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Social Intelligence Among Autonomous Agents

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Abstract

This paper presents a view of social intelligence as a multiple and inter-agent property. On one hand, some fundamental requisites for a theory of mind in society are presented in the paper. On the other, the role of objective social consequences of social action are argued to multiply agents&2018; mental properties. Starting from the problems posed by social situatedness the main mental ingredients necessary for solving these problems are identified. After an operational definition of a socially situated agent, a variety of tasks or demands will be shown to impinge on socially situated agents. The specific cognitive requirements needed for individual agents to accomplish these tasks will be identified. However, these cognitive requirements are shown insufficient to answer the social demands previously identified. In particular, the effective execution of individual social action seems to produce a number of interesting social consequences which extend to and empower the individual action. The follow-up hypothesis is that further cognitive properties consequently arise at the individual level, and contribute to reproduce and reinforce multiple agents&2018; intelligence.

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Conte, R. Social Intelligence Among Autonomous Agents. Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory 5, 203–228 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009634206383

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