ABSTRACT
What distinguishes a human agent from automata or insects is the developed capacity to reflect and deliberate upon the context, options, purpose and possible outcomes of action. As Karl Marx (1976, p. 284) wrote in Capital: ‘what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax’. This does not imply that all human behaviour is deliberate, but that human deliberation is possible. We should also acknowledge that some non-human animals might have very partially developed this capacity.
