In the last post we began looking at agency through the lens of evolutionary anthropology, following Michael Tomasello’s book The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans. We saw that agency, as a specific form of behavioral organization, is not unique to humans but is present to varying degrees in animals such as reptiles, mammals, and great apes. Human agency builds on the agency of our distant evolutionary forebears, from goal-directed to intentional to rational to socially normative. This evolutionary trajectory has led us to our modern human sense of morality, through which we cooperate effectively with other humans at the level of pairs, families, and larger groups (up through complex modern societies).
In today’s post, we’re returning to some of the questions we asked at the beginning of Part I: how much agency do we as individuals have in our own lives? Are we free to make our own choices, or are we at the mercy of external forces? Obviously this is an extremely complex topic, and there’s only so much we can do in one Substack post. But let’s do as much as we can.
Characteristics of Agency
First, let’s revisit Tomasello’s theory of agency, which we explored in-depth last week. We’ve already looked at how he characterizes four types of agency, from less complex goal-directed agents (lizards) to more complex socially-normative agents (humans). Before proceeding on our journey toward Stoic agency, let’s just step back for a moment and think about some features of agency as a general property of certain organisms.
Biological Constraints on Agency. Even animals with a high degree of agency don’t have outright “free will” the sense of being completely unconstrained. As humans, we have both physical and social constraints; we’re not free in the sense of being able to do whatever we want whenever we want it. But within the limits provided by our bodies, physical environment, and social environment, we have a significant capacity for making choices. That’s why I prefer to talk about agency rather than free will. I find it more productive to think about agency as an observable property of many different organisms, one which becomes more profound as the animal’s cognitive abilities increase.
Cross-species Comparison. Framing agency as a biologically-determined ability helps us to see it not as an exotic, unique property of humans but as a characteristic that we simply have more of than other creatures. If we follow Tomasello’s theory, then we can say that agency is just an evolutionarily useful pattern of behavioral organization that is present in many animals. Humans do have a much more complex form of agency than any other animal. But it’s simply a more complex expression of a basic biological pattern. Just as our higher-level language skills evolved from simpler communication skills in apes, our complex type of socially normative agency evolved from apes’ simpler “rational” agency.
The Function of Agency. Thinking about why agency may have evolved is useful in thinking about what we do with it. Recall from the previous post that agency probably developed in unpredictable environments where it was adaptive for an organism to respond to its specific context. It’s the combination of what Tomasello calls “deterministic and spontaneous elements” that works so well:
Because it cannot predict the particularities of the future situations that an individual might encounter, Nature has constructed an underlying psychological organization of agency enabling the individual to make its own decisions and self-regulate its own actions in pursuit of goals that, ultimately, Nature has built in. The concept of agency thus involves both deterministic and spontaneous elements. An organism’s capacities for acting agentively come into existence phylogenetically through processes of evolution by means of natural selection and ontogenetically through processes of (epi)genetic expression; they are thereby, in an important sense, determined. But these capacities must still be exercised in the moment, and for that we need a psychological agent whose defining feature is the making of spontaneous and independent behavioral choices. Nature may determine my capacities for using a language, but it does not determine what I say.
p. 134
There are very clear evolutionary advantages for an animal that is able to exercise agency in an unpredictable environment: its biologically-determined needs are met through flexible, context-responsive behaviors. This organization of behavior was so successful in the mammalian creatures from whom we descend that it was kept and added onto with every successive evolutionary step toward modern humans.
The result is that humans have quite a lot of agency in our own lives. We are capable of reflecting on our own actions, evaluating the impact of our behavior on our environment (including our social environment), and choosing how to respond. As individuals we are obviously strongly influenced by our biologically determined predispositions and our social environment. But we are not compelled to act in a certain way by these influences. Consider this distinction provided by Tomasello:
An organism may have a genetically wired preference for sugary foods, but from the point of view of agency, the issue is whether this preference compels the organism to consume every sugary food it encounters, or whether this preference is merely one factor among several in the organism’s individual decision of what to eat.
p. 3
Humans also have a hardwired preference for sugary foods, but we are not compelled to consume every sugary food we encounter (like some simpler organisms). We consider many other factors, such as whether our bodies really need that chocolate doughnut or whether it’s socially acceptable to have another slice of cake. Social and genetic influences have a bearing on our choice, but the fact remains that we can still say no to the sugary food.
