Organismic Agency as the Principle of Individual Selection

Abstract This article introduces organismic agency as the principle of individual selection. Individual selection involves the organism itself selecting a behavior or development according to individual preference metrics. It is the explanatory counterpart to natural selection, and both compete to explain phenomena of goal-directedness. This conceptualization allows agency’s underlying causal mechanism and explanatory function to be clarified. It also points to an operationalization strategy where agency is inferred when evidence suggests that natural selection cannot explain observations of organisms preferentially engaging in particular patterns of development or behavior.