CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 497Embodied and Extended CognitionPhilosophy and History of ScienceComplex Systems and Dynamics

Defining Agency: Individuality, Normativity, Asymmetry, and Spatio-temporality in Action

Open access
Barandiaran, Xabier E., Di Paolo, Ezequiel, Rohde, Marieke·2009·Adaptive Behavior
DOI 10.1177/1059712309343819
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

The concept of agency is of crucial importance in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and it is often used as an intuitive and rather uncontroversial term, in contrast to more abstract and theoretically heavily weighted terms such as intentionality , rationality, or mind. However, most of the available definitions of agency are too loose or unspecific to allow for a progressive scientific research program. They implicitly and unproblematically assume the features that characterize agents, thus obscuring the full potential and challenge of modeling agency. We identify three conditions that a system must meet in order to be considered as a genuine agent: (a) a system must define its own individuality, (b) it must be the active source of activity in its environment ( interactional asymmetry), and (c) it must regulate this activity in relation to certain norms ( normativity). We find that even minimal forms of proto-cellular systems can already provide a paradigmatic example of genuine agency. By abstracting away some specific details of minimal models of living agency we define the kind of organization that is capable of meeting the required conditions for agency (which is not restricted to living organisms). On this basis, we define agency as an autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence. We find that spatiality and temporality are the two fundamental domains in which agency spans at different scales. We conclude by giving an outlook for the road that lies ahead in the pursuit of understanding, modeling, and synthesizing agents.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/1059712309343819

Cites

79 of 79 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Theorists from biology associate agency with autonomy and self-maintenance; AI researchers focus on goal-directedness; traditional philosophical views understand agency in terms of beliefs, desires, and intentions.

    “Theorists from biology associate agenc y with autonomy and self-maintenance [ 66,67], AI researchers have recently focused on goal-directedness [ 68], and traditional philosophical views understand agency in terms of beliefs, desires, and intentions [ 69,70].”

    From Identifying indicators of consciousness in AI systems (2026) · cites this paper as [66]

  • In the enactive account, agency requires three organizational conditions: self-individuation, interactional asymmetry, and normativity.

    “In the enactive account, agency requires three organizational conditions: self-individuation, interactional asymmetry, and normativity.”

    From Toward an Enactive Conception of Productive Practices: Beyond Material Agency (2023) · cites this paper as Barandiaran et al., 2009

  • Each of the essential properties of agency proposed by Barandiaran et al. (2009) and Moreno (2018) is frame-dependent.

    “We support this claim by presenting a philosophical argument that each of the essential properties of agency proposed by Barandiaran et al. (2009) and Moreno (2018) are themselves frame-dependent.”

    From Agency Is Frame-Dependent (2025) · cites this paper as Barandiaran et al. (2009)

  • Following enactive work, all forms of agency are characterized by requirements of self-individuation, interactional asymmetry, and normativity.

    “Following enactive work, we propose that all forms of agency are characterized by requirements of self-individuation , interactional asymmetry , and normativity .”

    From Toward an Enactive Conception of Productive Practices: Beyond Material Agency (2023) · cites this paper as Barandiaran et al., 2009

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 14

  1. Barandiaran, X. (2004) Behavioral Adaptive Autonomy. A milestone in the Alife route to AI? In Pollack, J., Bedau, M.A., Husbands, P., Ikegami, T., Watson, R.A. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Simula- tion and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALife9), MIT Press, pp. 514-521.
  2. Barandiaran, X. (2007) Mental Life: conceptual models and sythetic methodolo- gies for a post-cognitivist psychology. In B. Wallace, A. Ross, T. Anderson, J. Davies. (Eds.) The World, the Mind and the Body: Psychology after cognit- ivism. Imprint Academic, pp. 49-90.
  3. Barandiaran, X. & Moreno, A. (2006) On what makes certain dynamical systems cognitive. Adaptive Behavior 14(2):171-185.
  4. Barandiaran, X. & Di Paolo, E. A.(2008). Artificial Mental Life (Abstract). In S. Bullock, J. Noble, R. A. Watson, and M. A. Bedau (Eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Artificial Life, Alife XI, Winchester, UK, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
  5. Barandiaran, X. & Ruiz-Mirazo, K. (Eds.) (2008) Special issue on "Modelling Autonomy". BioSystems 91(2).
  6. Bishop, J. (1989) Natural Agency. Cambridge University Press.
  7. Christensen, W.D. (1999) An interactivist-constructivist approach to adaptive in- telligence and agency. PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia.
  8. Adaptive Behavior Journal Barandiaran, X., Di Paolo, E. & Rohde, M. | DEFINING AGENCY RESEARCH PAPER and E. A. Di Paolo (eds), Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  9. Di Paolo, E.A. (2003) Organismically-inspired robotics: homeostatic adaptation and natural teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. In Murase, K., Asakura, T. (Eds.), Dynamical Systems Approach to Embodiment and So- ciality. Advanced Knowledge International, Adelaide, pp. 19-42.
  10. Gánti, T. (1971) The Principle of Life. 1st edition. (In Hungarian) Gondolat, Bu- dapest.
  11. Hanczyc, M., Toyota,T., Ikegami, T., Packard, N. and Sugawara, T. (2007) Chem- istry at the oil-water interface: Self-propelled oil droplets. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129(30):9386-9391.
  12. Kant, I. (1787/1974). Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vol. 1 of Wissenschaft, die drei Kritiken. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. Edited by W. Weischedel. (German ori- ginal published in 1787)
  13. Rasmussen, S. et al. (2008) Protocells. Bridging nonliving and living matter. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  14. Rosen, R. (1991) Life itself. A comprehensive enquiry into the nature, origin and fabrication of life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Barandiaran, X. E., Di Paolo, E., & Rohde, M.
Affiliations
  • University of Sussex (GB)
  • Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics & Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
  • Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (DE)
Corresponding author
Barandiaran, Xabier E.
ORCID
Venue
Adaptive Behavior
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2009-09-23
Volume
17
Issue
5
Pages
367-386
ISSN
  • 1059-7123 (ISSN-L)
  • 1741-2633
DOI
10.1177/1059712309343819
OpenAlex
W2097585998
Cited by
497
References
79
Citations by year
2026: 50 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 45 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 62 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 33 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 3
FWCI
4.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Adaptive Behavior (publishedVersion)
  • PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
  • Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
  • PUB – Publications at Bielefeld University (Bielefeld University) (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Systems and Dynamics
Keywords
agency, individuality, normativity, interactional asymmetry, autonomy, adaptive regulation, spatio-temporality, agent-based modeling, artificial agents

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review