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Machine Agency
175 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 8, 2025
Interesting & accessible philosophical textbook on the topic of agency in the age of automation— What is agency? Who (or what) possess it? Can we hold machines (or non-anthropomorphic entities) morally accountable for their actions?
In an era of digitization, I think these are the types of ethical and philosophical questions we need to ask ourselves in order to design better systems of AI governance. As the lines between human/machine and animate/inanimate object become blurred, the designation of agenthood holds both important descriptive and normative implications.
The book is written very intuitively for amateur practitioners of philosophy, and so I think it is best reserved for new readers / students seeking a high-level primer about AI, machine agents, and synthetic actors. There are 11 chapters that include follow-up questions, activities, and resources that allow for a more in-depth look at some of these topics.
I'm not 100% sure if I came out of the book with a definitive opinion of what makes a thing "agentic" or not, but I'm also not sure that's the point (any attempt to do so may be imposing a procrustean framework on a protean topic). Instead, I found myself developing a greater appreciation for rich philosophical debates in the vein of autonomous agents including: mind/body dualism (shoutout Plato/Descartes/Socrates), famous thought experiments in the philosophy of language / computing (Turing's imitation game, the decision problem, Searle's Chinese Room argument, the Octopus test), belief-desire vs reductionist models of agency, Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) frameworks, information theory / cybernetics, and questions of moral status in macroethics.
I think a good book doesn't need to provide all the answers, but instead, encourage the reader to seek out additional questions.
I also read these two articles, and they gave a very fascinating view of what it means to be a moral agent / moral patient (e.g., does A = P or A ⊂ P?)
- Floridi & Sanders. 2004. “On the Morality of Artificial Agents.” Minds and Machines.
- Johnson & Miller. 2008. “Un-Making Artificial Moral Agents,” Ethics and Information Technology
In an era of digitization, I think these are the types of ethical and philosophical questions we need to ask ourselves in order to design better systems of AI governance. As the lines between human/machine and animate/inanimate object become blurred, the designation of agenthood holds both important descriptive and normative implications.
The book is written very intuitively for amateur practitioners of philosophy, and so I think it is best reserved for new readers / students seeking a high-level primer about AI, machine agents, and synthetic actors. There are 11 chapters that include follow-up questions, activities, and resources that allow for a more in-depth look at some of these topics.
I'm not 100% sure if I came out of the book with a definitive opinion of what makes a thing "agentic" or not, but I'm also not sure that's the point (any attempt to do so may be imposing a procrustean framework on a protean topic). Instead, I found myself developing a greater appreciation for rich philosophical debates in the vein of autonomous agents including: mind/body dualism (shoutout Plato/Descartes/Socrates), famous thought experiments in the philosophy of language / computing (Turing's imitation game, the decision problem, Searle's Chinese Room argument, the Octopus test), belief-desire vs reductionist models of agency, Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) frameworks, information theory / cybernetics, and questions of moral status in macroethics.
I think a good book doesn't need to provide all the answers, but instead, encourage the reader to seek out additional questions.
I also read these two articles, and they gave a very fascinating view of what it means to be a moral agent / moral patient (e.g., does A = P or A ⊂ P?)
- Floridi & Sanders. 2004. “On the Morality of Artificial Agents.” Minds and Machines.
- Johnson & Miller. 2008. “Un-Making Artificial Moral Agents,” Ethics and Information Technology
Displaying 1 of 1 review