Friday 21 August 2015

Agency review cited in article by van Hateren - remarks on choice, freedom

My article
Tønnessen, M. (2015). The biosemiotic glossary project: agent, agency. Biosemiotics 8: 125–143.
has been cited in
van Hateren, J.H. (2015). The Natural Emergence of (Bio)Semiosic Phenomena. Biosemiotics. Published online May 27th 2015 (DOI 10.1007/s12304-015-9241-4).
Excerpts:
Agency as understood here is in fact largely consistent with its typical use in biosemiotics (Tønnesen 2015), where the "core attributes of an agent include goal-directedness, self-governed activity, processing of semiosis and choice of action" (see also van Hateren 2014b). For most species, the expression "choice of action" is probably a bit too strong, because choosing seems to presuppose sharp categorization. I rather prefer to call it "some behavioural freedom" (van Hateren 2015), where behaviour is interpreted broadly to include also processes within plants and unicellular organisms. But apart from wording, it points to a similar concept.

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