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Dear Rosaria, One can distinguish between normative and cognitive expectations. They are differently codified at the level of society, but they can also co-vary and at some times replace one another at the level of individual minds. Individuals have difficulties with keeping them separate because the focus is on integration as an identity. At the level of the social system, this can be more relaxed. With best wishes, Loet _____ Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] ; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ _____ From: News and discussion about computer simulation in the social sciences [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rosaria Conte Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 10:16 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [SIMSOC] Newbie on the list - working on emergence of norms and beliefs Il 18-01-2007 21:03, "Loet Leydesdorff" <[log in to unmask]> ha scritto: Dear colleagues, It seems to me that norms are not generated by individuals, but by social processes I would phrase it socio-cognitive processes. and then reflected at the psychological level by individuals. Not enough: agents not only reflect norms in their beliefs: based on them they decide whether t form corresponding goals, and then possibly transform these into the corresponding intentions, etc. So, the menatl path of norms is a long and complex one, which contributes to norms social dynamics. Of course there may be conflicting norms that agents will either ignore, solve, choose among, etc. Precisely for this reason, in accountig for norms in society one ought to integrate the cognitive and the social model. ross _____ From: News and discussion about computer simulation in the social sciences [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rosaria Conte Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 10:09 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [SIMSOC] Newbie on the list - working on emergence of norms and beliefs But, then, what does the statement mean? Can you give some examples of the use of cognitive agents that are not based on a cognitive architecture? There is a misunderstanding here: I said that a theory of norm emergence based on cognitive agents does not imply that a cognitive model (and the underlying architecture) is a model of large scale societal behavior: in other words, although cognitive agents contribute to societal processes, the latter should not be modeled as cognitively designed (a great deal of social dynamics is extra-mental). My personal view is that norms and practice are closely related. This is a conventionalist view of norms. In any attempt to distinguish them from conventions, norms are accounted as something rather different from practices. How can it be that entities reason upon representations of norms, but don't issue or understand these norms? Very simple. Lets start from legal norms: agents need to form a mental representation of the norms impinging on them in order to autonomously decide whether to comply with them or not. However, agents usually emanate no norm: often, they don't even have the faintest idea how norms are issued, by whom and through which processes. The same a fortiori is true for social norms. I am not aware of any cognitive agents that are not, in some way shape or form, based on a theory of human cognition. GPS is no theory of human cognition but it is meant to be a General theory of intelligent, planning systems. Miller, Galanter and Pribram's work (from the early 60s) is a general theory of intelligent, goal-driven systems which has poor relation with any pre-existing theory of human cognition. It is probably my lack of knowledge about those who define a theory of cognition for animals, other than human, that I can't say much about this. But, I would say that the theory of artificial minds is very much related to that of the theory of human cognition. Perhaps unfortunately,, this is not the case. The hegemonial, although no more so recent, trend in cognitive psychology is the modular view of the mind, that so far to my knowledge no-one took as a reference for computational modeling and agent architecture. As to symbolic theories of animal intelligence, in cognitive primatology, lots of people (Tommasello, Visalberghi etc.) are working on primates' and children's social imitation and cooperation with experimental and observational approaches, trying to understand related cognitive determinants of these behaviors. Cheers ross (...) More so, many scientist (e.g. neuroscience, anthropology, cognitive science) have in recent years developed counter theories to the theory of the human mind as a "symbolic copy machine." Although it is not entirely clear to me what a symbolic copy machine is, I do believe instead that cognitive science in general has no much to say against the theory of human mind as a symbolic system. To claim that cognition is based on symbolic processing, it means that that there is a copy function within the process, and symbolic structures are copied from one place to another in order to store and recall the symbolic structures. However, this by no means implies a particular commitment to a view of agents as necessarily conscious, ratiomorphic, and deliberative. Yes it does, at least deliberative, which I would posit needs consciousness. I am not sure what ratiomorphic is. A cognitive (based upon symbolic representations) view of the mind should not be equalized with a strictly deliberative view of agenthood. Maybe not in the field where you operate, but I would claim that in philosophy and cognitive psychology it does. Maybe you can give some examples that make your claim explicit. ... (but, alas, not every human activity is goal-driven). Of course. However, a cognitive theory of goals defines them as symbolic internal representations triggering and guiding actions; by no means, again, this implies that goals are also attributed the property of being rational, consistent, conscious and necessarily chosen for action (and therefore planned). But that is not what the goal-based theories say. More importantly, if one uses a BDI agent architecture (or an expert system based architecture, such as Jess) to model reasoning in your agents, then you are either implicitly or explicitly claiming that "goals are also attributed the property of being rational ..." Simply because these architectures are based on the theory that rational, consistent, conscious choosing of actions is planned and goal-based. In other words, imho, you cannot use these architectures to implement your agent system and then claim that your model does not rely on these theories. That is why we developed our own BDI-like architecture that is not based on these theories, but on theories of situated action and activity theory, which do not use the concept of a goal to model reasoning, and does not use goal-based planning to simulate perception-action and deliberation. Cheers ross