I enjoyed these comments about upwards and downwards causation in social 
systems.  Sorry to take so long to reply, I have been traveling.

I'm not aware of a more recent literature review, since my 2003 article, 
of sociological implications of agent based modeling.  (By the way, my 
2005 book SOCIAL EMERGENCE is a bit more recent and incorporates an 
updated version of the 2003 article.)  I'm interested if anyone can 
suggest one?

Yes, it's true I claim that no simulation combines both micro->macro and 
macro->micro simultaneously but here's what I'm referring to:

1. At the micro level, agents interact locally, and this eventually 
gives rise to the emergence of some macro level structures and/or entities.

2. The simulation then automatically develops explicit data structures 
that capture the emergent macro level structures.  (These are not 
internal to agents, but are autonomous from them.)

3. These new data structures then have causal effects on the local 
agents and their interactions.

It is step (2) that results in the most controversy/discussion, with 
many modelers saying, of course we don't do that because that doesn't 
happen in the real world.  But in fact, many sociologists do believe 
that something like that is the case in the real world.  They are 
sometimes referred to as sociological realists.  It's primarily those 
who are methodological individualists by inclination who think that (2) 
is unnecessary (as I have argued in several other publications).  Most 
if not all agent modelers are methodological individualists.

The mechanism whereby step (3) happens has been the topic of a few of 
these posts; immergence/second-order emergence is one of the leading 
candidates for a mechanism.  But that's not the only one; macro social 
structures and properties often have demonstrable causal effects on 
individuals even when those individuals are not consciously or 
explicitly aware of them.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SIMSOC] Models incorporating both, micro->macro + 
macro->micro ?
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:13:11 +0200
From: Rosaria Conte <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Rosaria Conte <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]

I would say yes. See for example the results of the EMIL project (EMergence
In the Loop, a FET-funded European project under the 6th FW,
http://emil.istc.cnr.it/ ) where the simulated process of micro-to-macro
emergence of norms is shown to include macro-to-micro processes in which
norms get gradually "immerged" in agents' minds

Rosaria Conte

National Research Council,
Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology,
V. S. Martino della Battaglia, 44, 00185 Roma.
LABSS (Laboratory of Agent Based  Social Simulation):
http://labss.istc.cnr.it
http://www.istc.cnr.it/createhtml.php?nbr=70

Il 17-06-2009 10:29, "Georg Holtz" <[log in to unmask]> ha
scritto:

> Sawyer (2003) relates multi-agent systems to the micro-macro link in
> sociological theory and concludes that there are simulations that show
> how  macro-social phenomena emerge from individual action and such that
> demonstrate that a change of macro structure (e.g. network topology,
> size of a society, communication mechanism) changes the bottom-up
> processes of micro-to-macro emergence. He then argues that no simulation
> has combined both micro-to-macro and macro-to-micro processes
> simultaneously (to avoid any misunderstandings, of course emergent macro
> situations influence micro-to-macro through specifying the context in
> which individuals act on the micro-level. In those cases agents are not
> influenced by the overall macro situation but only by local
> interactions. But this is not what Sawyer refers to, he is interested in
> a direct causal role of the macro level).
> 
> However, in my view Gilbert's extension of the Schelling model in which
> patches are labelled "good" or "bad" places for the respective groups
> according to the history of the patches would be a model which involves
> both micro-to-macro and macro-to-micro causation (Gilbert 2002)?!
> 
> What has happened with regards to that  in the last 6 years?  Is there
> any good up-to-date review article available on that topic?
> 
> Thanks & regards
> Georg
> ---
> Sawyer (2003): Sawyer, Keith, "Artificial societies - Multiagent Systems
> and the Micro-Macro Link in Sociological Theory", Sociological Methods &
> Research, Vol. 31, No.3, 2003
> Gilbert (2002): Gilbert, N., "Varieties of Emergence", Transcript of the
> introductory talk given at the Workshop on Agent 2002 Social Agents at
> the Ecology, Exchange, and Evolution Conference 2002
> (http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/staff/ngilbert/ngpub/paper148_NG.pdf)

-- 
R. Keith Sawyer
Associate Professor
Washington University
Department of Education
Campus Box 1183
St. Louis, MO  63130

www.keithsawyer.com