Do Robots Act for Reasons?

There are reasons why robots and other machines behave as they do at any given time. Knowledge of how they were programmed, combined with knowledge about the environment in which they behaved will give us their structuring and triggering causes , respectively. Information about each of these is, individually of jointly (depending on our standpoint and interests) crucial to the explanation of their actions.

I have argued elsewhere that reasons why we act should not be conflated with the reasons for which we act, but all I shall presume here is that the latter are at most of the former. If I miss a lecture because I overslept, my failing to wake up is a reason that explains why I didn’t make it on time but it is not a reason for which I missed the lecture, in the sense in which oversleeping might be a consideration I act upon (as in the case where I go to see my GP because I’m constantly oversleeping). Our question, then, is whether robots can act in the light of considerations which they take to favour their course of action viz. agential reasons.

The question is important because if machines are going to make important autonomous decisions for us it is important that these are made for reasons...

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