On the metaphysics of agents

• Authors: Paul Davidsson;Stefan J. Johansson
• Venue: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
• Year: 2005

Agent technology has not been accepted by software developers to the extent and rate anticipated. We believe that the lack of clarity and consistency regarding the terminology and its use may be a contributing cause for this. The dissemination of research results both to industry and related research disciplines becomes difficult. In addition, a typical sign of a mature scientific field is that the interpretation of the central concepts has converged. Although, this process is complicated by the fact that agent researchers constitute a heterogeneous group with different backgrounds, we believe that a common understanding of core concepts is a prerequisite for a broad industrial acceptance. In order to achieve this, we need to study the very nature of agents, or, in other words, the metaphysics of agents. We will in this work: (i) analyze the definitions of agents currently used, (ii) investigate whether these definitions correspond to how the term is actually used by researchers, and (iii) propose an improved definition of agents.