Theory of Functional Agency: Redefining Agency via Operative System Dynamics

This paper redefines the concept of "Agency," long conflated with psychological attributes like "consciousness" or "intention," or specific biological structures, from a functional perspective, formulating a universal axiomatic framework of "Functional Agency." We frame agency not as a static property, but as an "operative process" interacting with the external environment, proposing three axioms (Boundary Maintenance, Internally Initiated Discriminative Connection, and Irreversible State Change) as necessary and sufficient conditions independent of hardware implementation or internal intelligence. By introducing this axiomatic framework, "Functional Agency" is explicitly decoupled from intelligence and communicability. This makes it possible to objectively position the operation itself, which induces irreversible structural updates with the environment, as "agency," even for systems lacking higher-order thinking or means of communication with human observers.