Already within the situation
A conversation has begun before we decide what to say. Language, previous encounters, the room, a deadline and each person’s position are already shaping it. Solitude has conditions too: a body, objects, memory, learned skills and an anticipated future.
The Foundation calls this inevitable inclusion co-being. Participation makes a stronger claim: what is happening is available to perception and discernment, and the person has some capacity to influence its continuation. Autonomy takes shape within these conditions.
Presence and agency
Presence names the degree to which the situation is accessible for participation. Agency names the capacity to participate in changing it with the possibility of self-determination.
The distinction matters. Someone may notice a problem clearly and lack the resources to change it. Someone may have considerable influence while barely attending to what their action is doing. Neither a subjective sense of clarity nor the scale of an intervention settles the question of agency.
Presence and agency are interconnected aspects of participation. They are not two compulsory stages through which every action must pass.
Embodiment is a condition
Every human action is bodily, including writing, calculating and working with AI. Embodiment is always present. Different bodily configurations make different fields of action available.
Attention need not be confined to sensations inside the skin. It can extend to a partner, a tool, a changing room or the consequences of a decision. Bodily sensation contributes information; it can also be misread or carry habits formed elsewhere. AESTHESYS brings sensation into relation with knowledge, action and reflection.
Agency and control
Control is one mode of agency. It is useful when a result can be specified and its achievement organised. Other situations call for improvisation or receptivity: a direction can emerge through response to what is happening.
The question is therefore where, when and to what extent one’s own move is possible. A well-placed intervention may be forceful. It may also involve waiting, changing distance or refraining from adding something. Restraint counts as a move only insofar as it remains responsive and open to revision. Outward stillness alone tells us very little.
An option and an available move
An option can be imagined. A move must be available to this participant in this situation. Time, bodily possibilities, money, power, relationships and the actions of others can separate the two.
Suppose a conversation has become unacceptable. Changing one’s own participation, proposing a different interaction and leaving are distinct possibilities. Their practical availability and cost can differ greatly between participants. The example illustrates a distinction; it is not a promise that every person can simply choose to leave.
The other and the possibility of change
The Foundation uses the other for what does not fit an established way of participating. This may be another person, an unfamiliar material, fatigue, an unexpected result or an idea that resists a ready answer.
A mismatch can make a familiar response available for reconsideration. Change is possible; improvement is not guaranteed. What has been discerned still has to be weighed, and the criteria of significance may themselves change.
With another person there is a further limit: their experience is not directly available to us. Sensitivity does not remove the need for communication, consent and the possibility of correction.