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Threshold Phenomena in Epistemic Networks

In Proceedings, AAAI Fall Symposium on Complex Adaptive Systems and the Threshold Effect. AAAI Press (2006)

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  1. Modeling Epistemology: Examples and Analysis in Computational Philosophy of Science.Patrick Grim - 2019 - In A. Del Barrio, C. J. Lynch, F. J. Barros & X. Hu (eds.), IEEE SpringSim Proceedings 2019. IEEE. pp. 1-12.
    What structure of scientific communication and cooperation, between what kinds of investigators, is best positioned to lead us to the truth? Against an outline of standard philosophical characteristics and a recent turn to social epistemology, this paper surveys highlights within two strands of computational philosophy of science that attempt to work toward an answer to this question. Both strands emerge from abstract rational choice theory and the analytic tradition in philosophy of science rather than postmodern sociology of science. The first (...)
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  • Formal Models of Scientific Inquiry in a Social Context: An Introduction.Dunja Šešelja, Christian Straßer & AnneMarie Borg - 2020 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (2):211-217.
    Formal models of scientific inquiry, aimed at capturing socio-epistemic aspects underlying the process of scientific research, have become an important method in formal social epistemology and philosophy of science. In this introduction to the special issue we provide a historical overview of the development of formal models of this kind and analyze their methodological contributions to discussions in philosophy of science. In particular, we show that their significance consists in different forms of ‘methodological iteration’ whereby the models initiate new lines (...)
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  • Centralized Funding and Epistemic Exploration.Shahar Avin - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (3):629-656.
    Computer simulation of an epistemic landscape model, modified to include explicit representation of a centralized funding body, show the method of funding allocation has significant effects on communal trade-off between exploration and exploitation, with consequences for the community’s ability to generate significant truths. The results show this effect is contextual, and depends on the size of the landscape being explored, with funding that includes explicit random allocation performing significantly better than peer review on large landscapes. The article proposes a way (...)
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  • Diversity, Ability, and Expertise in Epistemic Communities.Patrick Grim, Daniel J. Singer, Aaron Bramson, Bennett Holman, Sean McGeehan & William J. Berger - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (1):98-123.
    The Hong and Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result has been used to argue for the more general claim that a diverse set of agents is epistemically superior to a comparable group of experts. Here we extend Hong and Page’s model to landscapes of different degrees of randomness and demonstrate the sensitivity of the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result. This analysis offers a more nuanced picture of how diversity, ability, and expertise may relate. Although models of this sort can indeed be suggestive (...)
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  • A mid-level approach to modeling scientific communities.Audrey Harnagel - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 76:49-59.
    This paper provides an account of mid-level models, which calibrate highly theoretical agent-based models of scientific communities by incorporating empirical information from real-world systems. As a result, these models more closely correspond with real-world communities, and are better suited for informing policy decisions than extant how-possibly models. I provide an exemplar of a mid-level model of science funding allocation that incorporates bibliometric data from scientific publications and data generated from empirical studies of peer review into an epistemic landscape model. The (...)
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  • Method Pluralism, Method Mismatch, & Method Bias.Adrian Currie & Shahar Avin - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.
    Pluralism about scientific method is more-or-less accepted, but the consequences have yet to be drawn out. Scientists adopt different methods in response to different epistemic situations: depending on the system they are interested in, the resources at their disposal, and so forth. If it is right that different methods are appropriate in different situations, then mismatches between methods and situations are possible. This is most likely to occur due to method bias: when we prefer a particular kind of method, despite (...)
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  • What Is the Epistemic Function of Highly Idealized Agent-Based Models of Scientific Inquiry?Daniel Frey & Dunja Šešelja - 2018 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (4):407-433.
    In this paper we examine the epistemic value of highly idealized agent-based models of social aspects of scientific inquiry. On the one hand, we argue that taking the results of such simulations as informative of actual scientific inquiry is unwarranted, at least for the class of models proposed in recent literature. Moreover, we argue that a weaker approach, which takes these models as providing only “how-possibly” explanations, does not help to improve their epistemic value. On the other hand, we suggest (...)
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  • Modelling the truth of scientific beliefs with cultural evolutionary theory.Krist Vaesen & Wybo Houkes - 2014 - Synthese 191 (1).
    Evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists have been considerably successful in modelling the cumulative evolution of culture, of technological skills and knowledge in particular. Recently, one of these models has been introduced in the philosophy of science by De Cruz and De Smedt (Philos Stud 157:411–429, 2012), in an attempt to demonstrate that scientists may collectively come to hold more truth-approximating beliefs, despite the cognitive biases which they individually are known to be subject to. Here we identify a major shortcoming in that (...)
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  • Influence theory.Nicholas Rescher & Patrick Grim - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-53.
    Influence theory is a systematic study of formal models of the communicative influence of one person or group of people on another person or group. In that sense influence theory is an overarching philosophical discipline that includes aspects of decision theory and game theory as sub-disciplines as well as established models of de facto segregation, cultural change, opinion polarization, and epistemic networks. What we offer here is a structured outline of formal results that have been scattered across a range of (...)
