented in random directions and then once it's below curie temperature they align in magnetic domains and it is There's You know, there's no external magnetic fields in the end It will be somewhat random Which way the magnetic domains will be oriented? But yes, it is you know as if a Decision is being made So how do we apply this to one of the most basic? Potential a gentle phenomena, which would be chemo taxes Swimming up gradients bacteria sensing Particular substances in the environment reacting to it accordingly It's an open secret that Most chemo taxes mechanisms are not so simple as the ones that we often find in textbooks So if you see something like that they will learn a couple of calls and arrows, but you could kind of more or less without losing much Summarize it as you know some type of function input and then output and It would just seem to be a Normal As if intentional process, but really one that can be replaced by more precise mechanistic explanation, okay, you can say that You know Some commentators would say yeah, but look it's goal-directed the the bacteria is Directed towards the source of nutrition But it's not really persuasive because well, yeah, but you can you can be more precise and point to the precise properties Mechanism that was shown in the previous slide and that is kind of the real Causal path, but you don't need to refer to the organism as a whole. It's the precise chemo taxes mechanism but so it's an open secret that Many chemo taxes mechanisms are much more complex than that. So and one particular that They don't only can take into consideration Inputs from outside, but also Call to your metabolic sensing Inputs from within the organism. So that's at least two very different types inputs to very different type of let's say goals And this is like how This is how that article talked about this kind of mechanism that multiple different signals Integrated in order to produce a balanced response, which is Deliberative language other Other Facts that complicate a simple functional explanation of chemo taxes is that well There are many different types of substances in the environment with coming in different intensities and Signals can be potentially confusing the bacteria The directionality is Statistical, so it's not as if that they just sense The presence of some substance and they change direction it produces a reaction produced production of proteins which can be modulated and it's more more precise is to say that bacteria are more or less likely to go in a certain direction and crucially bacteria Pulse when the signal is on Reverse direction And all of these issues are usually The they're not really highlighted You could wonder why they're not highlighted because It's an article from 1990 So it's 30 years old But there's not that much attention into how they pause and change direction and so on if you if you look at recent literature seems a lot of attention seems to go to Human neutrophil which is a type of white blood cell And I had a video maybe I can play in the background All right, here we go and Of course, you know that I think that's a fact of yeast that the Experimenter is putting in the vicinity and of course the the white blood cells sense the presence of those substances and change direction And if you see that you could say well, yeah, well, that's obviously just some kind of simple mechanism and a lot of attention and Regarding chemo taxes has gone to phenomenon like that and one could speculate that well Of course, we're very interested in understanding human immune response Precisely because it's so important for health outcomes But it's not necessarily very indicative of the nature of chemo taxes because well one it's it's a laboratory condition so the It's the signals are going to be much more clear than in the wild and to these bacteria are Evolved to be highly specialized and to to To pick up on a very narrow range of possible inputs so I Don't know some final remarks trying to anticipate some objections or our questions So the idea is that bacteria way different goals there's uncertainty in the sensory inputs and that this is The type of this is wash a Agency should be understood as in a more paradigmatic sense Of course, whether particular behaviors are essential or not. You have to look at the Qualifying factors Agency is not some mystical, you know vitalistic quantity here, it's It describes more kind of an explanatory structure with symmetries Where the course of actions are symmetries The sensory inputs come at different intensities and cause This the deliberation to go one way or another within the organism But crucially it's it screens off natural selection in the following way Yeah, this is not super developed but Selection you can be can think of selection as defining the types of action, but as deliberation is explaining why this Rather than that action was taken so Agency as deliberation explains why the particularities of Individual behavior not merely noise. So why The bacteria goes in that direction another direction Selection doesn't have that much to say about Though that level of detail And that's where we that's where agency has a role to play. So in conclusion You know different types of behavior of living organisms They're not necessarily all the attention I don't think that life should be equated with agency But if you're asking whether a behavior is a gentle the question is not really whether it's co-directed That's that's not that's not enough Because natural selection does that quite well But rather the