On the Metaphysics of Agents (extended version)
Stefan J. Johansson, Paul Davidsson · 2005
As a follow-up to the heated discussion in the mid 90s on how to define agents, we have done a study of how the concept is actually used today. All full papers published in a recent proceedings of the largest agent conference have been classified according to a number of agent properties. These properties have been derived from agent definitions found in well-known text books and publications. We analyze the lattice of properties with respect to the classification and propose new definitions that better match the actual use.