Cognitive Social Sciences: Resources
The cognitive sciences have made tremendous strides in recent decades. In particular, computational cognitive modeling (i.e., computational psychology; Sun, 2008; Thagard, 1996) has changed the ways in which cognition/psychology is explored and understood in many profound respects. There have been many models of cognition/psychology proposed in the cognitive sciences (broadly defined), leading to detailed understanding of many cognitive/psychological domains and functionalities. Empirical psychological research has also progressed to provide us with much better understanding of many psychological phenomena.
Given the advances in the cognitive sciences, can we leverage the successes for the sake of better understanding social processes and phenomena? More fundamentally, can the cognitive sciences (including experimental cognitive psychology, computational psychology, social-personality psychology, developmental psychology, cultural psychology, psycholinguistics, philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and so on) provide a better foundation for important disciplines of the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, ethics, as well as some "humanity" fields: history, literary studies, communication, legal studies, religious studies, and so on)?
Thus far, although very much a neglected topic, there nevertheless have been various efforts at exploring this topic. Some of the efforts were computationally motivated (see, e.g., Sun, 2006: "Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction", published by Cambridge University Press). Some other efforts were more empirical or theoretical in nature (see, e.g, Turner, 2001: "Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science", published by Oxford University Press).
There are both theoretical and practical rationales for developing "cognitive social sciences" (see, e.g., Turner, 2001; Sun, 2006; DiMaggio, 1997; Camerer, 2003; Tetlock and Goldgeier, 2000). We contend that the social sciences may find their future in the cognitive sciences (at least in part), which may well lead to a powerful and productive combined intellectual enterprise. This combination or grounding may provide the social sciences with imaginative scientific research programs, hybridization/integration, new syntheses, novel paradigms/frameworks, and so on, beside providing the cognitive sciences with new data sources and problems to address.
(from Sun, 2012, chapter 1)
- Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction.
- The 2010 Workshop on Cognitive Social Sciences: Grounding the Social Sciences in the Cognitive Sciences .
- World Congress on Social Simulation.
- The First World Congress on Social Simulation . Kyoto, Japan August 21-25, 2006.
- The AAAI-06 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Agent-based Social Simulation . Boston, MA. July, 2006.
- The International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2005) . Utrecht University, July 25-29, 2005.
- The 2005 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2005) . France. September 19-22, 2005.
- The Eighth Pacific Rim International Workshop on Multi-Agents (PRIMA 2005) . September 26-28, 2005.
- The Sixth International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS2005) . Utrecht University, July 2005.
- The IJCAI'03 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling of Agents and Multi-Agent Interactions, at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Acapulco, Mexico. 2003.
- The 2003 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2003) . October 13-17, 2003.
- The Second Asia-Pacific Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT-2001) . October 23-26, 2001.
- The 4th Pacific Rim International Workshop on Multi-Agents . July 28-29, 2001
- The ICCS'01 Workshop on Cognitive Agents and Multi-Agent Interaction, 2001.
- Agent'99 Proceedings - May 1-5, 1999
- Autonomous Agents '99 Home Page
- CIA-99 Workshop
- The Multi-Agent Systems Laboratory at U.Mass
- Tuomas W. Sandholm (sandholm@cs.wustl.edu)
- Wellman Publications
- Sandip Sen's Home Page
- The Social Web project at GMD (Germany).
- SDML- A Multi-Agent Language for Organizational Modelling, Modelling Bounded Rationality using Evolutionary Techniques, and Modelling Socially Intelligent Agents in Organisations here. Bruce Edmond's homepage for information about definitions of complexity etc.
- Kismet: A Robot for Social Interactions with Humans, part of the larger COG project at the MIT AI Lab.
- Claudia Goldman's Webpage at the Hebrew University: information about multiagent learning and agents organizations. The Center For Rationality and Interactive Decision Theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
- CASOS Homepage: Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. Carnegie Mellon University.
- The IP-CNR group (National Research Council Institute of Psychology (IP-CNR) in Rome, Italy): "Cognitive Psychology", "Theories and Systems of Artificial Intelligence". Members: Cristiano Castelfranchi, Amedeo Cesta, Rosaria Conte, Rino Falcone, Maria Miceli, Paola Rizzo.
- Gal Kaminka's Homepage at University of Southern California, including pointers to his work on intelligent autonomous agents. Simulation/Multi-Agent Evaluation, evaluation of coordination, teamwork, fault-tolerance and robustness in multi-agent research, used as a repository for researcheres interested in studying teamwork, social adaptability and flexibility, coordination, and flexible organization.