Computational methods and simulations have become a fruitful methodology for philosophers, particularly for understanding how social relations, norms, and communicative structures could and should shape inquiry. Work in computational social philosophy has illuminated phenomena ranging from the epistemic value of diversity and the dynamics of epistemic belonging to the emergence and erosion of norms and processes of polarization.
Generative and agentic AI tools stand to profoundly reshape computational social philosophy in at least two ways:
As objects of study for computational social philosophy. Generative and agentic AI are increasingly embedded in epistemic life: as sources of information, interlocutors, surrogates for social participants, gatekeepers within epistemic communities, and even partially autonomous epistemic actors. This should motivate a broadening of purview in social epistemology, which has tended to focus primarily on personal, interpersonal, and institutional factors that impact inquiry, but comparatively less on technological factors.
As tools of study for computational social philosophy. These systems can lower the technical barriers to computational work. More interestingly, they may expand the range of social phenomena philosophers can model, including richer representations of agents’ beliefs and behavior, more complex interactions and environments, and even digital-twin-style models of particular communities or institutions.
This cluster brings together philosophers working in, or seriously engaging with, computational social philosophy. We are eager to gather a cohort who can bring rigor, clarity, and intellectual generosity to advancing understanding in relation to the above themes.
We’re particularly interested in philosophical contributions that engage one or more of the following cross-cutting threads:
Modeling of AI systems as socio-epistemic phenomena: How might explicitly modeling the effects of AI systems within social epistemic processes challenge, deepen, or expand existing understanding in social epistemology and philosophy of science?
Modeling of socio-epistemic phenomena with AI-based tools: What new forms of social epistemological phenomena can AI-based tools help us represent and investigate beyond traditional methods, such as typical agent-based models?
Understanding aims and tradeoffs: How should we think about the tradeoffs between AI-afforded expressive power and the tractability and understanding long central to computational social philosophy?
Methodological standards: What standards should guide reliable, reproducible, and more generally epistemically and ethically responsible philosophical inquiry using AI-based methods in computational social philosophy?
Please note that, while we welcome expressions of interest from all disciplines, this is not a general workshop about AI or AI-based simulations. It is a workshop about how deeper engagement with AI systems as objects of modeling studies and as a modeling tool can ultimately enrich and expand philosophical inquiry.
The series will consist of bi-weekly virtual meetings, in the style of CSPS, starting in October 2026. The meetings are on Mondays at 11:30am ET.
You can submit your application to join the seminars by using this application form, which includes:
Basic details: Your name, email address, affiliation, career stage
Extended abstracts of up to 750 words and prepared for anonymous review (no identifying information in the abstract itself).
The submission deadline for applications is July 24th, 2026.