Autonomous Norm Acceptance

It is generally acknowledged that norms and normative action emphasize autonomy on the side of decision. But what about the autonomous formation of normative goals? This paper is intended to contribute to a theory of how agents form normative beliefs and goals, and to formulate general but non exhaustive principles of norm based autonomous agent-hood – namely goal generation and decision makingupon which to construct software agents. 1 Norms as Inputs to Goals It is generally acknowledged that norms and normative action emphasize autonomy on the side of decision. But what about the autonomous formation of normative goals? In a recent paper (Dignum & Conte 1997), the treatment of goal acquisition in the Agent Theory (AT) literature was found inadequate, some formal rules for goal generation have been proposed, and the role of social inputs in the acquisition of new goals has been emphasized. Here, we intend to continue that work, by including norms among the social inputs to one’s goals, and by extending the goal generation rule to the case of normative goals. The general question then is, how and why do autonomous agents form normative goals? The answer to this question goes back to a former paper by some of the authors (Conte & Castelfranchi 1995), where a typology of reasons for accepting norms has been explored in analogy with goal adoption. Here, however, the formal instruments worked out with regard to the general rules for goal generation will be applied to the special case of normative goals. In the next section we will describe other work related to norms in the multi-agent field. In Section 3 the objectives of this work will be described. In Section 4, the main concepts necessary for the description of norm acceptance will be introduced, and in Section 5 the rules for goal formation will be summarized to serve as a basis for the 100 R. Conte, C. Castelfranchi, and F. Dignum rules for norm acceptance. Finally, in Section 6, we will give a (formal) treatment of norm acceptance in which several aspects of autonomy in norm acceptance will be distinguished and characterized. Section 7 will conclude and indicate areas for further research.