alt Hacker NewsImagine a super-competent Navy SEAL who just sleeps in the barracks unless his commander tells him to do something. Does the Navy SEAL lack agency? As a target of this Navy SEAL, should you be reassured by the fact that they'll be sleeping in the barracks unless their commander tells them to do something?
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embedding-shape • today at 1:29 PM
Imagine a car, that does nothing until a person controls it. If a person uses that car to kill, who is responsible, the person or the car?
Is it really so unbelievable that tools, objects and inanimate things don't have agency? And that they different from a person?
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No, the Navy SEAL does not lack agency in this scenario because they are still a person with individual agency, they can act on their own accord without anyone prompting them to, but in this case their superior instructed them to stay put. He could rebel and go rogue, but that would mean he used his own personal agency to defy orders given to him, which again places responsibility on the actor that actually possesses agency.