Agency in Stoicism
Of course, this is what the Stoics have been saying all along. We don’t get to pick the constraints imposed on us by our environment, but within these constraints, we have a choice about how to respond. As Epictetus famously said, “You can chain my leg, but not even Zeus can overcome my power of choice” (Discourses, 1.1, 23). Epictetus attributed this gift to Zeus, while today we attribute it to “processes of evolution by means of natural selection.” Nevertheless, we can still say that this type of agency simply is a property of humans, like our human ability to walk and talk. We can take it for granted that in the case of adult humans in command of all their faculties, we always have the capacity to reflect and decide.
Our starting point for discussing Stoicism and agency, therefore, is that humans have a certain type of agency that allows us to make choices within pre-existing constraints. These constraints include the type of character we have at this moment, which is the product of many previous choices that have led us to act in certain ways and develop certain mental and emotional habits. So not only are we constrained by our physical bodies, physical environment, and social environment, we’re also constrained by all of those things in our past (including how we were raised, who our friends were, what culture(s) we’re part of, and so many other things). And those things are all the product of previous versions of those things, etc.
You might think, given so many constraints on our lives, that our choices are already made for us. For example, if we want to avoid eating sugary foods, our likelihood of doing so would depend on some combination of environment (how available sugary foods are), genes (our genetic predisposition toward impulsiveness), and upbringing (the eating habits we learned throughout our early life). On this view, we would have no say in the matter of whether we actually eat a sugary food; it would depend entirely on those external factors.
But as we’ve seen previously, that’s not how humans actually function. We certainly have constraints, but we have a genuine choice in what we do at any given moment. We have the power of reflection and decision. If I have a proclivity for eating sugary foods, I might at some point realize that I feel physically bad after eating too much sugar. This would give me a reason to say no to sugary foods in the future. Maybe I never said no to sugary foods in the past, but now I have a new reason, which I factor into my future decisions. (This is actually a true story—when I was in my 20s I realized that I felt physically sick after eating sweets, so now I eat dessert much more sparingly.)
The key lies in our beliefs about what is good for us. Where does our benefit lie? If we have certain bad habits, but we see no real reason to change them, then we won’t change. If we’re not completely convinced that eating sugar—or smoking, or staying online too much, or sleeping past our alarm, or anything else—is bad for us, then we won’t change our behavior. It takes a genuine belief that changing our habit will benefit us. As Epictetus put it:
For as a general rule—and one should have no illusions on the matter—there is nothing that a living creature is more strongly attached to than its own benefit…For there is nothing that he loves so much by nature as his own benefit; for him this is father, and brother, and family, and country, and god.
Discourses, 2.22, 15-16
What’s hard to wrap our minds around is the relationship between our individual choices and our character. If my character is the product of my social environment and my genetic predispositions, what power do I have to change it?
Agency and Our Capacity to Change
Here’s where it’s helpful to return to Tomasello’s theory agency. Remember, agency is “feedback control organization in which the individual directs its behavior toward goals—many or most of which are biologically evolved—controlling or even self-regulating the process through informed decision-making and behavioral self-monitoring” (p. 20). If I make a decision today, I can see what the impact is on myself and my environment, and I can choose to make a different decision tomorrow. If I continue making a different decision the day after tomorrow and the next day and the next day, I’m on my way to changing my character.
In other words, I may not be able to make a decision today that will result immediately in a change of character. But I can make a decision today that will change the initial conditions for my decision tomorrow. That decision, in turn, will change the initial conditions for my decision the next day. So I am making a series of individual decisions, based on the circumstances in which I find myself at that time. I can’t go from zero to Zeno in one day, but I can go from zero to one. Tomorrow, I can decide to go from one to two.
When we look at agency as a series of moment-by-moment decisions, we can see that humans are quite capable of making new choices as a response to different initial conditions. A simplified version of this is when a squirrel decides to change its typical path to an acorn because a predator is in the way. Perhaps the squirrel usually goes one way, but today, because initial conditions are different, the squirrel takes a roundabout way. Or perhaps it doesn’t go after the acorn today at all, deciding instead to eat some seeds nearby. The squirrel is using its agency to respond to a different condition in its environment.
