I'd like to follow up Kathleen Carley's point about the theory being the
simulation. In addition to the AI/DAI literature, there is a developed
position in the philosophy of science based in part around the idea that
the model is the theory (I'm grossly simplifying a very sophisticated
argument). It's an anti-Realist school of thought called Constructive
Empiricism, and I've long suspected that it makes a more sensible
philosophical foundation for the kinds of questions social modelers tend
to like to ask than do the Realist accounts that most of us feel obliged
to deploy. One of the most formative works in that tradition is Bas van
Fraasen's _The Scientific Image_ (Oxford 1980: ISBN 0198244274), which
won the Matchette Prize and the Lakatos Award back when it came out.
His most recent work in this same vein is _The Empirical Stance_ (Yale
2002: ISBN 0300088744), which will catch you up on the 20 years of point
and counterpoint that followed. Both are worth a careful read if you
enjoy this sort of thing (you might want to read in reverse order, as
the later book was written for a more general audience). Van Fraasen's
web site collects some useful reviews of _The Empirical Stance_ by Paul
Thagard, Richard Rorty, and others:
http://webware.princeton.edu/vanfraas/pubs/index.htm
I'm also curious about an issue that seems to me to be lurking within
this conversational thread. How should we understand the concepts of
necessary and sufficient conditions in the context of emergence and
social complexity? Do they become more valuable or less, when we're
seeking to understand non-linear, highly contextual influences on social
phenomena? Is 'necessary and sufficient' really necessary and
sufficient to construct causal accounts of emergence, or do we need to
modify our understandings in order to make meaningful claims about
causation in the presence of complexity?
--Chris Mackie
PhD Candidate, Woodrow Wilson School,
Princeton University
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