question Should be is the behavior the result of weighing multiple goals rich talk So I have myself a few question, but I'm gonna open you up Nothing nothing yet come and get on check Please There's some things that are not entirely clear so you Mentioned goals several times And we go We don't Mean there's something like Like even if you have just one goal You might want to my deliberation might be a matter of weighing Possible outcomes with respect to that one goal You the child only wants to make their parents happy for example Suppose that they only have that one goal And then they go into See which outcome might maximize that's typical And that seems to be already difficult sort of deliberative Process going on that seems to be along the lines of what you're getting at the situation where you have like different sort of goals and different values and so on like Wanting enjoyment from the P to the cookie and Want to make your parents happy and maybe other things they did that seems to be at a level that is even much more complicated so And another thing that I want to have more clarity about this the last thing you said about types of Actions of types of people types of behavior or something like that Which like would be interesting like natural selection to be able to say something about Behavior while the deliberative model would say something about individual But I don't really buy that distinction I see that it's much more about detail and the one is more about large scale things But it's always types you want to explain. It's you want to go in the 20 why? the child typically or the bacteria typically goes for Whatever, you know, I didn't see the example exactly the cute model Yeah going for that It seems that that's a type of behavior and a very small scale That you want to explain by the agent agent Yeah, but it's also a type It's never just one thing that doesn't seem to be something you want to explain. That is just noise. No, if you go to do It's about scale, but it doesn't seem to be about like token types Yeah, yeah, I know you're right right to push and act they didn't really develop this One response may be that you should start extinguishing I mean that there Two different types of type involved here Because I mean saying that the science is involved interested only in types You could you could that that could be a controversial statement If you're saying well, well, that's precisely then why Early population geneticists Dismissed all types of environmental variation Is due to noise because well didn't fit the type that they were interested in and so Selection there may define certain behavior types But that doesn't mean that all behaviors that Diverge from that type are necessarily just pure randomness or that they have no other type of explanation So and why is that? Well selection Selection is kind of a pretty crude process It's the reproductive success of an organism It it's a reflection of a lot of different Environmental circumstances it might have encountered during its lifetime. It's not necessarily very fine-brained So it's not surprising that Types of behavior that are selected might Might be coarse-grained in that way But on the other hand you could say well still if it's a pattern I mean science is interested in patterns. That's a behavior type as well. So and I think yeah, I Think you're right about that. Yeah, and in that sense agency Yeah, what type of what what patterns does it describe? I don't know what patterns of a great describes it. I guess it describes more a process by which behaviors are produced That's that's kind of if I were to develop that point further. Those would be the lines And your first question was about yeah You seem to be need to you think you mentioned that you always did that the fact that there are different goals seem to be something important while Yes, yes Yes, the Machiavellian child who was once those copes would use its power for deliberation for finding the best strategy Yeah, yeah Yeah, so my distinction between Intentionality and Deliberation was a bit crude I think what you described there is a already a first kind of great case And that you can say begin to wonder what is that is that would that fit more of the intentional mold or the Deliberation mold I would say it's a type of more sophisticated intentional behavior Because it still has a particular state of affair affairs in mind as the outcome and The way involved is about the choice of strategy So it's kind of a combination almost that the the desired outcome is not a question, but the What is in question is how precisely to meet her and so you could say well, there's a genuine deliberation going on here but within the Intermediary outcome of which strategy is going to be chosen So that's kind of think how I would analyze that case So Helen and Yeah, thank you that was really interesting I think this is just a question of clarification really so In the case of the cross the action as you said intentional action really central You know the kind of deliberative actions Kind of subset of the Manifestations about agency But people generally still see my switching on the light as a manifestation of my agency so now in the case of the the deer The state is locking Yeah, yeah Sort of seems to say what you're what you're sort of doing if I get a new right is kind of saying yeah There's kind of cases where you just got the single, you know the analogy I don't I count those as Manifestations of agency is that right? It's just the deliberative ones But I want to count