The Individuation of Social Systems: A Cognitive Framework

We present a socio-human cognitive framework that radically deemphasizes the role of individual human agents required for both the formation of social systems and their ongoing operation thereafter. Our point of departure is Simondon's (1992) theory of individuation, which we integrate with the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProcedia computer science Vol. 88; pp. 15 - 20
Main Authors Lenartowicz, Marta, (Weaver), David Weinbaum, Braathen, Petter
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 2016
Subjects
cognition
cognitive architecture
communication
individuation
self-organization
social systems
social systems
self-organization
cognition
communication
individuation
cognitive architecture
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Summary:We present a socio-human cognitive framework that radically deemphasizes the role of individual human agents required for both the formation of social systems and their ongoing operation thereafter. Our point of departure is Simondon's (1992) theory of individuation, which we integrate with the enactive theory of cognition (Di Paolo et al., 2010) and Luhmann's (1996) theory of social systems. This forges a novel view of social systems as complex, individuating sequences of communicative interactions that together constitute distributed yet distinct cognitive agencies, acquiring a capacity to exert influence over their human-constituted environment. We conclude that the resulting framework suggests several different paths of integrating AI agents into human society. One path suggests the emulation of a largely simplified version of the human mind, reduced in its functions to a specific triple selection-making which is necessary for sustaining social systems. Another one conceives AI systems that follow the distributed, autonomous architecture of social systems, instead that of humans.
ISSN:1877-0509
1877-0509
DOI:10.1016/j.procs.2016.07.400