**Agency as Ontological Primitive:** Agency (the capacity for causal initiation based on internal states) is irreducible to mechanism. Consciousness without agency is epiphenomenal; agency without consciousness is impossible. The triad Information-Coherence-Consciousness necessarily implies Agency as the fourth primitive.
Compatibilism redefines agency to fit determinism, emptying it of content. If my desires are determined by prior causes, and I "act on my desires," the action was determined before I existed. This is semantic sleight-of-hand, not agency. True agency requires that the agent be a genuine cause, not merely a node in a causal chain. The chi-field formulation preserves this: the agent's \Phi actively shapes the probability distribution over future states, not merely transmits prior states.
This presents a false dichotomy. Agency is neither deterministic nor random - it is teleological. The agent evaluates states according to an internal value function V(x) and acts to maximize coherence with preferred configurations. Quantum indeterminacy provides the "openness" for genuine choice; the agent's \Phi-structure provides the directedness. Random noise has no preference structure; agency does. The collapse direction is not random - it is guided by the agent's evaluation.
Libet's interpretation is contested. The "readiness potential" may represent preparation for potential action, not the decision itself. More importantly, subjects in Libet experiments can veto the action after the readiness potential - the conscious veto is the agency, not the preparation. Recent research (Schurger et al., 2012) suggests the readiness potential is neural noise crossing a threshold, not a deterministic signal. The decision emerges from the conscious evaluation of whether to act on the preparation.
If agency is an illusion, then the evolutionary theory explaining the illusion is also the product of an illusion of rational evaluation. This is self-undermining. Moreover, evolution requires differential reproductive success, which requires organisms that do things differently in relevantly similar circumstances - this is agency. Natural selection presupposes agency; it cannot explain it away.
Panpsychism posits degrees of consciousness (\Phi varies). Proto-consciousness in electrons (\Phi \approx 0) corresponds to proto-agency (minimal capacity for state-selection). Full agency requires high \Phi, which requires complex integrated information processing. An electron has near-zero agency because it has near-zero \Phi. The correlation holds: agency scales with consciousness.
The Measurement Problem as Agency Problem:
Standard quantum mechanics describes unitary evolution (Schrodinger equation) until measurement, then non-unitary collapse (projection postulate). What triggers collapse? The Theophysics answer: an observer with sufficient \Phi (consciousness) exercises agency in measurement.
Wigner's Friend and Agent Selection:
In the Wigner's friend scenario, two observers (Wigner and friend) have different descriptions of the system. Who "collapses" the wavefunction? The agent with highest \Phi in causal contact. Agency resolves the measurement problem by specifying who has the authority to collapse.
Modified Born Rule with Agency:
P(a_i | \mathcal{A}) = |\langle a_i | \psi \rangle|^2 \cdot W(\mathcal{A}, a_i)
Where W(\mathcal{A}, a_i) is the agency weighting factor - the probability is modulated by the agent's preference structure over outcomes. This is not observer-dependent reality (solipsism) but agent-dependent collapse direction.
The Category of Agents:
Define Agent as a category where:
(\Phi, V, \Omega) where \Phi is integrated information, V is value function, \Omega is accessible state spaced: (\Phi_1, V_1, \Omega_1) \to (\Phi_2, V_2, \Omega_2)Functor to Physical States:
There exists a forgetful functor U: \textbf{Agent} \to \textbf{Phys} that maps agent states to physical states but is not an equivalence (information is lost - the agency structure is not recoverable from physics alone).
Adjunction:
\textbf{Phys}(U(A), P) \cong \textbf{Agent}(A, F(P))
where F is the "free agent" functor. Not every physical system admits a free agent structure (most don't) - this captures why agency is special.