The six capacities of responsible autonomy: naturalizing free will in biological and artificial systems

Abstract The rapid integration of agentic AI is intensifying disputes about artificial autonomy, widening an agency schism between normative frameworks that presuppose agency and a scientific ontology that denies it. This paper proposes a revisionary naturalization: free will designates the control interface that embodied agents evolved to navigate social worlds pervaded by hidden intentional states, not a metaphysical ornament. The antinomy between determinism and libertarian freedom is dissolved by analysing free will from the perspective of control mechanisms. Diagnosing the philosophical record and systems neuroscience, I specify six capacities that naturalize free will as Responsible Autonomy: Active Decoupling, Endogenous Drive, Leeway, Normative Self-Governance, Diachronic Integrity and Experiential Ownership. These are proposed as control constraints on any responsible agent, and hence as design constraints for model construction and as a checklist for evaluating responsible agency in biological and artificial systems. A companion paper maps each capacity to the Distributed Adaptive Control theory of volition and agency, its neurobiological substrates and the Evaluation Suite for Responsible Autonomy (ESRA) test, supplying, in Carnap's terms, the precision and predictive power that complete the explication. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘From being to identity: analysis and synthesis of the self’.