Physical objects are defined by their physicality; people/persons - by their agency.

The natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology etc.) establish and explore the constitution and behavior of the physical world. Hence, when we invoke the term 'physical object', we mean precisely that which these sciences define and investigate. The study is the definition.

The study of agency, however, lacks this congruence.

While disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other cognitive sciencesexplore the manifestations of agency, they do not engage with its constitution in the way the natural sciences engage with the physical world.

These fields focus on the observable consequences (behaviour, neurological mechanisms, reports about cognitive states and processes, which are themselves metaphors) but do not address the "fabric" of the mind (of subjectivity itself).

Therefore, when we use the term 'agent', we refer to something distinct from the observable phenomena that theses cognitive disciplines investigate.

Philosophy purports to fill that alleged gap. It sees the fabric of the mind (of what it is to be like something) as its holy grail and seeks to probe it like the natural sciences explore the observable universe. Based on what?

We proceed.