agent definitions — cognitive science

overview

cognitive-science accounts treat agents as building blocks of cognition: modular processes, intentional planners, or distributed mechanisms that collectively form intelligent behavior. agency becomes a lens on mental architecture, not just overt action.

signature traits

modular societies: minsky’s society of mind frames agents as simple processes whose interactions yield complex cognition.
plan-based control: bratman and related theorists emphasize partial plans and practical reasoning structures.
representational focus: agency is tied to information processing, symbolic manipulation, or distributed representations inside the mind.

illustrative definitions

1986 — marvin minsky, society of mind: intelligence emerges from a “society” of small agents; agency is micro-level processing.
1987 — michael bratman, intention, plans, and practical reason: agency consists of stable, future-directed intentions organizing cognition and action.
later cognitive architectures: bdi (belief-desire-intention) models bridge cognitive science with agent-oriented programming, keeping mentalistic vocabulary.

relation to other dimensions

autonomy spectrum: autonomy is internal—agents manage their own plan hierarchies, emphasizing self-organization over external delegation.
entity frames: begins human-centered but readily generalizes to machine agents by abstracting minds into process societies.
goal dynamics: supports adaptation and limited negotiation among internal sub-agents coordinating plans.
persistence & embodiment: focuses on persistent mental structures rather than physical embodiment; embodiment is optional if representation suffices.

open questions

how do modern neural architectures map onto the “society of mind” metaphor—are attention heads agents?
can we operationalize partial plans and BDI constructs for contemporary llm-based agents without hand-crafted symbols?
what cognitive constraints should we import when designing oversight interfaces for multi-agent llm systems?