Dear Alan
the only problem which I see in this discussion (which, as Nina has
observed, is a very quiet, civil, and refreshing one) is that there
is a sort of collective need to attribute opinions to opposite
labeled "boxes" of one sort or another. Therefore, if one says that
social structures should be modelled explicitlu, that means he or she
is a (pragmatic) holist, and if I say that emergence is not *only* a
bottom-up phenomenon, then I become a Durkheimian.
Indeed, I have nothing against Durkheim, and perhaps I am a
Durkheimian and I did not know it before, but what I have said so far
is *not* aimed to
>3) develop a science of the social separate from biology and psychology.
Indeed, the opposite is true: I do think that we should account for
both the biological and the cognitive foundations of social
phenomena. My *program*, if I have one :-), is to account for the
different levels of analysis *and* their interrelationships. It is
true that social structures emerge from (interactions among) agents,
but the problem is that, once they have emerged, they do affect
agents in different ways: through agents' explicit, conscious
representations, through other mental mechanisms (e.g., implicit
beliefs, goals, emotions, values, etc.), and also through non-mental
mechanisms. Interestingly, there is an interplay between mental and
non-mental mechanisms. To go back to my example, reputation is an
objective property from the point of vbiew of the *reputed* agent,
but it is a social belief from the point of view of the *reputing*
agents. How and why do they decide to transmit this type of
information to one another? More interestingly, how will the
objective properties of an agent interact with its mental states? Of
course, social agents are inteligent and autonomous. But they are
also socially embedded, and this has consequences on both their
mental processes and their autonomy. Agents' autonomy, as well as
their intelligence and rationality, is limited. The difficult task is
to account for the processes by means of which agents work out,
elaborate external (including social) influence. That social
structures provide external inputs (not only constraints) is, I
think, undeniable. But, to me, this leads to a program which is
exactly the opposite of your description of the Durkheimian program!
It should lead us to develop an integrated explicit account of social
and cognitive processes/structures, meaning an account of both how
social structures provide external inputs to agents and how agents
elaborate and modify these inputs.
ross
Rosaria Conte
National Research Council, Institute of Psychology, V.LE Marx 15, 00137 Roma.
Division "AI, Cognitive and Interaction Modelling"
PSS (Project on Social Simulation) - voice:+39+06+86090210;fax:+39+06+824737
email: [log in to unmask] - http://ip.rm.cnr.it
University of Siena - Communication Sciences - "Social Psychology"
PLS, NOTICE THAT MY EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED: YOU MAY WANT TO UPDATE
YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. THANKS.
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