The IRMA Community
Newsletters
Research IRM
Click a keyword to search titles using our InfoSci-OnDemand powered search:
|
Relationships Between the Processes of Emergence and Abstraction in Societies
Abstract
This chapter presents an argument that the process of emergence is the converse of the process of abstraction. Emergence involves complex behavior resulting from simple rules, while abstraction forming simple rules that describe complex behavior. This converse relationship suggests the possibility that similar mechanisms underlie both processes, and a greater understanding of one can lead to a greater understanding of the other. Especially in the case of human and artificial social systems, the processes of abstraction and emergence are inextricably interconnected; the abstractions that individuals make will determine what behaviors emerge, and the behaviors that emerge in the society determine what abstractions will be made. This relationship between the two processes, which we call the abstraction-emergence loop, can be used to gain a better understanding of both. It is argued that the abstraction-emergence loop functions over various degrees of complexity and levels of detail, and that the loop has the greatest efficacy in certain ranges of detail. This way of understanding the two processes has particular bearing on social interactions; in order to understand macro-level emergent social phenomena, we must also simultaneously understand the micro-level phenomena from which they arise. In considering when emergence occurs, the role of the observer in the emergence abstraction loop is also discussed. In addition to describing various properties of the abstraction-emergence loop, this chapter presents descriptions of several ongoing and future research projects in the creation of autonomous agent societies, and offers pointers to future research directions aimed at exploring and understanding the nature of the abstraction-emergence loop. Such an understanding of the relationship between abstraction and emergence can be helpful in designing communities of autonomous agents that interact socially with each other and with humans, and may also be a helpful step toward understanding the phenomena of emergence and abstraction in general.
Related Content
|
Rafael MartÃ, Juan-José Pantrigo, Abraham Duarte, Vicente Campos, Fred Glover.
© 2013.
21 pages.
|
|
Peng-Yeng Yin, Fred Glover, Manuel Laguna, Jia-Xian Zhu.
© 2013.
20 pages.
|
|
Volodymyr P. Shylo, Oleg V. Shylo.
© 2013.
10 pages.
|
|
Tabitha James, Cesar Rego.
© 2013.
19 pages.
|
|
Gary G. Yen, Wen-Fung Leong.
© 2013.
25 pages.
|
|
Shi Cheng, Yuhui Shi, Quande Qin.
© 2013.
29 pages.
|
|
Xin-She Yang.
© 2013.
12 pages.
|
|
|