- An agent is an active part of their environment. Action is something an agent does that changes the environment.
- Active - part of the environment that takes action (alive), e.g. humans, dogs, all animals and plants that do stuff.
- Passive - part of the environment that do nothing (dead), e.g. fire, stars, planets, moons, dirt, sand, water, air, etc.
- Agency refers to how active a part of the environment the agent is: something with high agency performs a lot of actions that change the environment. Something with low agency either doesn’t perform a lot of actions, or they do not effectively change the environment. High agency is an expression of life, low agency is close to death.
- Agents are embodied, which means they are totally part of the environment, made up of environment material, with no hard boundary between the agent and the environment. For example, all living things are agents, so me, you, all other humans, dogs, animals, plants, all living things.
- E.g. I’m a human – I’m my mind, my body, my spirit, my wanting, my desires, my genetic predispositions, everything – as far as I know there’s no separate part to me. We’ll see what happens after death.