Not sure if this is the same thing you’re pointing at, but there’s a cybernetics/predictive processing view that pictures humans (and other agenty things) as being made up of a bunch of feedback control systems layered on top of each other. I imagine a theory of embedded agency which would be able to talk about each of those little feedback controls as an “agent” in itself: it takes in data, chews on it, and outputs decisions to achieve some goal.
Another piece which may relate to what you’re pointing at: I expect the “boundary” of an agent to be fuzzy on the “inputs” side, and less fuzzy but still flexible on the “outputs” side. On the inputs side, there’s a whole chain of cause-and-effect which feeds data into my brain, and there’s some freedom in whether to consider “me” to begin at e.g. the eye, or the photoreceptor, or the optic nerve, or… On the outputs side, there’s a clearer criterion for what’s “me”: it’s whatever things I’m “choosing” when I optimize, i.e. anything I assume I control for planning purposes. That’s a sharper criterion, but it still leaves a lot of flexibility—e.g. I can consider my car a part of “me” while I’m driving it. Point is, when I say “draw a box”, I do imagine having some freedom in where the boundary goes—the boundary is just there to help point out roughly which part of the universe we’re talking about.
Not sure if this is the same thing you’re pointing at, but there’s a cybernetics/predictive processing view that pictures humans (and other agenty things) as being made up of a bunch of feedback control systems layered on top of each other. I imagine a theory of embedded agency which would be able to talk about each of those little feedback controls as an “agent” in itself: it takes in data, chews on it, and outputs decisions to achieve some goal.
Another piece which may relate to what you’re pointing at: I expect the “boundary” of an agent to be fuzzy on the “inputs” side, and less fuzzy but still flexible on the “outputs” side. On the inputs side, there’s a whole chain of cause-and-effect which feeds data into my brain, and there’s some freedom in whether to consider “me” to begin at e.g. the eye, or the photoreceptor, or the optic nerve, or… On the outputs side, there’s a clearer criterion for what’s “me”: it’s whatever things I’m “choosing” when I optimize, i.e. anything I assume I control for planning purposes. That’s a sharper criterion, but it still leaves a lot of flexibility—e.g. I can consider my car a part of “me” while I’m driving it. Point is, when I say “draw a box”, I do imagine having some freedom in where the boundary goes—the boundary is just there to help point out roughly which part of the universe we’re talking about.