Of course, as generally agreed, agency is a convenient intentional stance model. There is no agency in a physical gears-level description of a system.
But this is circular. An abstraction for whom? What even is an abstraction, when you’re in the process of defining an agent? Is there some agent-free definition of an abstraction implicitly being invoked here?
To build it up from the first principles, we must start with a compressible (not fully random) universe, at a minimum, because “embedded agents”, whatever they might turn out to be, are defined by having a somewhat accurate (i.e. lossily compressed) internal model of the world, so some degree of compressibility is required. (Though maybe useful lossy compression of a random stream is a thing, I don’t know.)
Next, one would identify some persistent features of the world that look like they convert free energy into entropy (note that a lot of “natural” systems behave like that, say, stars).
Finally, merging the two, a feature of the world that contains what appears to be a miniature model of the (relevant part of the) world, which also converts energy into entropy to persist the model and “itself” would be sort of close to an “agent”.
There are plenty of holes in this outline, but at least there is no circularity, as far as I can tell.
Since you switched the moderation to “easy-going”...
I have hinted at a definition in an old post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NptifNqFw4wT4MuY8/agency-is-bugs-and-uncertainty. Basically we use agency as a black-box description of something.
Of course, as generally agreed, agency is a convenient intentional stance model. There is no agency in a physical gears-level description of a system.
To build it up from the first principles, we must start with a compressible (not fully random) universe, at a minimum, because “embedded agents”, whatever they might turn out to be, are defined by having a somewhat accurate (i.e. lossily compressed) internal model of the world, so some degree of compressibility is required. (Though maybe useful lossy compression of a random stream is a thing, I don’t know.)
Next, one would identify some persistent features of the world that look like they convert free energy into entropy (note that a lot of “natural” systems behave like that, say, stars).
Finally, merging the two, a feature of the world that contains what appears to be a miniature model of the (relevant part of the) world, which also converts energy into entropy to persist the model and “itself” would be sort of close to an “agent”.
There are plenty of holes in this outline, but at least there is no circularity, as far as I can tell.