California condor: What's anthropological agency? I heard a fascinating, Anthropology talk yesterday at Stanford, which suggested that food in Bengal, India, was an actant, or had agency, What's an agent anthropologically?, What's agency philosophically? What's agency for robotics? When can we say that a robot has achieved various degrees of autonomous causation? What's agency for digital bots such as avatars in virtual worlds?

What's anthropological agency?

I heard a fascinating Anthropology talk yesterday at Stanford, which suggested that food in Bengal, India, was an actant, or had agency.

... vis-a-vis mediation and in terms of being a generator of relationships ...


"Food as Mediation"
Manpreet K. Janeja


https://www.stanford.edu/dept/anthropology/cgi-bin/web/?q=node/1531


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What's agency philosophically?


Wikipedia -

agency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)



Oxford Companion to Philosophy -


agent.

A person (or other being) who is the subject when there is action. A long history attaches to thinking ...

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199264797.001.0001/acref-9780199264797-e-46



agent causation.

A direct causal relation between agents and actions that is irreducible to causation by events and states. Advocates of agent ...


http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199264797.001.0001/acref-9780199264797-e-47



agent-relative moralities.

Typical agent-relative moral principles forbid us from committing one murder even if by not doing so we permit five to ...

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199264797.001.0001/acref-9780199264797-e-48



Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Action -

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/action/


Shared agency -

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shared-agency/


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What's agency for robotics? When can we say that a robot has achieved various degrees of autonomous causation?

'Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents' series at the MIT Press
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/intelligent-robotics-and-autonomous-agents-series


"When Is a Robot a Moral Agent?"
by John Sullins

http://www.academia.edu/150599/When_Is_a_Robot_a_Moral_Agent


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What's agency for digital bots such as avatars in virtual worlds?

see these previous blog posts -

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/avatar%20agency

...