The contradictory character of the type of causation instruments embody—the fact of realizing the end of the principal agent while acting as a secondary agent which obeys its internal mechanical functioning—was hence first conceived and explained in the context of arguing for ministers as animate instruments in the ritual of administering the sacraments
In contrast, for Aquinas, the minister was distinct from God and an instrument for the administration of sacraments. Accordingly, the understanding of modern technology as instruments that are separable and distinct from humans and designed for their use continues to carry the sign of the intrinsic contradiction of animate instrument. From this perspective, symbolic AI can be understood as a paradigmatic example of absolute instrumentality where the will of God as the principal agent who commands the minister as a human instrument has been incorporated in the technology itself. Early forms of AI and technology per se owe themselves to the separation between instrument and user inaugurated by the notion of causa instrumentalis in the 12th century.
For this reason, Agamben insists that “mastery preserves and exercises in action not its potential to play but its potential not to play.”27 Thus, human action cannot be understood as a simple transition from potentiality to action. Instead, as exemplified by masters of an art, action is exercised by acknowledging and suspending one’s potentiality to act during action, by resisting the ever-present potential to do.
Mastery includes the capacity for refusal — the decision not to build something is itself an exercise of skill. Being judicious about what to realize, rather than responding to every demand or request, is a form of creative discipline that parallels Agamben’s “potential not to play.”
