ABSTRACT
Minimal agency is a version of agency that has a minimal set of features and that can still be regarded as a proper form of agency. Commonly proposed features of minimal agency are causal efficacy and minimal forms of goal-directedness, normativity, behavioural freedom, individuality, and representation. The chapter focusses on minimal agency in biological organisms. It discusses the main theories that aim to explain how minimal agency is produced and evaluates how well these theories can explain the proposed features (summarized in a table). The ‘explanatory role’ theory ascribes agency to a system whenever that is useful or indispensable for explaining the system’s behaviour. Most features of agency can be ascribed, but a major problem is that agency lacks a real causal role according to the theory. The ‘intrinsic power’ theory is based on a neo-Aristotelian ontology of causal powers, of which agency is one. All proposed features of agency are intrinsically present, but the approach is non-naturalistic and thus disconnected from science. ‘Evolutionary etiology’ explains agency via the concept of biological functions and their goal-directedness. Its dominant weakness is that it cannot produce current causal efficacy and thus fails to provide an actual ontological status to agency. The ‘organizational theory’ proposes that agency is part of the adaptive mechanisms that maintain an organism’s structural integrity. It accounts for several features of agency, but it cannot explain behavioural freedom and assumes a norm that appears to be groundless. The ‘fitness estimation’ approach explains agency as produced by an internal estimate of an organism’s own evolutionary fitness. It produces strong emergence of minimal agency and all of its proposed features. However, it currently lacks empirical validation. The chapter concludes by noting that minimal agency can help to explain several major features of full-blown agency, but not all.
