Unsaying

The Trouble With Agency

Agency implies an agent that is doing something. If there is no agent, there can be no agency. What lies between chaos and agency?

James M. Corrigan, Ph.D.

26 Aug 2018 — 6 min read

Original art showing THE SELF-OPERATING NAPKIN by Rube Goldberg from the regular series The Inventions of Professor Lucifer G. Butts, A.K. (Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Originally published in Collier’s Weekly, September 26 1931)

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Agency, of course, is the action or intervention of a thing, or person, to produce an effect. But what happens if there is nothing that has an intrinsic self-existence? For some reason, although this is a normal and fairly early meditative insight that comes as a result of a direct meditative experience, it is often overlooked that if there is nothing with an intrinsic self-existence, then there is nothing that can be the cause, or agent, of any change.⁠¹