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