the stations of agency because we can get some other kind of like just get some You know, yeah, it's not just simple, but I suppose I kind of And I thought what the human case it feels like I still want to hang on to the You just want the room to be like there's one way of doing it Yeah, you're being an agent So I Think I'm well just as preliminary mark. I think I want to talk about What's paradigmatically? Agential because Of course because quickly, you know and start arguing about the meaning of words Because you can say well, you know agency there's must be some type of Self-causing kind of the the organism is all that's the cause of the behavior and you're turning on the light Well, it's me turning on the light. It's not something else Why and it's not deliberative you could say I mean you could you could take that behavior and start analyzing in very different ways That The engineers Designing the switch have thought about how to do it in such a user-friendly way that we won't have to think about it too much That's me. It'll be accessible The the workmen will have thought about where to place it as the guide or action in a certain way We have developed habits of turning on and off lights And so once you start analyzing in those ways, you're beginning to see about how External factors are also playing a role in Switching on and off the light in that particular way, so But again, so I think that's like that's that kind of fleshing out why is it not deliberative and How if it's let's say merely intentional without being deliberate with how that There's some ambiguity there that you can perhaps also explain it By means of external causes But do I want to say that it's not a gentle? No, I don't necessarily want to say that it's not a gentle. I just think that it's not It's not necessarily doing that much extra But but but like humans of course are our difficult case because we actually have conscious mental representations So I mean in the in the human case You know, there's probably still some type of Unconscious deliberation going on there. I mean, it's we're not being determined by natural selection to turn on the lights Or any inherited cognitive mechanism and it's it's that contrast. That's the important one, of course when it comes to animal behavior Right, so is it more that you're kind of thinking in the animal case? It's whatever is the case in the human case and the animal case is kind of just more helpful to think of deliberation is that there's a recent case of the kind of the core central case and now there might be You know, maybe there are some cases that are not clearly deliberate So, you know, yeah, I'm turning on the bike to whatever and that's just a more helpful place to start They're kind of coming up to it from the other angle and then I'm thinking of the much more Interesting model, but you can then maybe beat up the complicated Yeah, I think if you start with Agency is gold-directedness you get you run into confusions and because my natural selection can also Shape gold-directed behavior Thank you So so I think I understand how the Deliberation can screens off some natural selection explanation, especially in natural selection that you select for a specific behavior But in the case for example of the bacteria the mechanism of deliberation the way they must have been must be selective so in that case you would fall again on you know evolutionary psychology because As you know better than me after they try to explain Specific behavior they went in the wall and they say now it's the mechanism of choosing the behavior that is selected So so it looks a little bit like evolutionary psychology plus So am I where am I wrong? Well, maybe first what the bacterial case That's anything a bit easier Yeah What is that mechanism of weighing of course who knows right? I mean, we're just kind of But there is there is there a mechanism of weighing that's being selected for Of course, not necessarily could also just be an explanation more But let's even say that that it has been seen like it was super inefficient Yeah, yeah, but let's even say that that it had been selected for I mean in another metaphor could be like in computer science Artificial intelligence kind of complex neural net which does seem to make some type of deliberation And so I think what the response there is that Well Selection may have designed that deliberative mechanism but Selection can't really explain Whatever the deliberative mechanism in those particular circumstances came up with That you that in a certain sense the deliberative mechanism it screens off natural selection and if you move into like kind of human nature ethics, I think the closest Equivalent is is kind of the fact value of distinction that you have the the causes of Whatever rational capacity we have for deliberation and then you have the reasons for action and of course, I guess that leads to evolutionary psychology and why that's also so lastingly controversial because of course they abstract away from whatever reasons humans may have for for behaving and Evolutionary psychology to find certain general cognitive mechanisms But I guess the worst accesses of current evolutionary psychology are precisely those who kind of Take that type of idealized model of human behavior and then ignore everything that Human behaviors that might depart from that model So What is the lesson from that? I mean, I think it's I think it's not evolutionary psychology Let's put it that way this I mean, I think evolutionary psychology when it attempts to