Would it perhaps be helpful to think of agent-like behavior as that which takes abstractions as inputs, rather than only raw physical inputs? e.g. an inanimate object such as a rock only interacts with the world on the level of matter, not on the level of abstraction. A rock is affected by wind currents according to the same laws, regardless of the type of wind (breeze, tornado, hurricane), while an agent may take different actions or assume different states dependent on the abstractions the wind has been reduced to in its world model.
Would it perhaps be helpful to think of agent-like behavior as that which takes abstractions as inputs, rather than only raw physical inputs? e.g. an inanimate object such as a rock only interacts with the world on the level of matter, not on the level of abstraction. A rock is affected by wind currents according to the same laws, regardless of the type of wind (breeze, tornado, hurricane), while an agent may take different actions or assume different states dependent on the abstractions the wind has been reduced to in its world model.