Describing Robot Gestures by Design and Agency: An Exploration with Dennett’s Stances

This chapter explores the question of whether robots can make gestures that can be described as related to the intentionality of the robots themselves and not to the intentionality of their designers. For this exploration, robots are approached as entities designed by humans. Dennett’s stance framework is adopted for analysing descriptions of robot gestures and this framework is generalised to one in which not only single stances can be used to describe robots, but also pair of stances where one is applied to the robot and one to its designers. Conclusions are that Dennett’s framework warrants descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality and does more often so as compared to more fundamental approaches to agency in which it should be first determined that robots have agency. Yet, in the case of robots displaying unexcepted gestures, more fundamental approaches may warrant descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality that cannot be adopted on Dennett’s approach.