Sorry for a delayed contribution to this discussion, but I could read this exchange only recently.
Apart from a general agreement on the necessity of cognitive agents to model norm emergence and propagation, I would like to comment on a couple of statements that I am not sure how to interpret, and whether to agree with. See below both statements and comments.
Il 13-01-2007 19:26, "Maarten Sierhuis" <[log in to unmask]> ha scritto:
“... However one has to be careful in selecting cognitive architectures as a model for large scale societal behavior.”
The statement that cognitive agents are needed to account for norm emergence and propagation by no means implies ‘to select cognitive architectures as a model for large scale societal behavior’. Indeed, norm emergence and propagation does not imply that there is a deliberate issuing of norms, not even an understanding of this process on the part of the agents contributing to it. However, for a given behavior to spread by means of norms, the agents displaying it if autonomous must form and reason upon normative representations.
Cognitive models are based on a theory of human cognition,
I am not sure I agree about this. It of course depends on what is meant by cognitive models. If what is meant is mental models, than of course the cognitive psychological view of the mind is at stake. But cognitive modeling interacts with, if it does not subsume, the study of animal and artificial minds as well.
(...)
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. However, this by no means implies a particular commitment to a view of agents as necessarily conscious, ratiomorphic, and deliberative. A cognitive (based upon symbolic representations) view of the mind should not be equalized with a strictly deliberative view of agenthood.
... (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).
Cheers
ross