Genetics, cybernetics, and human agency

Cybernetics, the study of goal-directed, adaptive, information processing systems that self-regulate via feedback, can serve as a bridge from genetics to an understanding of human agency that is mechanistic but can also... [ view full abstract ]

Cybernetics, the study of goal-directed, adaptive, information processing systems that self-regulate via feedback, can serve as a bridge from genetics to an understanding of human agency that is mechanistic but can also encompass the phenomenology of free will. In this talk, I lay out an argument for this approach, describe a cybernetic theory of individual differences (DeYoung, 2015), and apply it briefly to understanding mental illness (DeYoung & Krueger, in press). Gray (2004) has argued that cybernetics is necessary for a mechanistic understanding of living things because the laws that govern biological systems are not reducible to the laws of physics. As physical objects, organisms obviously obey the laws of physics, but under physical law any base pair can be adjacent to any other in DNA. Evolutionary theory can describe the historical process that leads to the structure of a particular organism, but cybernetics describes law-like regularities in the structure of all organisms because cybernetic systems are exactly what evolution necessarily produces, as organisms pursue strategies that increase the likelihood of reproduction. A basic tenet of cybernetics is that the concept of “agency” is applicable specifically and exclusively to cybernetic systems. As complex cybernetic systems, human beings are unusual in their ability to adopt an extraordinarily broad range of goals. Most species are genetically constrained to pursue a very particular set of goals relevant to survival and reproduction, whereas human beings, though obviously subject to evolutionary pressures, have evolved capacities for exploration and abstraction that both allow and require us to choose many of our goals, leading to the flexibility of human agency with which philosophers are often concerned. We relate differences in agency across situations and individuals both to the likelihood of the individual’s choosing differently under similar conditions and to the integration of the various goals that the individual pursues. This cybernetic perspective can reconcile and improve on two competing types of account in the philosophical literature on agency, which have been described as “control” theories and “self-expression” theories (Sripada, 2016).

DeYoung, C. G. (2015). Cybernetic Big Five Theory. Journal of Research in Personality, 56, 33–58.

DeYoung, C. G., & Krueger, R. F. (in press). A cybernetic theory of psychopathology. Psychological Inquiry.

Gray, J. A. (2004). Consciousness: Creeping up on the hard problem. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sripada, C. (2016). Self-expression: a deep self theory of moral responsibility. Philosophical Studies, 173:1203–1232.