Agency is often associated with intelligence, planning, problem-solving, or cognitive sophistication. In APS, however, intelligence is only one specialised expression of agency.
Agency refers to the viability-oriented activity through which living systems sustain the conditions of their own continued persistence. This activity is present wherever living organisation regulates, repairs, adapts, reorganises, and maintains itself relative to viability.
Many forms of biological agency therefore occur without intelligence. Cells regulate internal conditions, tissues coordinate repair, organisms maintain physiological stability, and developmental systems preserve continuity long before cognition, learning, or symbolic representation are involved.
APS consequently treats intelligence as an evolutionary elaboration of agency rather than its defining feature. Intelligence expands the ways in which living systems can sustain viability, but the underlying organisational principle remains the same.
APS Principle: Intelligence is one possible expression of agency. Agency is the broader viability-oriented activity through which living systems sustain organised persistence.