Make authoritative statements of the causes of human behavior Beyond certain very kind of broad patterns. I think that they're ignoring Deliberation rather than taking it into consideration. Oh But it's the same spirit where it's the mechanism that it's could be selected and I can I Yeah, please there's someone else. So I was surprised about Not now because you said you talk about the neural network as a metaphor Yeah, and it seems really closer to what you think and so I was quite confused about the phase transition metaphor and spontaneous signature breaking Or maybe maybe it's to input output the The the neural network because I thought the neural network would be a nice metaphor of Select of deliberation to a complex mechanism that can change and be some with a certain Opacity like for the back period Yeah, yeah, like like that. It's a kind of a black box. Yeah, and it can change Oh Okay Yeah, I had the same at the exact same question Also, they're confused in trying to characterize this process of deliberation as a case of symmetry breaking especially face transitions because they would be spontaneous as the free mind we have Was a period that's donated as which is between two equal heaps of a and then ends up starving There's no way to make a choice. So it seems we need some kind of explicit into breaking the then What is explicit here? What is doing the breaking? Let's say real real systems will will maybe never remain undecided in precisely that way because Other fluctuations and there are some I mean may seem symmetrical, but there might be some slight asymmetries and That's kind of the direction that I would understand this process that the absorption environmental inputs You know Presence of this type of nutrition presence another type of nutrition presence of a competitor of a predator There are many different You know, do you do you prioritize avoiding the predator? Do you avoid you prioritize avoiding the competitor? Do you go into a new niche where there are fewer predators and fewer competitors or do you go for the kind of the juicy price? There are different ways in which an organism can behave so in that way it's there are symmetries Of courses of action and that's So this this model of deliberation then is is that for whatever reason then The particulars of the situation pushes an organism into one course of action or another but let's say the Yeah, the basic structures is that and I don't know immediately how to connect that with neural networks But still face transition I know because in face transition or you have spontaneous face transition So there's no no ultimate cost so equality of all the aspects and the case of aromagnetism is often understood that way Or there's a cost. There's something explicitly breaking the symmetry, but you don't know it, but still it's there So it depends what you want about that. Do you want to have that something that smells determinism? But does it there's a true spontaneous? The face transition exists. Yeah Is it's purely spontaneous or not? It's a discussion Is it a purely statistical or is it Some kind of non-linear sum of stuff and there's a there's a direction, but we don't know Yeah, and okay, I would I would believe that in the case of the bacteria There's probably part of this stochastic part that is unknown but determined in the in the way thing Function that is used. Yeah So, I don't know what is the best metaphor And so and where with the metaphor with the let's say then an explicit face transition where that break down I think the breaking heavens If the child wants this is too possible of course She didn't hear he really wants to go because it's tasty or he wants to be stare as happy You may see those as the two There doesn't know what way to fall. That's perfectly symmetric, but then I think It isn't symmetric once he starts with the reading Behind the corner watching David so so that so that wasn't there The two local people are the same. It's pretty clear in which way you should go Yeah, yeah, is there some confusion here on how the symmetries are defined whether it's Kind of from God's perspective or from the perspective of the organism Because you when you're talking about kind of the because you said it's something of equality of No indifference to go and after the deliberation Wait the thing but there's a prio in Indifference to go in your in your approach So it looks it looks like what they know what's saying Because you seem to have this indifference to go at the first at the first level Because there's no intention So there's something like that after that Do you spontaneously goes in one of the valley or or is it all what you data? Oh, maybe I should not go there Right or I don't think about I would be surprised at such an important mechanism of decision for bacteria is not I would be surprised even if we don't understand it. Yeah Oh, but that's yeah, so this is where I want to jump in right so so I Don't I don't I don't take it that that's your point, right? I mean the idea you don't you know You don't want to say that you don't want to say that natural selection doesn't play a role at all All right, no point in the point that you consult how that story if you wanted to The point is that this is a because that's that's so so clearly let me let me let me back up right so So this is this is what I this is what I because I struggled with similar kinds of things before this took me to thinking about So what exactly is the role of the metaphor? Right, and I and I understand the kind of the kind of tension