Hi all,

There's been some really interesting discussion about this whole agency 
thing.  But it's hard for someone like me to fully grasp the arguments.

So maybe all this is going to seem naive, but that's never stopped me 
before!

Anyways, it seems the matter is really in coming up with a set of 
definitions that we can all agree to, for the terms 'act', 'action', 
'agent', and 'actor'.  It would be important to keep the definitions as 
crisp as possible so that we don't confuse each other with ambiguity.

If one accepts this (as I do - not to say I'm right, of course), then 
could we not say:
to act: to bring about change in a situation
an actor: an entity that acts
an action: the thing done by an actor to bring about change in a situation.
an agent: an entity that can act on itself.

That last one deserves comment.  For example: I am an agent.  When I 
become hungry, I change myself by establishing as a priority the getting 
of food.

At this level, the 'I', above, is roughly equivalent to a reconfigurable 
robot, which can alter its physical structure to respond to specifics in 
its situation.

What makes me (perhaps only slightly) more advanced than a 
reconfigurable robot is (a) the complexity of the tasks I can handle and 
reasoning I can do to towards those ends, and (b) things like intention, 
free will, etc. that I haven't the words yet to express to my own 
satisfaction but that would appear to be unique to humans.

So humans are a subset of agents, which are a subset of actors.

The reason why I like this approach is that it accounts for *some* 
properties of a whole bunch of entities (people, reconfigurable robots, 
"software agents", etc) while still distinguishing humans in an 
open-ended kind of way.  This means we can at least do some reasoning 
about matters of agency, activity, etc. while we wait for a better 
understanding of human uniqueness.

...anyways, this works for me.

Finally, with regards to Ken's message describing a the notion that 
agents are human.  I would ask about situations in which a person might 
not be sure if the 'other' entity with which the person is interacting 
is human or not.  It might, in certain restrictive situations, appear to 
be a human, and even seem like an agent, but might not be.  I guess an 
obvious, though hypothetical, example might be the Turing Test.

The human would be in a 'context' of not knowing one way or the other, 
whereas some other person with a different context might indeed know. 
Surely, a proper 'theory' of this sort of thing should account for these 
situations, should they not?

