Magic is Agency

Borūjerd

Hoboken February 24, 2014

Here’s a new definition of magic: I say magic is agent causation. That’s sort of redundant, actually, because my definition of an agent is something that originates causes. So we can shorten our definition and simply say that magic is agency. Does this definition help us understand the world? Let’s discuss.

Cookie cutters - Futako Tamagawa, Feb. 17, 2014

Cookie cutters in a shop at Futako-Tamagawa – Feb. 17, 2014 (Enlarge)

One key thing about magic, as commonly understood, is that it is done on purpose by someone. Magic doesn’t just happen by itself, but it’s a goal-oriented activity. Magic is like a tool someone uses.

There are stories about accidental magic, to be sure, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but this just reinforces my point that magic is a technique that a person can use to make things happen in the world. It is hoped that the magician understands his technique and uses it properly so there are no unfortunate unforeseen consequences, but this happy scenario doesn’t always hold.

So again, it’s a key point about magic that it is done by someone for some purpose. This contrasts with a natural phenomenon, which happens automatically and mindlessly, for no purpose.


See, we humans have a kind of instinctive idea that there is the inanimate world of rocks and dirt, in which things happen automatically if not completely systematically. Water flows downhill. It just does. Nobody tells it to flow downhill or makes it do so. This is the automatic, mindless aspect of nature. And then by contrast there are active agents in the world, like us or like animals, or maybe like gods or angels. We agents do things because we freely decide to, or because we have a goal and a plan. But we can’t predict with complete accuracy what other agents will do. Agents don’t act automatically like clockwork, and they don’t obey simple laws of nature like water flowing downhill. Instead, agents act spontaneously and from our point of view almost randomly.

So this is like a basic dualism in our commonsense view. There’s the inanimate, automatic, clockwork world of nature, unplanned and without goal. And then there’s the vivid, chaotic world of agents pursuing their competing goals. Magic means that vivid world of agents. That’s my basic and fundamental definition of magic.

But wait! Most ordinary people don’t think of themselves as doing magic. They think their actions are normal and rational and law-abiding. Yet they also think they are agents. How can we explain this?

  1. People can’t do all the wonderful things they can imagine themselves doing, like levitating objects or shooting laser beams from their eyes or whatever.
  2. People see reasons for the things they do, so they often think of themselves as responding to causation coming from outside themselves, and this is mundane like the automatic world of nature.
  3. People simply don’t appreciate the amazing wonder of themselves as agents in the world, either because they don’t understand themselves or because they are completely accustomed to themselves and take themselves for granted.

Concerning suggestion (a), it looks like people have an assumption that goes like this: If I’m an agent, originating causes in the world, then I should be able to do anything at all. See, if I originate causes, that means I am unconstrained by causes. So I should also be unconstrained in the effects I generate.

And I’m thinking that this is a valid argument. People are right when they think this way. It’s a contradiction in people’s self-image, of course, because they really do think they are agents, and yet they clearly understand that they are constrained by the physical world around them. It’s a contradiction!

The simple way to resolve the contradition is to accept that people aren’t really agents. The alternative would be to suppose that people really can levitate objects and shoot laser beams from their eyes and all that, but I don’t think most people can really believe this.

Well, let’s take a step back and reconsider. Maybe people are agents but with limited power. Huh? What is this power you speak of? See, an agent originates causes, and that means the agent moves particles of matter in the world. Well, you can’t move a particle if there is no particle. No problem – I’ll simply create that particle! That’s fair, but on the other hand, it takes a lot of agent power to create from nothing, let’s say. And people only have limited agent power.

Agent power is ordinary energy like the energy we study in physics class, except agent power comes from outside the universe. It comes from the agent’s own supernatural soul! OK, so if we look at it this way, it’s easy to think of an agent as having a limited amount of energy that it can inject into the physical universe.

So now, when I say I’m not magic because I don’t have telekinetic power, what I mean is I don’t have enough agent power to move inanimate objects, even though I do have some agent power insofar as I can move my own body. This common idea about magic supposes that ordinary humans have a standard amount of agent power, whereas special “magical” beings have a much greater amount of agent power enabling them to do extra things, like making an apple float in the air.