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  • Modelling Efficient Team Structures in Biology.Vlasta Sikimić & Ole Herud-Sikimić - 2022 - Journal of Logic and Computation.
    We used agent-based modelling to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of several management styles in biology, ranging from centralized to egalitarian ones. In egalitarian groups, all team members are connected with each other, while in centralized ones, they are only connected with the principal investigator. Our model incorporated time constraints, which negatively influenced weakly connected groups such as centralized ones. Moreover, our results show that egalitarian groups outperform others if the questions addressed are relatively simple or when the communication among (...)
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  • Agent-Based Models of Dual-Use Research Restrictions.Elliott Wagner & Jonathan Herington - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (2):377-399.
    Scientific research that could cause grave harm, either through accident or intentional malevolence, is known as dual-use research. Recent high-profile cases of dual-use research in the life sciences have led to debate about the extent to which restrictions on the conduct and dissemination of such research may impede scientific progress. We adapt formal models of scientific networks to systematically explore the effects that different regulatory schemes may have on a community’s ability to learn about the world. Our results suggest that, (...)
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  • Some lessons from simulations of scientific disagreements.Dunja Šešelja - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6143-6158.
    This paper examines lessons obtained by means of simulations in the form of agent-based models about the norms that are to guide disagreeing scientists. I focus on two types of epistemic and methodological norms: norms that guide one’s attitude towards one’s own theory, and norms that guide one’s attitude towards the opponent’s theory. Concerning I look into ABMs that have been designed to examine the context of peer disagreement. Here I challenge the conclusion that the given ABMs provide a support (...)
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  • Centralized Funding and Epistemic Exploration.Shahar Avin - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axx059.
    Computer simulation of an epistemic landscape model, modified to include explicit representation of a centralized funding body, show the method of funding allocation has significant effects on communal trade-off between exploration and exploitation, with consequences for the community’s ability to generate significant truths. The results show this effect is contextual, and depends on the size of the landscape being explored, with funding that includes explicit random allocation performing significantly better than peer-review on large landscapes. The paper proposes a way of (...)
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  • Scientific Networks on Data Landscapes: Question Difficulty, Epistemic Success, and Convergence.Patrick Grim, Daniel J. Singer, Steven Fisher, Aaron Bramson, William J. Berger, Christopher Reade, Carissa Flocken & Adam Sales - 2013 - Episteme 10 (4):441-464.
    A scientific community can be modeled as a collection of epistemic agents attempting to answer questions, in part by communicating about their hypotheses and results. We can treat the pathways of scientific communication as a network. When we do, it becomes clear that the interaction between the structure of the network and the nature of the question under investigation affects epistemic desiderata, including accuracy and speed to community consensus. Here we build on previous work, both our own and others’, in (...)
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  • What Kind of Explanations Do We Get from Agent-Based Models of Scientific Inquiry?Dunja Šešelja - 2022 - In Tomas Marvan, Hanne Andersen, Hasok Chang, Benedikt Löwe & Ivo Pezlar (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology. London: College Publications.
    Agent-based modelling has become a well-established method in social epistemology and philosophy of science but the question of what kind of explanations these models provide remains largely open. This paper is dedicated to this issue. It starts by distinguishing between real-world phenomena, real-world possibilities, and logical possibilities as different kinds of targets which agent-based models can represent. I argue that models representing the former two kinds provide how-actually explanations or causal how-possibly explanations. In contrast, models that represent logical possibilities provide (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Robustness and Idealizations in Agent-Based Models of Scientific Interaction.Daniel Frey & Dunja Šešelja - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4):1411-1437.
    The article presents an agent-based model of scientific interaction aimed at examining how different degrees of connectedness of scientists impact their efficiency in knowledge acquisition. The model is built on the basis of Zollman’s ABM by changing some of its idealizing assumptions that concern the representation of the central notions underlying the model: epistemic success of the rivalling scientific theories, scientific interaction and the assessment in view of which scientists choose theories to work on. Our results suggest that whether and (...)
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  • Exploring Scientific Inquiry via Agent-Based Modelling.Dunja Šešelja - 2021 - Perspectives on Science 29 (4):537-557.
    In this paper I examine the epistemic function of agent-based models of scientific inquiry, proposed in the recent philosophical literature. In view of Boero and Squazzoni’s classification of ABMs into case-based models, typifications and theoretical abstractions, I argue that proposed ABMs of scientific inquiry largely belong to the last category. While this means that their function is primarily exploratory, I suggest that they are epistemically valuable not only as a temporary stage in the development of ABMs of science, but by (...)
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  • Theory-choice, transient diversity and the efficiency of scientific inquiry.AnneMarie Borg, Daniel Frey, Dunja Šešelja & Christian Straßer - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2):26.
    Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...)
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  • Centralised Funding and the Division of Cognitive Labour.Shahar Avin - unknown
    Project selection by funding bodies directly influences the division of cognitive labour in scientific communities. I present a novel adaptation of an existing agent-based model of scientific research, in which a central funding body selects from proposed projects located on an epistemic landscape. I simulate four different selection strategies: selection based on a god's-eye perspective of project significance, selection based on past success, selection based on past funding, and random selection. Results show the size of the landscape matters: on small (...)
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