that you're sitting with right because on the one hand You feel like you need to have some kind of a metaphor because it's freaky to say that bacteria deliberate So you just don't want to like right, right? That's just weird And so you want to have some way to cash that out in terms of something Like makes it seem less weird But at the same time it feels like it's not it's frankly It's not going to be the metaphors doing anything more than that than being like an incredulous stair reduction function, right because If the deliberation if being able to tell the deliberative story is still really screening off the natural selection Then the deliberative explanation It's a free-standing legitimate explanation of what's going on here And even if it feels freaky to you to say that the bacteria deliberate suck it up the bacteria deliberate Sorry, like it's weird. Yeah, but and so that's I mean That's kind of why I'm sort of wondering so so so I think one thing that would help here is is clarifying Yeah, why do we why do we need the metaphor other than other than to like to like make the pill make the medicine taste better as it goes down Yeah, because it partially Pragmatic because I think that we can't I think we When we're thinking about agency, we we don't we can't avoid metaphors so let's let's let's then Think about what Other than others and I think deliberation is a better metaphor than Just intentionality Because whether we like it or not something like intentionality seems to be Motivating a lot of more technical work at play But do you need that metaphor once the more Let's say once the story has been told and you know causal mechanistic terms which and I tried to do in terms of phase transitions But I need to maybe be more precise about explicit versus spontaneous and so on I mean, I wouldn't say bacteria deliberate suck it off because I don't know. I have too many too much experience of Vitkins denians who just attack you and say you've fundamentally misunderstood the concept Deliberation and so it's uh, I mean that's not the hill I want to die on It's just like it's it's fine. It's as if deliberation Uh, and we can translate it into, you know causal terms It's it's just not a simple optimization process. It's it's something Uh, something else but uh Why talk about the metaphor at all? I don't know It's just kind of all the human mind works philosophy It's it's it's somehow clearer. I mean the deliberation does Identify a type of A structure binding goals and action together And perhaps, you know sensory input Right and that type that type of abstract structure You can translate then into And so as it's kind of a more intuitive way of just capturing that that abstract structure So, yeah, maybe maybe that's uh A response if I can if I can keep going for a second. Sorry. Um So maybe that I mean so maybe this is I'm I'm I'm I'm seriously speculating here, but but maybe maybe something like this would help So a danger that I think that someone might see here And I think that this comes out in this discussion of of the the symmetry breaking is If somebody reads that metaphor as like so like I'm trying to show you what Kind of causal structure is really isomorphic to what's going on in the case of of these apparent as if deliberations Right, then the the symmetry story really has to carry A lot of weight, right? It's not just a helpful guide to sort of get your head in the right place for thinking about what's going on The bacteria does chemotaxis. It's like no the causal structure really needs to be like bang on the same Maybe a way to go here would be to tell a story So to have what's doing that causal structure work not be this kind of metaphor, but but something more like So here's the causal here's a story I can tell you about two kinds of things that natural selection could produce And I heard something a bit like this narrative in in your in your talk Although it was it was kind of at a secondary level right natural selection could produce This sort of goal directed optimization to a single end point And that's the kind of stuff that we usually talk about when we talk about basic functional explanations But also all kinds of other junk in natural selection I mean we have these kinds of conversations all the time It also could produce and this was where I think Alex Hall was going again. It also could produce this kind of Second level structure for what it would be to optimize over a field of possibilities under uncertainty And like that's where the cool action is for stuff that feels like agency under natural selection So how are we going to talk about that stuff? That could be what's carrying the real weight of like that's the isomorphism. That's really what's happening What's happening is we have this like weird two level complex selective explanation It might make it might make it might help you to think about it in terms of something like symmetry breaking That might let you get your head in the right space But you could let something else carry the real like here's the isomorphism for understanding what the heck is actually going on With the causal structure I don't know if you like a move like that, but well, no, I think I mean that's that's kind of precisely what I Mind when I could talk about screening off that's yeah the deliberative The capacity for deliberation, let's say that that's If you invoke that as an explanance that that screams off Whatever selective story you might say Why that capacity arose in the first place? I just don't think that if you refer to The