Skip to main content

The Micro-Macro Link in DAI and Sociology

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1979))

Abstract

No matter if a population is human or artificial, we can surely identify phenomena that can be described as micro or macro phenomena. In this paper, we discuss micro and macro aspects of a population from a DAI and a sociological point of view. We analyse similarities and differences in these viewpoints, and identify misperceptions in the DAI community about the micro-macro terminology. We explain these misperceptions and argue for the transfer of sociologically founded concepts to agent-based social simulation. Our research is done in the DFG focus programme socionics. We cooperate with sociologists from University Hamburg-Harburg with the intention to transfer knowledge from sociology to DAI as well as from DAI to sociology. In cooperation with DFKI Saarbrü = cken we work on improving agent theories to be applied in large sized multi-agent systems in the freight logistics domain.

This work is supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under contract Fi 420/1-1.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Alexander, J. (1983). Theoretical Logic in Sociology. Vol. 4:Tthe Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Alexander, J. (1995). Fin-de-siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction and the Problem of Reason, London.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bazzan, A. L. C., Bordini, R. H. und Campbell, J. A. (1997). Agents with Moral Sentiments in an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Exercise. In [13].

    Google Scholar 

  4. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York, Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs/New Jersey.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bond, A. H. and Gasser, L. (1988). Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 3–35.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bourdieu, P. (1987). La Distinction: critique sociale du jugement. Translated by Nice, R.: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard Univ Press. 1987

    Google Scholar 

  8. Castelfranchi, C. and Falcone, R. (1998). Principles of Trust for MAS: Cognitive Anatomy, Social Importance, and Quantification. In Y. Demazeau. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS 98), 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Colemann, J. (1990): Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge/Mass.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Colemann, J., and Bourdieu, P. (1991). Theory for changing Society, N.Y.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Conte, R. and Castelfranchi, C. (1996). Simulating Multi-Agent Interdependencies. A Two-Way Approach to the Micro-Macro Link. In Troitzsch (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Conte, R. and Moss, S. (In preparation). Agent Based Social Simulation: Technological Roadmap. Document for the AgentLink SIG on Agent-Based Social Simulation.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dautenhahn, K., Masthoff, J. und Numaoka, C. (1997). Socially Intelligent Agents. Papers from the 1997 AAAI Fall Symposium, November 8-10, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Technical Report FS-97-02.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Doran, J. E. (1997). From Computer Simulation to Artificial Societies. Transactions SCS, vol.14(2), pp. 69–77.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Edmonds, B. and Dautenhahn, K. (1998). The Contribution of Society to the Construction of Individual Intelligence. In Edmonds, B. and Dautenhahn, K. (eds.), Socially Situated Intelligence: a workshop held at SAB’98, August 1998, Zürich. University of Zürich Technical Report, 42-60.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of Society, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Goffmann, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor Books.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Goffmann, E. (1959). The presentation of Self in Everyday-Life, N.Y.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Goffmann, E. (1961). Encounters, Indianapolis, N.Y.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Hannoun, M., Sichman, J., Boissier, O. and Sayettat, C. (1998). Dependence Relations Between roles in a Multi-Agent System: Towards the Detection of Inconsistencies in Organization. In Sichman, J., Conte, R. and Gilbert, N. (eds.), Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based Simulation, LNAI 1534.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Homans, C. (1950). The human group, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Homans, C. (1974). Social Behavior, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Kennedy, J. (1999). Artificial Sociocognition: Cultures of Belief in Populations of Elementals. In Landauer, C. and Bellman, K. L. (eds.): Virtual Worlds and Simulation Conference (VWSIM’99), Simulation Series, vol 31 (2), The Society for Computer Simulation.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Jennings, N. R. and Campos, J.R. (1997). “Towards a social level characterisation of socially responsibel agents”, IEE proceedings on software engineering 144(1), pp. 11–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Jennings, N. R., Sycara, K. and Wooldridge, M. J. (1998). A roadmap of agent research and development. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 1:7–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Langton, C. B. (1989). Artificial Life. Studies in the Sciences of Compexity, vol. 6, pp. 1–48, Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Marcenac, P., Courier, R., Calderoni, S. and Soulie, C. (1998). Towards an Emergence Machine for Complex Systems Simulations. In Del Pbil, A. P. and Mira, J. and Ali, M. (eds.): Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1416, Springer Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Malsch, T. (2000). From a talk given at the kick-off meeting of the German socionics projects in Hamburg Rissen, January 28th.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Mead, G. (1934). Mind, Self and Society, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Moulin, B. and Chaib-Draa, B. (1996). An overview of distributed artificial intelligence. In O’Hare, G. M. P. and Jennings, N. R. (eds.): Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pp. 3–55. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Müller, H.J., Malsch, T. and Schulz-Schaefer, I. (1998). SOCIONICS: Introduction and Potential. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. vol. 1(3).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Nwana, H. S. (1996). Software Agents: An Overview. In Knowledge Engineering Review, vol. 11 (3), pp. 205–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Parsons, T. and Shills, C. (1962). Toward a General Theory of Action. New York.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Parsons, T. (1971). The system of modern societies. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Sandholm, T. (1999). Distributed Rational Decision Making. In Weiss (1999).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Sichman, J.S., Conte, R., Castelfranchi, C., and Demazeau, Y. (1994). A social reasoning mechanism based on dependence networks. Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Schillo, M., Rovatsos, M. and Funk, P. (2000). Using trust for Detecting Deceitful Agents in Artificial Societies. In the AAI Journal, Special Issue on “Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies”, eds: Castelfranchi, C., Tan, Y., Falcone, R., and Firozabadi, B. S.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Schütz, A. and Luckmann, T. (1973). The Structures of Life-World. London: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Troitzsch, K., Mueller, U., Gilbert, N. and Doran, J. (1996). Social Science Microsimulation. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Troitzsch, K. (1996). Multilevel Simulation. In [43].

    Google Scholar 

  45. Verhagen, H. and Smit, R. (1997). Multi-agent systems as simulation tools for social theory testing. Poster presentation at International Conference on Computer Simulation and the Social Sciences (ISSC&SS), Cortona.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Wallerstein, I. (1991). The Modern World-System: Capitalistic Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the sixteenth Century. Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Weiß, G. (1999). Multi-Agent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence. MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Yamagishi, T. (1986) The Provision of a Sanctioning System as a Public Good. In Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 51 (1), pp. 110–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Schillo, M., Fischer, K., Klein, C.T. (2000). The Micro-Macro Link in DAI and Sociology. In: Moss, S., Davidsson, P. (eds) Multi-Agent-Based Simulation. MABS 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1979. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44561-7_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44561-7_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41522-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44561-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics