Machine Agency
by Mattingly, Cibralic
| ISBN: 9780262380973 | Copyright 2025
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An engaging exploration of agency that provides students with the critical tools needed to understand and participate in debates about future machines.
The great promise of artificial intelligence's evolution lives alongside an equally great anxiety. As we develop increasingly autonomous machines that do things in the world, questions about agency—distinguishing machines that can act from those that cannot—are among the thorniest we face. A concise and probing exploration of agency, this accessible textbook provides the critical, technical, and conceptual tools needed to make sense of rapid changes in what machines can do and their role in our lives.Â
James Mattingly and Beba Cibralic begin with an examination of foundational issues: What is agency? How does it differ from mindedness, consciousness, and intelligence? Can we attribute agency to certain machines, and if so, how and why? They then examine the social and ethical implications of building ever more complex machines, including those concerning moral status and responsibility. Drawing together ideas from philosophy and computer science as well as from information theory, literature, and the history of science, Machine Agency invites students to participate thoughtfully in critical debates about future machines.
•Provides a roadmap for interrogating the concept of machine agency suitable for philosophy majors and non-majors alike
•Investigates the connections between developments in AI and pressing issues in analytic philosophy
•Explores the social and ethical impacts of computational systems with agencyÂ
•Features robust end-of-chapter exercises
| Expand/Collapse All | |
|---|---|
| Cover (pg. Cover) | |
| Contents (pg. v) | |
| Preface (pg. vii) | |
| Acknowledgments (pg. xi) | |
| 1. Orientation (pg. 1) | |
| I. A Very Old Question (pg. 1) | |
| II. Why Agency? (pg. 3) | |
| III. Some Basics on Artificial Intelligence (pg. 5) | |
| IV. What’s Philosophy Got to Do with It? (pg. 8) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 11) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 12) | |
| 2. Myths of Machine Agents (pg. 13) | |
| Introduction (pg. 13) | |
| I. Tales of Four Entities (pg. 15) | |
| II. Understanding Agency and Mindedness in the Stories (pg. 19) | |
| III. A Little Theory (pg. 22) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 27) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 28) | |
| 3. Debates about Machine Minds (pg. 29) | |
| Introduction (pg. 29) | |
| I. The Problem of Minds (pg. 30) | |
| II. The Turing Test and Beyond (pg. 32) | |
| III. Semantics Schemantics (pg. 35) | |
| IV. Beyond Searle and Turing (pg. 39) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 40) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 41) | |
| 4. Exploring Agency (pg. 43) | |
| Introduction (pg. 43) | |
| I. The Basics of Agency (pg. 44) | |
| II. Other Strands in the Conversation (pg. 49) | |
| III. Lessons Learned (pg. 52) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 54) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 55) | |
| 5. A Minimalist Theory of Agency (pg. 57) | |
| Introduction (pg. 57) | |
| I. Beyond the Belief–Desire Pair (pg. 57) | |
| II. The Possibility of Machine Agency (pg. 61) | |
| III. Critiques and objections (pg. 63) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 67) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 68) | |
| 6. Computational Implementation of Agency (pg. 71) | |
| Introduction (pg. 71) | |
| I. Algorithms and Computation (pg. 72) | |
| II. Algorithms, Representation, and Guiding Behavior by Representations (pg. 80) | |
| III. Program Implementation Clarified (pg. 83) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 84) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 85) | |
| 7. Agency in Contemporary Machines (pg. 87) | |
| Introduction (pg. 87) | |
| I. Other Views of Machine Agency (pg. 88) | |
| II. Worries about these views (pg. 91) | |
| III. Unseeing Agency in LLMs (pg. 94) | |
| IV. Looking forward (pg. 97) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 97) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 99) | |
| 8. Biology and Brains (pg. 101) | |
| Introduction (pg. 101) | |
| I. Agents as Organic Unities (pg. 102) | |
| II. Complex Adaptive Systems (pg. 104) | |
| III. How Necessary Is the Biological, Evolutionary Context? (pg. 109) | |
| IV. Final Word (pg. 111) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 112) | |
| Reflect or Discuss (pg. 112) | |
| Expand Your Thinking (pg. 113) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 113) | |
| 9. Information, Communication, and Control (pg. 115) | |
| Introduction (pg. 115) | |
| I. Command and Control (pg. 116) | |
| II. Information Gathering and Utilizing Systems (pg. 118) | |
| III. Updating Representations (pg. 122) | |
| IV. Agency and Information (pg. 123) | |
| V. Putting It All Together (pg. 126) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 127) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 128) | |
| 10. Responsibility for Machine Actions (pg. 129) | |
| Introduction (pg. 129) | |
| I. What Is Responsibility? (pg. 130) | |
| II. The Responsibility Gap (pg. 132) | |
| III. An Analogy to Animals (pg. 136) | |
| IV. Problems with the “Human-in-the-Loop” Story (pg. 139) | |
| V. Wrap Up (pg. 141) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 142) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 143) | |
| 11. Agents in the Social World: Moral Status and Relationships (pg. 145) | |
| Introduction (pg. 145) | |
| I. Foundations of Moral Status (pg. 145) | |
| II. Machines and Moral Status (pg. 149) | |
| III. What’s So Special about Relationships? (pg. 152) | |
| IV. Relationships with Machines (pg. 156) | |
| V. Looking Forward (pg. 157) | |
| Your Tasks (pg. 158) | |
| Further Reading (pg. 160) | |
| Index (pg. 163) | |
James Mattingly
James Mattingly is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, author of Information and Experimental Knowledge, and editor of The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.Beba Cibralic
Beba Cibralic is an Associate Fellow at Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and a Researcher on AI at RAND Corporation.|
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