Naively yours,
Fil


Terence Love wrote:
> Dear Carl, Ken and others,
> 
> I'm with Ken on the agency issue. It requires some serious redefinition to take a concept that was developed and intended to distinguish humans from objects and then make it a property of objects. 
> 
> I think it is helpful to distinguish between
> 
> 1. Items  in the objective 'real' world
> 2. Items in humans' subjective worlds
> 3. Items in theory worlds 
> 
> The broad indications are that these can be regarded as incommensurate. That is, for example, what goes on in peoples heads can't prove that things are so in the real world. Ditto what goes on in people's heads can't be proven by theory. Perhaps more difficult is that theory can't be proven by looking at events in the real world. The incomensurability appears true for all six relations. This is described by Popper  in some work in the mid 70s if I remember right.
> 
> Extrapolating from this, descriptions of concepts in actor-network theory, activity-theory as all other theories are structured definitions of concepts whose characteristics are chosen primarlily  for the making of elegant theory models. In for example, activity theory (as I understand it) there is a three way symmetry available in the entity-relationships structures in the  theory world if objects are given similar properties to humans. The benefits are access to insights about influence processes that are not usually perceived when situaitons are viewed through the lenses of more traditional theories. 
> The choice of allocating, in the theory world, the property of agency to a theoretical represenation of an object or context is shaped by convenience and the opportunity to disturb our reified mental models. It does not mean that it is true in the real or subjective worlds or that there is any justification for arguing that real world objects (or contexts) have agency - only that if we pretend they might have then we get some useful insights and a model that is easier to develop routine ways of processing data.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Terry
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kjetil Fallan
> Sent: 9/11/2005 8:28 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Agency -- a clarification on agents, actors, and actants
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Ken
> 
> Your semantic demarcation regarding Latour's use of the terms agency/agent/actant/actor is important and interesting, and is in line with much of the criticism Latour has met - also within the STS community. Many a scholar has had a hard time accepting the way he seeks to give nonhumans a voice. Margaret C. Jacob, for instance, has described Latour's strategy of letting artefacts "speak" for themselves - referring especially to the ending of Latour's Aramis, or The Love of Technology - as an exercise in "self-indulging pantheism". (Jacob, 1999: 106)
> You write that "Manufactured artifacts cannot possess agency unless we redefine the term "agency" to exclude precisely the qualities of will and understanding that define agency as we now use the term." An attempt to overcome or sidestep this predicament has been presented by Brown and Capdevila, who - concurring that will is a prerequisite for being an agent/actor - have suggested to introduce "a novel way of reading will, one which is entirely devoid of subjective intentions or desires." (Brown and Capdevila, 1999: 40) I am not really sure if this solves any problems or puts you and other Latour critics at ease, though. In any case, I do not feel up for the task of engaging in a profound discussions on the linguistic/philosophical aspects of this problem.
> In his latest book, Latour defines an actor as someone/something which "is made to act by many others... An 'actor'... is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it." (2005: 46). The actions/tasks performed by human actors have often been delegated to them by others, just as actions/tasks performed by nonhuman actors have often been delegated to them by e.g. designers. As I understand it, this is another take on his attempt to dismantle what he sees as an artificial divide between the human and the nonhuman, the "social" and the "technological"/"natural". In other words: the supposed intentional will guiding the actions of human actants is no more evident and unproblematic than in the case of nonhuman actants.
> You write that Latour "does not describe non-human agents... Agency is the property of an agent... not even Latour seems to claim that "actants" are agents possessing agency in the sense that agents possess will and understanding."
> As you also point out, Latour (and Akrich) do not present any scrutinizing analysis of the relation between intentional will and their notion of (nonhuman) actants,  but Latour does assert that "objects too have agency" (2005: 63) I suspect that his lack of concern for the aspect of intentional will stems from his/their maintaining that "a machine can be studied no more than a human, because what the analyst is faced with are assemblies of human and nonhuman actants where the competences and performances are distributed." (Akrich & Latour, 1992: 259) To Latour it is in fact the very "apparent incommensurability of [objects'] modes of action with traditionally conceived social ties" which make nonhuman actants so important - their actions are intermittent but crucial in understanding social connections: "any course of action will rarely consist of human-to-human connections... or of object-object connections, but will probably zigzag from one to the other." (Latour, 2005: 74
-75). His interest in action is thus focused on studying settings which includes different actants of different kinds. Action is seen as something which takes place in the relations between these different actants, and this view might explain why the quality of intentionality/will seems subordinate to Latour.
> I do not wish to take on the role as Latour's advocate, nor to profess the infallibility or universality of his theories, but I do maintain that many aspects of them may make for new and interesting perspectives on design studies.
> 
> References:
> 
> Bruno Latour, Aramis, or The Love of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996)
> 
> Margaret C. Jacob, "Science Studies after Social Construction - The Turn toward the Comparative and the Global" in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn - New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) p 95-120
> 
> Steven D. Brown and Rose Capdevila, "Perpetuum mobile: substance, force and the sociology of translation" in John Law and John Hassard (eds.), Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) p 26-50
> 
> Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social - An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
> 
> Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, "A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies" in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, (eds.), Shaping Technology / Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992) p 259-264
> 
> Regards
> 
> Kjetil Fallan
> Research Fellow & Doctoral Candidate
> 
> Dept. of Architectural Design, Form and Colour Studies
> Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art
> Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
> 
> N-7491 Trondheim, Norway
> 
> [log in to unmask]
> 
> +47 73595023 (office)
> +47 90937874 (mobile)


-- 
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University                         Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
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