Symposium: Agent cognitive ability and orders of emergence
Wednesday 2nd April 2008
AISB Convention - Communication, Interaction and Social Intelligence
Aberdeen, 1- 4 April 2008
Call For Papers
http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/aisb2008.html
The concept of emergence has become widely used within the agent community.
However, it continues to be vaguely defined and to stand in for different
propositions about social generative mechanisms. To date the community has
focused primarily on upward causation (consistent with its usage within
complex systems theory and artificial life) (Sawyer, 2003). Relatively
little attempt has been made to re-examine critically the concept within the
context of human agency. Similarly, derivative concepts such as downward
causation and 'immergence' (Castelfranchi, 1998) have only recently begun to
be explored in the simulation of human social systems.
Gilbert has referred to a form of emergence which cannot be explained using
the conventional bottom up notion and which implies that emergence involving
agents with advanced cognitive ability may be qualitatively different from
when it is absent. This 'second order' emergence occurs, he argues, when
agents recognize emergent phenomena, such as societies, clubs, formal
organizations, institutions, localities and so on, where the fact that you
are a member or a non-member changes the rules of interaction between you
and other agents. In a similar vein, Goldspink and Kay (2007) have argued
for the need to at least distinguish between:
* Non-reflexive emergence: where the agents in the system under study
are not self-aware, and
* Reflexive emergence: where the agents in the system under study are
self-aware and linguistically capable.
They have also attempted to identify the effect of these two orders on
system characteristics and dynamics.
There is a need to advance the debate about the nature and form of
emergence associated with human social systems and therefore relevant to
human to human and human to agent interaction. Specifically there is a
need to identify linkages between current theories of cognitive
developmental thresholds, including but not limited to the development
of language, narrative ability, self-identity and theory of mind, and to
examine the implications that these developmental stages may have in
supporting qualitatively distinct orders of emergence in social systems.
Contributions that consider emergence in the context of:
* Human social systems (including, for example, virtual worlds)
* Animal societies and systems
* Computational agents with simulated cognitive and/or linguistic
abilities will all be welcome.
Submissions should be sent to Chris Goldspink
<[log in to unmask]> by January 17, 2008. Papers should be
formatted according to the instructions at:
http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html
and should not exceed 8 pages.
Programme Committee: Joanna Bryson, Kerstin Dautenhahn,
Nigel Gilbert, Chris Goldspink, Bruce Edmonds, Klaus Troitzsch
Further information at: http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/aisb2008.html
________________________________________________________________
Professor Nigel Gilbert, ScD, FREng, AcSS, Professor of Sociology,
University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. +44 (0)1483 689173
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