As William James described in the late nineteenth century, and as it is reiterated in the text, "to focus attention on one idea, on one possible course of action...is precisely what we mean by an act of volition" (Schwartz & Begley 2002). That is, making a decision to pay attention to one thing, and to develop a plan of action -- an intention with specific actions to be taken on our part and expected consequences as a result of thee actions -- is an act of will. James "intuited" this, and modern research has borne this assumption out (Schwartz & Begley 2002). The near-constant and ever-growing assault on our senses competing for our mental attention makes this principle fairly easy to perceive; we must always decide to pay attention to the task at hand rather than the distraction out the window, or to tear ourselves away from the television in order to answer the phone -- which input we decide to pay attention to determines the direction of our progression and the formation of our intentions far more than the input itself.

In human beings, both James and the authors of the text consider this the ultimate act of "morality," asserting that this morality underlies all of our decisions (Schwartz & Begley 2002). The robots that exhibit self-aware behavior and develop their own intentions must possess the same basic morality, then. This morality is more explicitly linked to immediate rewards, however; the walking robot, for instance, was not given any instruction or training, but was rewarded for developing a self-model and managing to move forward (Lipson 2007). Its attention and intentions were shaped by the application of this reward, suggesting that the "morality" that theoretically drives intentions in humans must also be directed by the belief in a reward.

An even more profound consideration of the attention displayed by Lipson's self-aware robots is the self-replication that became the robot's prime motivation when no reward was offered for any action. The imperative to reproduce has been a long noted feature pf biological and psychological studies, and the underlying drive of robots to perform the same function when given the opportunity means that the development of such attentions and intentions is perhaps more deeply ingrained in the most fundamental laws of nature than was previously thought (Lipson 2007). When nothing competes with the robot's own volition -- that is, when no external reward is offered in an attempt to influence the robot's progression and development -- its natural "instinct" is to build more of itself (Lipson 2007). Coupling this with the assertion of morality being in control of volition, and thus of controlling attention, intention, and action, means that the most basic natural act of morality is reproduction -- at least for robots.