A.13 - The Agential Role & Agency Spectrum

A.13:0 - Use This When

Use this pattern when a precise claim of agency matters: which System qualifies for a local goal-directed system-role kind, and which assignment actually holds for the action in question? Start with that System, the kind and criterion it satisfies, the obtaining assignment, and only the scope, situation and window the use needs. Keep the evidence for those facts recoverable. The first result is a supported agency claim, not a five-characteristic measurement exercise.

Open the characteristic profile when a Grade, autonomy or profile claim consumes it, when the local kind’s criterion depends on a characteristic, or when a named assurance use requires it. Otherwise stop at the core. A characteristic-only claim about an admitted System need not assert a system-role assignment.

Ordinary use of “agent” does not by itself require this precise account. Use A.12 for an acting/changed-participant question and A.15.1 for whether a particular dated Work occurrence took place.

A.13:1 - Intent & Context

A.13 separates a precise agency claim from a claim about the holder’s agency characteristics. The former identifies a System’s local kind and obtaining assignment; the latter states the characteristics the receiving use needs.

This pattern builds directly on the FPF Kernel. A.1 establishes that the acting holder must be a U.System. A.2 and A.2.1 distinguish a local system-role kind, classification by that kind, and an obtaining occurrence of a directly declared U.SystemRoleAssignment species. A.12 supplies the acting-side externalization principle.

This distinction serves three uses:

1. Define agency as an assignment claim: a local agential system-role kind is assigned to a U.System through an obtaining U.SystemRoleAssignment, rather than being an intrinsic holon type.
2. Describe a multi-dimensional spectrum of agency through the agency-characteristic profile when its values are needed.
3. Provide a didactic grading system for communicating a profile summary.

A.13:2 - Problem

Treating agency as an intrinsic property or a mere label hides different questions:

1. Episteme-as-Actor: When “the specification decided to update the system” hides the actor, use A.12 to identify the proposed acting entity. A precise agency claim needs that entity admitted as a System under A.1, distinct from the specification under A.7.
2. Type Inflation: Introducing a root agent kind alongside U.System and U.Episteme would violate Ontological Parsimony (C-5). The same System may qualify for an agential system-role kind and receive an assignment in one working situation but not another. The agency claim states its scope and window separately; a root type cannot express these differences.
3. Unsupported Claims: A label such as “agent” supplies neither the local kind criterion and obtaining assignment nor evidence for a claimed autonomy profile. Those claims need their own support under A.10.
4. The Binary Trap: “Agent/not-agent” alone does not distinguish a thermostat’s feedback, a cruise-control system’s prediction and a strategic robotic swarm’s self-learning capabilities.

A.13:3 - Forces

A.13:4 - Solution

Establish the agency core first. Add the characteristic profile when the receiving claim requires it; use a Grade only as its didactic summary.

A.13:4.1 - The Core Definition: Agential participation through an exact system-role assignment

An ordinary-language “agent” is not a fundamental FPF type. When a precise agency claim is needed, name four things:

1. the acting holder recognized as a U.System;
2. the exact local agential system-role kind whose membership criterion the holder satisfies;
3. an occurrence of a directly declared U.SystemRoleAssignment species that assigns that kind to the holder and actually obtains; and
4. any claim scope, working situation, and time window needed by the intended use, kept separate from the assignment’s identity.

This keeps a useful ordinary word without creating a universal Agent or AgentialRole kind. Classification by the local kind does not establish an assignment or performed Work. An episteme cannot be this assignment’s holder because the holder must be a U.System. Evidence supports the core facts independently of any profile; a characteristic-only claim about an admitted System need not add an assignment.

A.13:4.2 - Local Agential System-Role Kinds and Their Specializations

• Local agential system-role kind: A practice or source may define a local kind whose stable work-facing contribution is goal-directed action. The kind classifies candidate Systems under its own criterion; it is not a universal root kind, an assignment occurrence, or Work.
• Specialized agential system-role kinds: A local practice may distinguish transformation, observation, planning, or another contribution when it supplies a real criterion for the distinction. An assignment to one such kind establishes only that assignment; any transformation, observation, plan, or performed Work still needs its own claim.

A.13:4.3 - Measuring Agency: The Agency Characteristic Profile and the Spectrum

The agency-characteristic profile describes distinct capabilities of the holder. Use it for a consumed Grade/autonomy/profile claim, a characteristic-dependent local criterion or a named assurance use that requires it. A.13 defines this domain profile; A.17, A.18, A.19, C.16 and A.10 govern characterization, measurement and evidence.

The following descriptions state what the five characteristics concern. A measured value also needs its declared characteristic definition, scale, measurement method and evidence basis under the patterns above. Each measurement names its holder and, where relevant, task family or work target, claim scope, situation and time window. A.10 governs the claim’s evidence and provenance.

1. Boundary Maintenance Capacity (BMC): The ability of the System to maintain its own structural and functional integrity against perturbations. The maintained property is the holder’s integrity, not merely the value it controls.
2. Predictive Horizon (PH): The temporal or causal depth of the holder’s internal model. State which depth the claim uses; the horizon is distinct from prediction accuracy.
3. Model Plasticity (MP): The rate at which the holder can update its internal model (U.GenerativeModel) in response to prediction errors (U.Error). Describe the model update and its rate; evaluate capability acquisition separately under E.10.LRN.
4. Policy Enactment Reliability (PER): The probability that the holder will successfully execute its chosen U.Method under operational conditions. The event is successful Method execution; a result or safety claim needs its own basis.
5. Objective Complexity (OC): A measure of the complexity of the U.Objective the holder can pursue, from simple set-points to abstract, multi-scale goals. These examples distinguish objectives; a complexity comparison needs a declared criterion and scale.

