Computer Models of Constitutive Social Practice

Abstract

This paper describes a computer implementation of the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons, as described in Making It Explicit. First, I rehearse the distinction between regulative and constitutive views of social practice. It is noteworthy that much multi-agent AI research has been based on the regulative view, despite the philosophical attractions of the constitutive view. Then I distinguish between two sub-types of constitutive interpretation, divided by whether or not intentionality itself is viewed as a bundle of capacities that is constituted by participation in practices. Then I describe a detailed model of the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons, as a first step in the project of showing how intentionality itself can be realised in a set of practices. I describe the technical points at which I was forced to deviate from Brandom’s original description.