capacity for goal directed behavior that doesn't really screen off natural selection And I think that's problematic because then why should we be talking about agency? And so yeah, no, I think I think that's I think what you said is a kind of a good summary um and Whatever I said about Symmetry breaking and phase transition Yeah, I need to double and triple check that because I mean, that's why I pushed back Beta and polyxon from there because it does play An important role. I mean I want to be able to tell some type of story Why this is not just Kind of a spooky capacity that floats over Whatever might be going on On a more fundamental level And I think that physics has the conceptual resources already there to make sense of something like a capacity of deliberation But yeah, so we need to need to Investigate this Yeah, that's super. Yeah and so A lot of the things I want to say have been covered already So I tried to put it in a slightly different way. So it's not the first of all, I really I really loved it and I and I think there's clearly something to it like to identify this like causal I mean when I take home from from this is that you identify very nice causal structure That seems to be able to characterize human liberation but also some processes Maybe in physics, although that's starting to be So my question is about the what what What occurs in the process of naturalization and what makes it still like an agency like deeply an agency model because one thing that makes like Then human deliberation is special and I think you really wanted it is like the Distinction to causes and reasons when we deliberate we're looking for for reasons for why to Make a decision but Once you naturalize it It seems like the the opposition between reasons and causes Doesn't seem to be Like right a lot anymore because what what matters is really like is really the structure. So it is we start from it's like a process At the beginning we have a sort of indifference possible outcomes Whether this is the kind of symmetry that we're having in physics or not is I guess something to clarify But there is some kind of indifference possible outcomes is And then there's a kind of process to be sort of like causal process of depoputation. There's a process that this Is in various steps to decision Then there's a clear outcome that is that is like that's that's the way I get the structure works And it seems that when once the reason why you can naturalize it is that This process has to be implemented by some sort of causal mechanisms. So it looks like you're you're describing The sort of way If you wanted to catch it out in the like causal mechanics worldview metaphysics, it seems like I expect this kind of abstraction to occur in cases where we have a lot of like mechanisms that have like very limited Inputs and outputs are very specialized But they can somehow work together And then in in certain configurations some straight up decision will be made after a process of like very very rational like process And but then we don't have reasons anymore, which is a process all the way. So it's kind of so Where's where's the agency there another way to put it perhaps in a more political way, assuming that the Symmetry principle is a very good instantiation, which is not not here, but So if this is agency, well Yeah, yeah Well, um, if this is there if this is a definition model and I it's hard to see that there's agency there Oh, it's not clear to me whether that I mean if this is agency, then this is such a broad notion of agency that we are very far away from What So the way I take your question is that you're already now Extrapolating this model to human agency and it's like I mean can we use this to understand human agency as well Which is of course, you know just as an exclaimer not strictly, you know the scope of this project because you know, I mean if Animals don't have reasons that's quite fine for you know, every biologist maybe even better so So that's kind of it's it's not not a not a If whatever, you know causal mechanistic translation I make Precludes or obviates any necessity to talk about reasons. It's not a problem when we're talking about an organismic agency Now what about human agency? Uh Um Maybe just one thing in response Is that because you talked about a Kind of a series of mechanisms leading to the decision and that's I think that's where I Diverged and thinking about so I don't think that it's kind of the a series of you know, intermediary outputs and inputs The next because indeed if you could do that that would be be be reducing into some kind of complex functional explanation There has to I mean for for the model what I work is there has to be Some type of crystallization at the moment of decision There are a lot of factors that come in but there's there's kind of not Intermediary step that kind of really predetermines what the outcome is And you can ask of course, then is that is that a realistic model of human decision-making? um, I guess Yes, and no, maybe some decision-making is like that. Surely not all obviously we take a problem and we chop it up into smaller problems and and solve them one by one so But so just to go back to the what I call about the paradigmatic examples of like an ethical dilemma There are there's a genuine weighing going on. It's not as if you can you know Chop up the delivery of process into different units that you then kind of solve It's a there's some type of a holistic judgment going on In this in these cases of deliberation where that you kind of need