Frank Esken

In this paper, we argue that there is no evidence in sight warranting the conclusion that robots are social agents in some strong sense that requires an understanding of social norms. In support of this skepticism, we first consider an argument to the effect that a basic sensitivity to norms requires no mindreading abilities and may therefore also be found in non-human animals. In rebutting this view, we rely on arguments based on Searle’s theory of institutional facts and Tomasello’s theory of collective intentionality. We, then, extend these arguments to the case of robots and argue that robots’ social behaviour does not reach the level at which an understanding of norms becomes crucial.

In this paper we address the question how children come to understand normativity through simple forms of social interaction. A recent line of research suggests that even very young children can understand social norms quite independently of any moral context. We focus on a methodological procedure developed by Rakoczy et al., Developmental Psychology, 44, 875–881, that measures children’s protest behaviour when a pre-established constitutive rule has been violated. Children seem to protest when they realize that rule violations are not allowed or should not have happened. We point out that there is more than one possible explanation for children’s reactions in these studies. They could be due to disobeying an authority, an inability to follow a rule, or the violation of an empirical expectation due to the mismatch between statement and action. We thus question whether it would still count as an indicator for normative understanding if children responded to aspects of the game other than the violation of a constitutive rule and conclude that the protesting behavior, when taken in isolation, does not suffice as evidence for normative understanding.