Note: This is part of the “Forces of the Soul” series. The introduction to the series links to other essays in this series.
It is a marvelous thing to watch a baby learn their way in the world, and even more remarkable to see them literally discover themselves. In the video above you can see the wonder in their eyes as they learn they can control their hands — "whoa! did that just happen? was that something I did?"
The second force of the soul is our sense of agency. It interacts closely with our sense of existence and undergirds whether we are moved to act. It is also closely related to ideas of freedom and liberty, which have fueled history, politics, revolution, and war. The word “freedom” sometimes seems mystical, and “free will” can even feel like the thing that makes us who we are. But I want to sidestep these heavily loaded words, which have inspired millenia of philosophical and theological scrutiny and is impractical to address in a single post.1 Instead, I want to focus specifically on that subjective felt sense of agency. We all have felt it. It is a sense that is acutely felt even by the proverbial child who resents being forced to eat spinach.
Whereas freedom and liberty can be hard to define, the description of the sense of agency is quite straight forward. The sense of agency consists of a few parts:
A conceptualization and felt sense of self. This largely happens unconsciously, and is very much a feeling.
A forecast of both a desired action taken by the aforementioned "self" and a predicted observable change.
Estimate of the likelihood of the outcome, and observation/confirmation of whether predictions were right.
The first two points go hand in hand. Without identifying or feeling an action as self, to what is agency attributed? Secondly, a feeling of self does not yield a sense of agency unless the brain or soul anticipates a change to occur as a consequence of actions attributed to the self. It is usually the violation of anticipations that result in marked feelings of agency (or lack thereof). The estimated certainty of an action and surprise at unforeseen outcomes thus also plays a critical part in our feeling of agency.
For example, if we wish to raise our arm, we expect to see it rise, and we are usually pretty certain that we can. In this case, attempting to raise our hand but running into constraints (say, our arm is tied down) feels like a violation of agency. On the flip side, if a paralyzed person finds all of a sudden they can move their arm, that must feel like a rush of agency.
Similarly, think of that baby discovering they have a hand for the first time. That observation is completely unexpected, and the brain doesn't know of a reasonable proximate cause located in the external world. Thus, the brain probably assigns the cause to neural signals2 that are loosely correlated as having origins in oneself. The self is reinforced, and that is exhilarating. I imagine the children of Hajimete no Otsukai feel a similar sense of accomplishment and agency upon completing errands for the first time.
As we get older, the rush of a sense of agency often becomes a rarer occurrence. One instance when it might be (unconsciously) felt is when one is in "flow" or partaking in an act of creation, constantly pushing the boundaries of what the brain expects itself to be capable of. Other times, this pursuit of the sense of agency takes the shape of acts of rebellion. These moments of rebellion feel very agentic because, like the baby and its hand, they involve realizing outcomes in the world that the brain and soul didn't previously feel were reasonable or possible. As in the case of the baby and their hand, when outcomes are unconsciously inferred to be caused by oneself, feelings of self are reinforced, and I suspect this is why the feelings of agency associated with rebellion are also often described as "feeling alive.”3
The above illustrates how the sense of agency can lead to shifts of perspectives on the self and the world. The subjective nature of the sense of agency, however, also underscores the many ways that the sense of agency can shift with changes in perspective. Some examples:
If one’s scope of expected change in the world is too big, e.g. if one places heavy expectation on seeing climate change reversed, one may end up feeling helpless. But if one’s focus is more targeted, e.g. personal electricity reduction, one may feel more agency. The sense of agency does not point to some intrinsic and absolute capacity for agency, but is instead context and perspective-dependent.
If one has one’s mind set on driving off-road, one may find roads to be very constrictive to one’s sense of agency. Yet if one wishes to arrive at their destination quickly, one may find that the road enables that, thus reinforcing and enabling the sense of agency. I.e. even rules can feel freeing, with the right mindset!
Stories that depersonalize the self can often lead to virulent resistance. Most common is telling someone that they are largely determined by genes, or evolution, or nurture, or history, or capitalism, or societal forces, etc. I suspect what's happening here is that the brain takes actions that previously involved signals of "self", and starts associating them with “outside” ideas and signals, thus weakening that sense of self and agency. Thus, it is not just an intellectual matter, it is a felt matter, and this can feel violating.
Sometimes we intentionally forgo the sense agency! We do this by resorting to phrases like, “law of nature,” or “up to fate,” essentially depersonalizing the self and denying the efficacy or ownership of our actions.
The sense of agency can compel us to act, resist, and fight. Sometimes we change perspective to reclaim that sense of agency. Sometimes we resist changes in perspective, or change our actions to try to reclaim that sense of self. You may have noticed that it also involves anticipation and pattern-recognition (i.e. what I called the first force of the soul), but what distinguishes it is its pertinence to whether and how we take action in the world.
In the future we’ll intimately investigate more objective accounts of agency and how these accounts can strain our sense of agency to the point of breaking. This will be closely followed by exploring the possibility of a more nuanced and resilient sense of agency that is compatible with more flexible senses of self, and seeing how this can better align with reality.
Just in case you can’t resist watching babies, here’s another video:
Much smarter people than me have pointed out how loosely we use the word "freedom," and how subjective an idea it can be. One popular notion of freedom bristles at rules and emphasizes the freedom to act upon desires. Yet Kant looked upon this notion of freedom with disdain — to him it is merely being enslaved to one's desires. And for as much as we might cherish the freedom of choice, many exalted human experiences are not described as a choice at all: athletes pulling off superhuman stunts often describe the moment of execution as "unconscious," sometimes we are often "overcome by joy (or conviction)," and oftentimes people find peace in “accepting fate.” Some great essays on the nuances of free will include a set by Everything Studies, a series on the site LessWrong, and one by Jay Garfield on how concepts like “free will” might miss the point and be irrelevant (echoing views articulated by philosophers like Daniel Dennett).
Specifically, I am thinking of the "readiness potentials” that neuroscientists have measured that precede voluntary actions. The readiness potential might seem odd, or philosophically interesting, but I almost would be surprised if something like it didn't exist. My suspicion is that the readiness potential, or something like, is a mechanism by which the brain tries to distinguish between neural signals that were stimulated “internally” as opposed to primarily driven by externally-attuned sensory signals. Most likely this distinction between inside/outside can never be made clear-cut, but it makes a lot of sense for the brain to at least loosely categorize some neural signals as the result of its own processing and deliberation, rather than “bare” inputs from the senses and environment.
The opposite is also true, that a lack of agency can make one feel lifeless.