Between Meanings and Senses-Making Spaces: Agency and Ownership Emergence Formalization from Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Position, for an AI-Friendly Model

Abstract

Sense of agency and sense of ownership are considered crucial in autonomous systems. However, drawbacks still exist regarding how to represent their causal origin and internal structure, either in formalized psychological models or in artificial systems. This paper considers that these drawbacks are based on the ontological and epistemological duality in mainstream psychology and AI. By shedding light on the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and dialectical logic, and by building on and extending related work, this paper attempts to investigate how the noted duality affects investigating the self and “I”. And by differentiating between the space of meanings and the sense-making space, the paper introduces CHAT’s position of the causal emergence of agency and ownership by stressing the twofold transition theory being central to CHAT. Furthermore, a qualitative formalized model is introduced to represent the emergence of agency and ownership through the emergence of the contradictions-based meaning with potential employment in AI.