to take into consideration all of the factors somehow into the In the decision So I just really get the reason why I felt like I had to try to give a sort of like the kind of translation of this precisely this holistic process Still we get back to the issue of like the spookiness so so There has to be like some sort of like into process So either it's purely symmetrical And then like in a strong sense. Yeah, and then what we get Kind of has to be some sort of spontaneous like symmetry. We keep the concept out of nowhere just like But that's not what happened when we like deliberately ethical dilemma dilemmas. We try to extract like It was very subtle asymmetry that We thought was not relevant was was what's hidden That's right and so and and so there has to be like a sort of logic that takes us from and so there has to be a sort of computation and whether we're going to so that the question is how I strongly resist To take it as a black as a black box because then it looks like The breaking comes or so that has to be something to say about this process And that's because I'm I'm bent towards like because only can stick like what do you Although another eugenic I like this No, I have a band towards this kind. This is something I really understand well So so my my tendency would be to try to Get into the black box And find something there that's so I'm So that's why I am tempted to interpret your diversity as an abstract puzzle structure that could be instantiated by complex of mechanisms But it could be instantiated by some other stuff. I know that's that's something to For me to that is really that's a good way for me to Understand it and make it work So it gives it clearly a distinct style of explanation. So that's that's not I don't mean to Take it as a as a way to dismiss it and say no, it's something you can reduce something else I think there's a clear like And that can do a lot of explanatory work where the small weekends Right So I think this is kind of like really kind of zooming in on what I described there is the process of deliberation Of course like for purposes here all that I needed was that contrast between intentional and then because I Know if you abstract away There is the real distinction going on here, but of course, you're right and if you start zooming in and And I guess I was only really interested in And before the deliberation starts and afterwards and that you know before the deliberation starts There's kind of no predetermined outcome. But of course, you're right. I mean otherwise, I mean if If there'd be that indeterminacy During the deliberation process, it would be some type of a rational process. So it would seem to defeat the The nature of it And That's why I suspect that When I'm talking about symmetries, it's relevant to say that The symmetries are are are the ones that appear so to the agent given knowledge of the situation But of course, yeah as the deliberation process proceeds Yeah, it stands to reason that of course one course of action might clearly become more attractive and that I get what we have that language as well, right where we tend in that direction No, we might haven't decided yet, but you know, we're inclined to choose this So I think I think that's No, probably be my response to a question. That's kind of that's that's already more That's you're inquiring about the details there and and and you're right. Yeah, but it's just not I don't think I need to take it into consideration for for this Poor project. It just earned my attention. We're looking for this this kind of mathematical way of modeling this I think love for it and colleagues a They wrote this whole book on tendencies And if you write terms that it has vectors for this, you know You can tend to something to different degrees. Of course It's not a spirit if you're going to go to that goal because there are many tendencies They pull you in different directions and again you need to make some kind of Utopia vectors to see where you end up Seems that the version would be something like that or there are possible ways you could go If you don't try to do them to different degrees and again, you need to make some kind of vector summation to find the right course that you try to enlarge Yeah, yeah I think Sam sounds right First approximation Okay, I missed a part but I worry that because you're considering too much Oh because if if they push you towards a mechanism that is causal that is something like the sum of reasons or blah blah blah It will be quasi deterministic No, no this crystallization this weirdness that you want and that will be selected that that it's it's it will be a selection a selection the ordinary selection explanation so so you need something Sorry, but you said the right answer before you said the mechanism As enough Weirdness that has whatever it will be as spontaneous symmetry breaking that it can't the section cannot explain this particular Chain of event that that the mechanism select But maybe at a higher level like the like the Show maybe their selection So so it's no chance because if you concede Peter Okay, well, it's done, you know, it's done. It's it's an ordinary selection. You're absolutely right. Of course. I uh, I guess you're a nice man They should not concede to these too too much I said at first approximation because of course Um, I mean you could take that in two different directions that that picture of uh and you could you could take it also in the direction of just like deliberation as a calculation And then that you kind of just need