"Intentionality in Autonomous Robots" Roger A.Young
Philosophy Department
University of Dundee (Scotland)



This paper discusses three views on representational states in agents. These views concern representation of an environment.

• On the first view, and the third, learning is of crucial importance. The first view is that of Dretske, particularly in his seminal paper, Misrepresentation (Dretske, 1986). In that paper there is discussion of how a relatively simple non-conceptual associative learner has states to which the representation/misrepresentation distinction may be applied. Dretske's discussion concerns organisms. It can also be applied to artificial learning systems, for example ones based upon genetic algorithms and classifier systems.
• The second view is that of Evans (1984). I am concerned with his so-called Generality Constraint, as a criterion for when an agent has concepts.
• The third is my own view (Young 1993,1994,1996). I develop an account of autonomous agents with concepts of, and intentional states about, their environment An autonomous intentional agent
  • can learn/develop its own autonomous concepts of the world,
  • lacks concepts which others may have acquired,
  • lacks a language of complete description of the world,
  • can learn to extend its language by interaction with others.

It is argued that intentional autonomous agents can be embodied in robots. I compare my view with that of Dretske. I also relate my view to the logic of context. (Giunchiglia and Ghidini 1998)

Bibliography

• Dretske, F. 1986 in Belief: Form, Content and Function ed..Bogdan, R.J., Oxford University Press
• Evans, G, 1982, Varieties of Reference, Oxford University Press
• KR'98 paper by Fausto Giunchigla and Chiara Ghidini
• R.A.Young, 1993, "Learning and Intentionality", Contributions to the International Wittgenstein Symposium
• R.A.Young, 1994a, "Robots and Intentionality", AISB workshop series 1994
• R.A.Young, 1994b, "Mentality of Robots", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
• R.A.Young, 1996, "Embodied agents as interactive agents". AAAI Fall Symposium on Embodiment,

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