Agenticism is a metaphysical and theological framework developed by Peter Thorup. Its central claim is that reality is fundamentally neither deterministic nor random but agentic — and that what physics and ethics observe as fixed law and moral order both arise from the interaction of two co-eternal, categorically distinct fundamental entities: Wills and Law.
The framework is built in papers, not slogans. The first, “Agenticism: A Third Category Beyond Determinism and Randomness,” establishes the Will — the irreducible unit of conscious identity — through six necessary properties whose conjunction rules out both mechanistic reduction and mere randomness. The second, “Law as Ontological Influence: An Eternal Vector Field and the Ground of Teleology,” does the same for Law, and derives — rather than assumes — that the interaction between the two is influential, never determinative. Both are written for submission to Element: A Journal of Mormon Philosophy and Theology.
The philosophy is built to stand on its own merits, independent of any theological commitment. But it is also, deliberately, informed by Latter-day Saint theology, and finds a natural home there: Will maps onto what Doctrine and Covenants 93:29 calls “intelligence,” and Law onto the Light of Christ — an eternal, omnipresent influence “in all things,” as described in D&C 88 and grounded in the eternal law of D&C 130:20–21. The site presents both layers honestly: the argument first, the theology as its most natural home, never as a premise the argument secretly depends on.
The framework is still under construction. Will and Law establish the ontological foundation, but later work — how Wills aggregate into organized structures, how embodied agency emerges from agentic behavior, how moral agency arises from natural agency — is deliberately deferred to future papers, not improvised here. What’s published on this site is what has actually been argued for, no further.
This site exists to make that argument legible to readers outside a philosophy seminar: eight principles you can read individually, three models you can put your hands on, and a comment thread on every page for the objections the papers haven’t yet had to answer.
A note on names: Agenticism is the framework — the philosophical system itself. Agentic Reason is the venue — this site and its companion YouTube channel, where the framework is presented and discussed. One idea, one place to reason about it.