Conference Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy, Is it possible to develop a confirmation theory for agent-based models? The are good reasons to be skeptical: Classical confirmation theory explains how empirical evidence bears on the truth of hypotheses and theories, while agent-based models are almost always idealized and hence known to be false. Moreover, classical ideas about confirmation have been developed for relatively simple hypotheses, while even the simplest agent-based models have thousands of variables. Nevertheless, we can draw on ideas from confirmation theory in order to develop an account of agent-based model confirmation. Theorists can confirm hypotheses about model/world relations, and they can also use a variety of techniques to investigate the reliability of model results. This paper is an exploration of these possibilities. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 13.12.2014 | Speaker: Michael Weisberg

Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) Research Focus Reduction and Emergence (LMU)

Agent-based Models and Confirmation Theory

Conference Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy, One general problem faced by attempts to explain the origins of morality using traditional rational choice theory is that the demands of rationality and the demands of morality often fail to coincide. This can happen in at least three different ways. Sometimes our moral intuitions recommend actions which are identified as irrational (such as cooperating in the prisoner's dilemma or in the centipede game, or rejecting unfair offers in the ultimatum game). Sometimes our moral intuitions recommend an act which is only one of several recognised as rational (as can happen in games having multiple Nash equilibria). And sometimes we have multiple competing moral intuitions in cases where rationality recommends a unique act (such as in asymmetric bargaining games, in contrast to the Nash solution). In this talk, I present a number of results drawn from agent-based models of imitative learning on social networks, showing how this single framework manages to explain many of our moral intuitions across a wide variety of diverse cases. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 13.12.2014 | Speaker: Jason McKenzie Alexander

The Structural Evolution of Morality

Conference Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy, Despite ubiquity and universality, norms are still awaiting for a general comprehensive theory. In the presentation, a conceptual, theoretical, and computational framework will be proposed to provide a general account of norms, enabling us to investigate: (a) differences and commonalities among social, moral, and legal norms; (b) norm emergence and change; (c) the individual properties involved or responsible for bringing about norms. The main thesis is that observable conformity is only the tip of the normative iceberg, and that norms cannot emerge in society if they do not previously immerge in the mind, i.e. if they are not first converted into mental representations of some sort. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 12.12.2014 | Speaker: Rosaria Conte

Minding Norms. Mechanisms and Dynamics of Social Order in Agent Societies

Conference Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy, One important area of study for social epistemology is the social structure epistemic groups -- who communicates their knowledge with whom? Significant research has been done on better and worse communication networks, but less has been done on how a group comes to have one network or another. In this talk, I will present a number of results (some recent) from economics and philosophy about how individuals choose with whom to communicate. Understanding how individuals decide where to gain information can help us to design institutions that lead to epistemically more reliable groups. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 12.12.2014 | Speaker: Kevin Zollmann

The Formation of Epistemic Networks

Conference Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy, In the past two decades, agent-based models (ABMs) have become ubiquitous in philosophy and various sciences. ABMs have been applied, for example, to study the evolution of norms and language, to understand migration patterns of past civilizations, to investigate how population levels change in ecosystems over time, and more. In contrast with classical economic models or population-level models in biology, ABMs are praised for their lack of assumptions and their flexibility. Nonetheless, many of the methodological and epistemological questions raised by ABMs have yet to be fully articulated and answered. For example, there are unresolved debates about how to test (or "validate") ABMs, about the scope of their applicability in philosophy and the sciences, and about their implications or our understanding of reduction, emergence, and complexity in the sciences. This conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers aimed at understanding the foundations of agent-based modeling and how the practice can inform and be informed by philosophy. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 11.12.2014 | Speaker: Scott Page

Collective Accuracy: Agent Based & Emergent vs Statistical and Assumed

The Poison Pill of Structural Model Error, The sensitive dependence on initial condition associated with chaotic models, the so-called "Butterfly Effect", imposes limitations on the models’ predictive power. These limitations have been widely recognized and extensively discussed. In this lecture, Roman Frigg will draw attention to an additional so far under-appreciated problem, namely structural model error (SME). If a nonlinear model has only the slightest SME, then its ability to generate useful prediction is lost. This puts us in a worse epistemic situation: while we can mitigate against the butterfly effect by making probabilistic predictions, this route is foreclosed in the case of SME. Roman Frigg will discuss in what way the description of problems affects actual modeling projects, in particular in the context of making predictions about the local effects of climate change. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 10.01.2014 | Speaker: Dr. Roman Frigg

Chaos beyond the Butterfly Effect

Research Focus Reduction and Emergence, For the last thirty years, string theory has played a highly influential role in fundamental physics without having found empirical confirmation. The presentation will analyze reasons for the high degree of trust many physicists have developed in a theory that, according to classical standards of theory assessment, would have to be called an unconfirmed speculation. It will be argued that the case of string theory suggests a new perspective on our understanding of theory confirmation in general. In the last part of the talk, some implications for the scientific realism debate and the question of reduction in science shall also be addressed. | Center for Advanced Studies: 10.12.2013 | Speaker: Dr. Richard Dawid | Moderation: Prof. Dr. Stephan Hartmann

String Theory and the Scientific Method

Reduction and Emergence in the Sciences, [Conf.] Reduction and emergence play a central role in the relations of scientific theories and disciplines. Unfortunately, the discussion about reduction and emergence suffers from two uncertainties at once. On the one hand the concepts of reduction and especially emergence are not precisely defined, on the other hand there are few if any uncontentious cases of reduction or emergence in the sciences. This conference will bring together philosophers of science and scientists of different disciplines with the aim of addressing the inter- and intratheoretic relations of specific theories and providing precise notions of such relations for the application in the sciences. These relations can then serve as a basis for explications of reduction and emergence that are applicable in the sciences. | Center for Advanced Studies & Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy: 14.-16.11.2013

Cross-Level Linkages in Neurobiology

Emergence and Explanation

Scarecrow’s Brain and Homunculi: Neurobiological Reductionism as Ensoulment-Objectification Process Seen Through Anthropological Lenses

Heterogeneity and Emergence in the Social Sciences

How Can One and the Same Thing be Subject to Different Theories?  On the Proper Logic for Non-Reductive Monism

Technical Aspects of Reduction and Multiple Realizability

"Reversed Reduction" in Gibbsian Statistical Mechanics

Holography and the Emergence of Gravity

Through the reduction of one theory or discipline to another, the results of the reduced theory or discipline can be obtained from the reducing one. In contrast, a theory that describes emergent phenomena is ostensibly autonomous: no other theory can be understood as providing a reducing basis. Questions of emergence and reduction determine how much one discipline can borrow from another, and, to a certain extent, what structures scientific theories in various disciplines can have. Successful reductions increase the epistemological importance of the reducing theories, and arguably their claim to research funding as well. If it is shown that a phenomenon is emergent, on the other hand, the discipline concerned with the emergent phenomenon is unlikely to be replaced by research in other fields, and thus requires its own funding. Furthermore, stronger relationships between the disciplines make it difficult to cast doubt on a small number of selected theories without affecting the rest of the sciences. This is important, for example, in the politically motivated, selective doubt of the theory of evolution, climate research, or genetic technology.

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