to plug in the different values and then you get the outcome that way and of course, that's that's that's not what I'm describing here because that's then Then you don't really need I mean then deliberation is not kind of screaming off whatever designed that That that equation, let's say So But yeah, I said at first approximation because I need to look at whatever they actually said and maybe in I mean I do think that whatever account of agency that one gives You need to show how it's at least translatable into kind of I'd say causal mechanistic terms Without saying that you know That you I guess what what is the standard way of saying that that you can have the physicalist reduction, but not the explanatory reduction I'm pretty happy with that standard way We have four minutes. I'm going to ask a quick question No, I I really enjoyed the discussion so No regrets No, I just wanted to your description of the four models of agency and the So Ocasha, Moreno Mosio, Walsh and Freyston, basically And then you say it's it's very interesting for me because it's Legions where I'm really going through in the last few years I'm still going through a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. I don't understand But and then you say well the common theme between these four models is that Intentionality is the model of agency I mean the way I understand it and the way are I meant in the like working out of this material I think Ocasha, I will say Ocasha has a very inflationary concept of agency that models over Human agency and then as to go to an end like as if mode because of course As you were saying that's it's uneasy with with biology, but I wonder what that's the case for You mentioned you the second you call the pre-assist the second the third call ecological psychology I'm going to I'm going to talk about a little bit in the middle. So an act in activism, which is a little bit in between For example, I think about a lot. There's this paper by Ezekieli Paolo and he published in Phenomenology and cognitive sciences in 2005 that for me is kind of like a volandar paper and it's called Titleist Autopoiesis Adaptivity Theology Agency, maybe you know that and he's kind of like making the case that well, you know And go go direct in this in the in your region of autopoietic formulation is not enough You need you need more scaffolding Conceptual scaffolding to make sense of agency and and and the cause of the input there in the middle is Adaptivity and an activity is the capacity of the of the system to modulate In relation to the condition of viability. So what does it mean that normativity comes in gradients? So there's the even the bacterium. There's there's not just good and bad like what allows self-mountainous what doesn't allow self-mountainous, but there's a gradient of normativity or there's maybe this is a little bit better This is a little bit worse. So it's and So I think it because of an action. There's a slightly more articulated concept of agency that is not totally The same as as intentionality. I don't know about active inference I've been meaning to read the the last book by par pizzolo and friston called active inference came out two months ago So I never really still haven't got gotten to the point of reading that but so I was At least with regard to an action to an active approach. I wonder whether Intentionality really is the model or whether they're trying to do something else Yeah, well, of course, I mean those those slides were Somebody working in that field could have challenged me any one of those kind of Jumps that I made Uh Even take the the gloss the inactivists give on agency I mean, it's still it's still about Self-maintenance or like the closure of constraints. It's it's about kind of maintaining whatever conditions that are necessary for The maintenance of assertion organization So to maintain those conditions. So it's I mean How maybe just put it as a question how precisely do they depart from that kind of loss where You know, organismic behavior is directed towards self maintenance Of course, but that's the that's they call it's minimal agency then you have sensory motor agency Then you have the cognitive like the cognitive agency, which is it's it's always it's a very scaffolded Framework where every level enables the following one, but it's does not determine it So you have right is a very strongly anti reductionist framework because he never really can Right But um Yeah, but even like those other uh levels of biological autonomy, they're still all directed towards self maintenance And even if there's cognition involved in sensory motor capacities, uh, you know bacteria Uh relocating towards a more favorable Microenvironment you could of course analyze that as a as a form of self-maintenance And I don't know that's just also my impression I don't find much discussion in that literature How precise what exact explanatory work it's doing that selection isn't That I mean there seems to be a lot of redescribing of the phenomenon In in in their kind of cognitive apparatus But there's not much to talk about natural selection at all. I think right. I mean, I don't know It's a big literature, of course, so it's hard to generalize But you'd think that they would need to show You know why we need to view Organisms in this particular way And what what that's doing that's you know, we can't achieve through kind of the selection of certain structures Now, it's a huge question You're not supposed to solve the problem So thank you very much. All right. Thank you