Dear all,
I personally support Scott's suggestion that, prior to any publication, we
carefully identify the different threads that have popped up during this -
long - open discussion.
Although I am a computer scientist (and not a sociologist), this discussion
has really interested me because of the parallel one could easily draw
between the arguments found here on the role of MABS and the ones used for
describing the usefulness of Distributed AI vs. "traditional AI". As a
matter of fact, I strongly believe that the tasks of "design of artificial
multi-agent systems" and "multi-agent simulations of real systems" share
the same conceptual difficulties, and that, in each of these activities, we
encounter the same questions.
[A small exercise: replace the word "simulation" here by "MAS design" and
forget about the sociological jargon in the second sentence (or replace it
by the recurrent "*emergent* vs. *explicit* multi-agent organization
design" debate)
> 1. Issues of application -- whether simulation as description should
> be bottom-up or top-down and the conditions in which each is valid.
> 2. Issues of sociological theory -- nominalism and methodological
> individualism versus social realism and Durkheimism
> 3. Should theory drive application or should application drive theory?
]
However, it is probably not sufficient to "simply" identify these
methodological questions and list the pros & cons side by side if we want
to get ahead a little bit and offer readers some insight on the usefulness
of MABS.
My guess is that a publication could be very useful if, in addition to
pointing the different approaches, it could highlight the strength of MABS,
which is (in my opinion) precisely to allow these approaches to be compared
using related computable models.
By doing this, one could probably relate much of these differences to a
fundamental question not mentioned by Scott (but present in filigree in
much of the contributions), namely :
4. What is the role assigned by each of us to simulation and how does it
influence our methodological or theoretical choices ? (by "role", I
essentially mean "goal", in fact : prediction, explanation, exploratory
work, pedagogical work, model shaping, etc. )
Regards,
Alexis
--
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Alexis Drogoul - LIP6 Case 169 - Univ. Paris 6
8 rue du Cne Scott 75015 PARIS FRANCE
Tel/Fax: +33 1 44277139 | ICQ #57997863
http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~drogoul/
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