A Matter of Time: Towards a General Theory of Agency
2026/06/30 by Amahury J. López-Díaz, Carlos Gershenson
Computer Science · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #cs.AI #q-bio.OT
paper · pdf
42 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables
arxiv created 2026/07/30 · arxiv updated 2026/07/31
Abstract
Agency is widely invoked in biology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and philosophy, yet its organizational basis, its empirical thresholds, and the operational criteria that distinguish it from other teleonomic terminology remain unsettled. Building on temporally parametrized (F, A)-systems, we propose a multidimensional theory of biological agency grounded in relational biology, physical biosemiotics, and process ontology. Our central claim is that the precarious physical realization of self-reference is necessarily diachronic; constitutive constraints act, decay, and are regenerated over distinct characteristic timescales. By temporalizing organizational diagrams ordered by specified relation deletion, we obtain a structural partial order, rather than an evolutionary ladder, that distinguishes four defeasible conditions: autonomy as internal regeneration of constitutive constraints under material openness; goal-directedness as viability-biased maintenance; agency as endogenous anticipatory modulation of organism--environment coupling; and open-endedness as reconstruction of the variables, measurement relations, effectors, and norms through which future viability is defined. We translate these distinctions into a closure-sensitive mechanistic workflow and a provisional profile of operational signatures for semantic closure, measurement--control complementarity, anticipatory modulation, affordance reconstruction, syntactic open-endedness, and viability-corrected skill acquisition. Markov blankets and active inference are treated as derived modeling tools, while Bickhard's interactivism clarifies anticipatory error and normativity. Across chemical, cellular, multicellular, and artificial systems, our framework turns agency from an all-or-none attribution into a falsifiable, scale-explicit research program.
Citations
- Ephaptic coupling can explain variability in neural activity
- Biology Needs Philosophy, But What Philosophy?
- Bootstrapping Life-Inspired Machine Intelligence: The Biological Route from Chemistry to Cognition and Creativity
- Cognition spaces: natural, artificial, and hybrid
- Characterizing Open-Ended Evolution Through Undecidability Mechanisms in Random Boolean Networks
- Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems
- A "good regulator theorem" for embodied agents
- Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agents
- Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory
- Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience
- A Bayesian Interpretation of the Internal Model Principle
- Artificial intelligence is algorithmic mimicry: why artificial "agents" are not (and won't be) proper agents
- The debate over understanding in AI’s large language models
- Organization needs organization: Understanding integrated control in living organisms
- Bridging the explanatory gaps: What can we learn from a biological agency perspective?
- A continuity of Markov blanket interpretations under the Free Energy Principle
- How Molecules Became Signs
- Rosen's no-go theorem for regular categories
- Mechanistic Causation and Constraints: Perspectival Parts and Powers, Non-perspectival Modal Patterns
- Eco-evolutionary feedbacks - theoretical models and perspectives
- Eco‐evolutionary feedbacks—Theoretical models and perspectives
- An introduction to niche construction theory
- The Information Theory of Individuality
- Hylomorphism and the Metabolic Closure Conception of Life
- No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere
- Defining Agency: Individuality, Normativity, Asymmetry, and Spatio-temporality in Action
- The physics of symbols: bridging the epistemic cut
- Symbols and dynamics in the brain
- I.—COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE
- Behavior, Purpose and Teleology
- An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory
- Contextuality, Cognitive Engagement, and Active Inference
- Organisms≠Machines
Related