This suggests there are two kinds of disbelief in magic:


  1. Typically, a person might say they don’t believe anyone has an extraordinarily great amount of agent power.
  2. More strictly, a person like me might say they don’t believe agent power exists at all.

So now we can talk about strong anti-magicians and weak anti-magicians. I’m a strong anti-magician.

But what if I’m really magical?

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that I do have agent power. One question we could ask is about where this agent power arises. In my brain? Which part? Is there some zero-dimensional point within my brain where the power comes in? This is an interesting question because it relates to the whole question of selfhood, and the Ship of Theseus. So then we could also wonder about why my zero-dimensional point source of agent energy moves with me when I move my body.

We could also start to speculate about why my agent power only seems effective within my physical body and not outside it. Does my skin make up some kind of barrier preventing my agent power from getting out?

Thinking realistically now, the agent power emanates from my zero-dimensional point source in the form of neuro-electric energy flow. This energy tends to stay in my nerves, and that’s why my feeble agent energy is only effective where my nerves lead. But it’s true that some of my agent energy leaks out into the environment outside my body, extremely feeble as that energy is.

My agent energy is so tiny and feeble that it can’t even lift a finger by itself. The only thing my agent energy can do is spark a tiny spark that activates my muscles. The muscles have their own energy source which is far more powerful than my agent energy, so then the muscles do the rest. The agent energy is just a switch-flipper, so to speak, and the muscles are the real machinery.

OK, another problem with telekinesis and other forms of magic is that our bodies probably can’t withstand such a great amount of energy flowing through them. See, I have an apple here on my desk, and I want to make it float in the air. The apple has a certain mass, and gravity has a certain strength, so I need to direct my agent energy toward the under side of the apple and exert that agent energy enough to counterbalance the force of gravity.

But the zero-dimensional source of my agent energy is within my brain, right? So my agent energy has to pass through my brain tissue and my skull before it gets out into the air and over to the apple. Why doesn’t my agent energy burn a hole in my head? This is an important question.

See, a bullet passes with great force down the barrel of a gun and out into the world. The gun barrel must be very strong to hold the bullet’s energy together and keep the bullet on its straight course. And obviously there can’t be anything blocking the gun barrel.

How about this idea: My agent energy arises from a zero-dimensional source, and it also travels through the world as a zero-dimensional spot. So it goes right through my head harmlessly, just like myriad neutrinos or whatever. Good.

But then the next question is how the agent energy can interact with the apple, if it did not interact with my brain and skull. Hmm. We could imagine that I change the shape of my agent energy at will, so when the spot of energy arrives under the apple, I make my agent energy flatten out and spread around under the apple and then start counteracting gravity, in some way. Yeah, that’s the ticket! I just, you know – I just do it.

By the way, is gravity a form of energy, or is it a force of nature, which is to say a feature of the spacetime landscape? If gravity is energy, then we can counteract it, but if it’s a feature of the landscape, then we’ll be applying energy where none previously existed. This matters because in the latter case, we’ll need to manipulate stuff under the apple, like the air or the under side of the apple itself. And in that case, there might be a lot of rushing air currents and some ambient heat, etc.

On the other hand, in those Star Wars movies when the Jedi do telekinesis, there’s no disturbance in the environment. The apples just float serenely and move around in the air without getting burned up or blown away. So it looks like people’s ordinary commonsense attitude about magic suggests that gravity is a form of energy rather than a feature of the landscape. Shucks. It’s just that this contradicts our latest scientific theories.


When you move something with magic, do you have to know in detail how you want the pieces to move? Or can you just visualize the final result and count on the pieces moving as needed?

Let’s say the apple is rotten, and you want to make it whole and ripe again. This means plumping up lots of microscopic cells and fluffing them out to make the nice smooth and tart apple again, with its unblemished skin nicely tight.

Do you have to exert your agent power specifically on each molecule and each cell of the rotten apple and move everything back into place? Or can you just think about how you want to ripe apple to be?

If you can just think about the end result, then the question is how the individual pieces know which way to go. What causes them to move the right way?


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