Anticipatory agency and the ecology of causal bubbles: a pragmatic constructivist framework for human-AI collaboration

Abstract

This paper develops a pragmatic constructivist framework for understanding human-AI collaboration by synthesizing Michel Callon’s economic sociology of market agencements with Robert Rosen’s anticipatory systems theory. Key terms are used as follows: ‘Causal bubbles’ are defined as maintained zones of operational regularity in which anticipatory coordination is viable. ‘Anticipatory agency’ refers to the capacity to act based on internal models of projected futures rather than just reacting to present stimuli. ‘Agencement’ describes the assemblage of human and nonhuman elements that together enable agency. Rather than making ontological claims about agency or causation, the framework proposes ‘causal bubbles’ as a vocabulary for describing maintained zones of operational regularity within which anticipatory coordination becomes viable. The synthesis addresses conceptual impasses in AI responsibility discourse by shifting from questions of blame attribution to questions of systemic maintenance. Drawing on Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if,’ I argue that ethical evaluation of human-AI configurations should focus not on metaphysical questions of intelligence or consciousness, but on whether such configurations preserve or degrade the conditions for effective coordinated action across cognitive, social, and ecological scales. The framework offers heuristic indicators for assessing ‘bubble health,’ a three-phase repair cycle for restoring degraded configurations, and applications to pedagogy, research integrity, and governance. Throughout, the paper maintains epistemological modesty: the constructs offered are pragmatic tools for coordination and intervention, not truth claims about underlying mechanisms.