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Multi-scale resolution of neural, cognitive and social systems

  • S.I.: SBP-BRiMS 2018
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Abstract

We recently put forth a thesis, the Resolution Thesis, that suggests that cognitive science and generative social science are interdependent and should thus be mutually informative. The thesis invokes a paradigm, the reciprocal constraints paradigm, that was designed to leverage the interdependence between the social and cognitive levels of scale for the purpose of building cognitive and social simulations with better resolution. We review our thesis here, provide the current research context, address a set of issues with the thesis, and provide some parting thoughts to provoke discussion. We see this work as an initial step to motivate both social and cognitive sciences in a new direction, one that represents unity of purpose, an interdependence of theory and methods, and a call for the careful development of new approaches for understanding human social systems, broadly construed.

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Notes

  1. Because cognitive systems are sometimes tightly yoked to neurophysiology, we consider three levels as central to our thesis: neurophysiology, cognitive architecture, and social systems

  2. We don’t have an approximation of the degree to which our community clustering algorithm mapped onto the structure shown in Fig. 3.

  3. Agent-based models, however, can range in abstraction, from the stylized models just described to empirically-driven models; although the latter in no way implies incorporation of cognitive constraints.

  4. Simuilations on the order of say \(10^{4}\) to \(10^7\) agents; examples might include large communities within social media platforms; a bipartite graph among patients and care providers within a national health system; daily interactions in a multi-national corporation.

  5. The ACT-R GitHub example described above used this platform

  6. This idea has obvious roots in Wilson’s Sociobiological approach. Wilson (2000)

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Acknowledgements

The Matrix Agent-Based Modeling Platform was developed by Parantapa Bhattacharya, Saliya Ekanayake, and Mandy Wilson.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biocomplexity Institute & Iniative, University of Virginia, 995 Research Park, Charlottesville, VA, 22911, USA

    Mark G. Orr

  2. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

    Christian Lebiere

  3. University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Andrea Stocco

  4. Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, USA

    Peter Pirolli

  5. Virginia Tech, Arlington, USA

    Bianica Pires

  6. George Mason University, Fairfax, USA

    William G. Kennedy

Authors
  1. Mark G. Orr
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  2. Christian Lebiere
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  3. Andrea Stocco
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  6. William G. Kennedy
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Correspondence to Mark G. Orr.

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The research is (partially) based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), via the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of DARPA, the AFRL or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. This article is an extended version of Orr et al. (2018).

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Orr, M.G., Lebiere, C., Stocco, A. et al. Multi-scale resolution of neural, cognitive and social systems. Comput Math Organ Theory 25, 4–23 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-018-09291-0

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