Dear All,
I would take a different tack and say that one of the reasons why these sorts of definitional tasks are so difficult and controversial is because it is not clear what the _aim_ of definition is. What do we "gain" when we define (rather than just "illustrate") the concept of agents? You cannot remove some aspects of reality that you don't approve of just by definition (or people will argue with you endlessly). So how could one adjudicate "scientifically" the dispute about whether an agent must/needn't have "advanced reasoning capabilities?" (Which, of course, is another contestable definition and so on!)
An example. We can "define" a household as two married adults living in the same house with dependent children (and marriage and dependent also have formal definitions). Then we can do some statistics to show (perhaps) that this kind of household is correlated with educational success. But then we have to allow that it is not being married that creates this correlation but whether the household is "harmonious" (which some cohabitation is and some marriage is not) and whether the parents engage with and support their children's schooling (ditto). We have done the research starting from a clear definition (and that is good) but the definition has not "saved us" from the complexities of social life behind it. Given than many ABM are not so empirical, we cannot ask whether one definition rather than another generates "better designed" research or "better fit with data" (or some other "worthy" outcome) and that is another reason why (IMO) such discussions tend to be relatively unproductive.
All the best,
Edmund
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Edmund Chattoe-Brown
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