Humans, with our much greater social and cognitive complexity, also choose how to respond to different input and conditions in our environment. Yesterday I had no reason to avoid sugar; today I have a reason to do so. If I continue making the choice to avoid sugar, I will become a healthier person. My entire physical health changes because I’m able to respond to a new condition in my environment (my new awareness that sugar is bad for me).
We can change aspects of our mental health in a similar way. Epictetus notes a related strategy for changing our emotional habits:
If you don’t want to be bad-tempered, then don’t feed the habit, throw nothing before it on which it can feed and grow. First of all, keep calm, and count the days on which you haven’t lost your temper—“I used to lose my temper every day, and after that every other day, then every third day, then every fourth”—and if you continue in that way for thirty days, offer a sacrifice to God. For the habit is first weakened, and then completely destroyed.
Discourses, 2.18, 12-13
Today, my character might be such that I get angry very easily. Given my human capacity for reflection, I might realize that this is causing problems in my life, and I need to change. I can’t simply tell myself to never get angry again. My agency has constraints, in this case my pre-existing habit of getting angry. I have to work within this constraint. If I try to go cold turkey, I will probably fail and get frustrated and give up, thinking I’m a hopeless case. So I use my reasoning ability to consider my options and look for support, like a book on Stoicism, a good role model, or anger management therapy. It’s not cheating to get help—in fact, it’s the smartest thing to do.
The ancient Stoics recommended getting help with our character whenever possible. (The sage may not need help, but the rest of us do.) They recognized the power of social influences—as we saw in the previous post, humans tend to align ourselves with the values of the people around us. So they encouraged prokoptons to spend time with people and things that would make them better: mentors, good books, philosophical lectures, wise friends. They encouraged learners to set themselves up for success, not failure. That’s why Epictetus advised his students, “To begin with, keep well away from what is stronger than you” (Discourses, 3.12, 12) and recommended that they stay away from gladiatorial games and friends with bad habits. And Seneca says,
If a person waits for the time when he knows by himself the best thing to do, he will go wrong in the meanwhile and as a result will be prevented from reaching the stage where self-sufficiency is possible. Therefore he needs to be governed until he becomes capable of governing himself.
Letters on Ethics, 94.51
It seems to me that a lot of people believe Stoic agency is about never relying on anyone or anything else else—that you have to solve all your problems on your own. I don’t think this is true. I think we use our agency to rely on the resources and people around us in an appropriate way. We all need help in shaping our character, and it’s up to us to look for support, to take steps toward change. We can’t expect to reform long-standing mental and emotional habits overnight and all alone. Often the best choice is to find people and activities that will strengthen us in our efforts to change.
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot of ground in these two posts on agency, so I just want to quickly sum up a few important points from today:
Humans are highly constrained by our biology and environment, but we have a significant amount of agency within these constraints. We are influenced by and responsive to social and genetic influences, but we are not biologically compelled to act in a certain way.
We exercise our agency in the present moment, which means we can decide at any moment to alter what we are doing. A change at one time leads to different initial conditions when we make our next decision.
Upon realizing that there’s a problem in our lives, we can seek out a different environment and different social influences to help us improve our mental and emotional patterns. We use our agency to interact wisely with the resources and people in our lives.
While we can’t control the emotional patterns, values, or mental habits that were established earlier in our lives, we can seize hold of our ability to make decisions in the present moment. Often we are not capable of making radical changes to our character overnight (given the constrains of our existing character). But we can decide at this moment that we don’t like the way our lives are going, and we need to figure out a different way of doing things. We can choose to find a therapist, to enroll in a course, to read a book, to end or begin a relationship. We simply have to remember that we exercise our agency as a chain of related choices. The choice you make at one moment leads to the next choice which leads to the next. Change is certainly possible, but sometimes it just happens one decision at a time.
Good read! Although it does seem to me that all of our decisions would ultimately be determined by different factors. Like sure it’s more complex than sugar is good therefore I eat sugar, but even if it’s a complex causal web involving social factors, health, desires to look good, etc. that doesn’t mean it isn’t ultimately determined by those factors. My “choice” is just the combination of all those factors.
Thank you for your generosity in taking the time to explain a sensible pathway to better character. Very much appreciated.