A.13:4.3.1 - Task-family specialization claims

When assessing a holder’s time-to-usable specialization, name the holder, TaskFamily and work target. Use C.22 for the task anchor and C.22.1 for adaptation time or budget to the declared work-measure threshold. Keep task family, work target, claim scope, situation, measurement window, threshold, adaptation budget and provenance basis distinct where the claim uses them. The same holder can show different specializations for different task families; this does not establish greater intelligence in general or a new U-kind.

Low-human-overlap or newly discovered task families remain admissible when the task family, evidence basis, and reuse window are explicit by value.

A.13:4.4 - The Agency Grade (Didactic Layer)

Engineers and managers can use the Agency Grade as a non-normative, didactic summary of a profile. The scale runs from 0 to 4; an assurance use that consumes agency characteristics needs their supported values, not this summary.

The Grade 0 label summarizes a profile; it does not settle the separate local-kind classification or assignment claim.

The profile states characteristic claims and their supporting evidence; the Grade is a pedagogical summary. A claim about a holder’s Agency Grade requires a corresponding auditable profile under CC-A13.3. The Grade remains unavailable as a normative premise under CC-A13.4.

A.13:5 - Archetypal Grounding

Start with the simple controller: “Thermostat_Model_T800 holds T800-home-heating-assignment as HomeHeatingController for household-temperature control.” The holder, local kind and assignment are different objects. For this illustration, System admission, qualification under the local kind’s criterion and an obtaining assignment are premises. The working case must supply that criterion, the supporting facts and any needed scope, situation or window; the names alone supply none of them.

The table gives schematic variations for individual and collective Systems, then a knowledge-artifact contrast. Profile and Grade remain separate claims. These local kind names are examples, not a universal AgentialRole vocabulary.

The profile values above are illustrative assumptions, not measured results. The case explanations support narrower statements:

• The thermostat “maintains temperature” in the household-control use. That does not establish the thermostat’s own structural and functional integrity under perturbation; BMC: High remains an assumption.
• “Learns drift” leaves the sensor’s model/parameter-update versus capability-acquisition meaning unspecified. MP: Medium does not supply that missing account.
• The team’s retrospectives name an activity, not a measured rate of internal-model update. MP: High remains an assumption; E.10.LRN keeps model change and capability acquisition separate.

Key takeaway from grounding: The same ontology works for a thermostat, a predictive controller, a learning System, and a collective System: classification by a local kind and an obtaining assignment are both stated, while scope, situation, Work, evidence, profile, and grade remain separate. An exact ISO claim episteme may be cited in an A.10 evidence-provenance account or a B.3 reliance claim; any direct relation relied on by that account or claim must actually obtain under its own defining rule. Its file carrier merely bears a publication form.

A.13:6 - Conformance Checklist

Apply these normative checks to the corresponding agency, profile or Grade claim in an FPF publication:

A.13:7 - Consequences

A.13:8 - Rationale

The core answers which System qualifies for a local kind and holds its assignment. The profile answers separate questions about that holder’s capabilities. A Grade summarizes the profile for communication; it does not replace the detailed characteristic results needed by an assurance use.

The following research contributions inform different agency questions:

• Levin’s scale-free cognition paper (2019) proposes an account of individuality and goal-directedness while allowing more than one useful agent definition.
• Levin’s TAME proposal (2022) describes a rich space of capacities rather than one privileged scalar of cognition. It motivates distinguishing capabilities instead of treating “agent” as a sufficient comparison.
• Friston et al.’s active-inference account of agency (2013) is a historical anchor concerning prior beliefs about action in an embodied account. That question differs from defining A.13’s five measurement scales or Grade mapping.

A.13:9 - Relations

• Builds on:
  • A.1 Holonic Foundation: Establishes that only U.Systems can be bearers of behavioral roles.
  • A.2 System-Role Kinds and Assignments: Distinguishes an exact local system-role kind, classification by that kind, and an obtaining U.SystemRoleAssignment.
  • A.12 Acting-Side Externalization and Reflexive Split: Identify Who Acts on What: Work by an acting holder is modeled using the acting-side externalization principle.
• Coordinates with:
  • B.2 Meta-Holon Transition (MHT): New supervisory structure together with a documented agency-characteristic threshold crossing prompts the whole-reidentification inquiry. B.2 first tests whether the same whole suffices; only an established transition warrants the MHT declaration.
  • B.3 Trust & Assurance Calculus: A profile can supply evidence-backed characteristic results when a named reliability, safety or other assurance argument uses them. Retain each result’s bearer, scale and basis; the didactic Grade is not the assurance input.
  • D.2 Recognize Ethical Concerns Across Levels and Scopes (Multilevel Ethics): For a multilevel ethical concern, name the local gain, possible loss, affected levels or scopes and next subject question. State responsibility or accountability separately under the rule defining that relation and its participants; use an agency-characteristic input only if that rule calls for it.

A.13:End