Patiency as an Essential Part of Agency

초록

Is a driverless car an agent? How about a humanoid robot equipped with higher-level AI? Agency is considered a necessary condition for moral and legal responsibility. What makes an entity an agent? In other words, what is the condition for an entity, whether a human being, an animal, or a robot, to be qualified as having agency? What about patiency? I will analyze this pair of questions, which shall appear to be entangled inseparably together, and make some suggestions about the answer. The core idea is that patiency is an essential part of agency. In other words: No patient, no agent. In order for a physical system to be qualified as an agent, it should first prove itself to be a unified patient system. I will discuss some realistic necessary conditions for making such a patient system.