why is it difficult to think in a way that sees an event as the result of an agentic assemblage? Is it the structure of our minds, is it something about the language we use to talk about things?

The Chomsky article talks about studies where babies show signs of causal thinking.

John Locke had already reached conclusions rather similar to Hume's. He was exploring the nature of our ideas, and he recognized, I'll quote him, 'that body, as far as we can conceive, is able only to strike and affect body, and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, is able to produce nothing but motion.' These are the basic tenets, of course, of the mechanical philosophy. They yield the conclusion that there can be no interaction without contact, which is our common sense intuition. And modern research in cognitive science has given a lot of, have given pretty much, pretty solid grounds for Locke's reflections on the nature of our ideas. It's revealed that our common-sense understanding of the nature of bodies and their interactions as, no nowadays, we would say, in large part, genetically determined. It's a lot, it's very much as Locke described.

Very young infants can recognize a principle of causality through contact, not in any other way. If they recognize causality, they seek a hidden contact somewhere. And those, in fact, appear to be the limits of our ideas, of our common sense. The occult ideas of the Scholastic's or of Newton, Newtonian attraction, it goes beyond our understanding, and is unintelligible, at least by the criteria of the Scientific Revolution.

How does vibrant matter relate to historical materialism?