Fred L. Dretske, Machines, Plants and Animals: The Origins of Agency, Erkenntnis 51/1, 1999, 20-31.

• Many of our actions are built on - they are modifications of - behaviours that are not actions at all (p. 27).

To be an agent, it is not enough to be a thiker and a doer. The thinking must explain the doing (p. 20).
But what does it mean to be governed by thought? (p. 20)

'Obedient Microphone'-Beispiel:

I say something into a microphone: I say 'vibrate rapidly'. In response to my command the microphone's diaphragm vibrates rapidly. (...) The poor thing cannot tell the difference between being told to virbrate rapidly and being told to be still (p. 20).

Dretske beschreibt eine Pflanze, die auf betsimmte Signale hin 'etwas tut'.

This plant can be 'fooled'. (...) The plant suffers for its mistakes (p. 26).

Bei Tieren jedoch beginnt die Bedeutung, direkter relevant zu werden:

Things that happen to the particular system relating to the success of its behaviour are relevant to its future behaviour (p. 28).
It is the meaning of (...) internal events that explains why these internal events are producing the behaviour. In this sense, then, the behaviour is being governed by meaning (p. 30).