‘I, Max ’ – Communicating with an Artificial Agent

Abstract. With the advent of communicating machines in the form of embodied agents the question gets ever more interesting under which circumstances such systems could be attributed some form of consciousness and self-identity. We might want to ascribe an agent with human appearance and conducting reasonable natural language dialog that it has desires, goals, and intentions. Taking the example of ‘Max’, a humanoid agent embodied in virtual reality, this contribution examines under which circumstances an artificial agent could be said to communicate from the intentional stance. We will link our examination to the question of how such a system could have selfconsciousness and how it is grounded in its (virtual) physis and its social context. We shall discuss how Max could be equipped with the capacity to differentiate between his own and a partner’s mental states and under which conditions Max could reasonably speak of himself as ‘I’