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Abstract
I also discuss recent research into "believable" software agents, which are designed on principles borrowed from the character-based arts, especially cinematic animation as practiced by the artists at Disney and Warner Brothers Studios. I claim that these agents exemplify a kind of autonomy that should be of greater interest to philosophers than that exemplified by the generic agent modeled in current philosophical theory. The latter agent is autonomous by virtue of being governed by itself; but a believable agent appears to be governed by a self, which is the anima by which it appears to be animated.