Syllabus: IR 419: COMPLEX MODELS of COGNITIVE, SOCIAL and ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Home , Robert Axelrod

Course meets Tu,Th 1230-150pm, VKC 254 Hayward R. Alker misc. labs meet Weds. 11am-1150am, in VKC 213 [email protected] VKC 328, SIR; 213-740-2152

Syllabus: IR 419: COMPLEX MODELS OF COGNITIVE, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Overview

We often hear calls for simplicity, order instead of chaos, public learning, the adaptive revision of our domestic or international institutions, the viability of our cities, or the sustainable development of our countries. To go beyond shallow rhetoric concerning such matters, we need knowledgeably to discuss the scientific bases, if they exist, for such concepts and their metaphorical applications. Indeed, “Chaos,” “complexity” and evolutionary “adaptation,” “learning” or “sustainability” are terms with relatively clear (but multiple) meanings in the mathematical, computational, natural and social sciences, meanings we shall try to explore. This course seeks to increase understanding of the complexities of meaningful human thoughts, actions and interactions, seen as located within evolutionary and ecological contexts. Both students with and without a background in the use and programming of computers are welcomed into what can be described as an advanced introductory course: one where different relevant backgrounds are deemed helpful, but not presumed, one where "how to model" and "why model" questions are both addressed. We wish to give students from different parts of the USC campus opportunities to explore inter-disciplinary complexity literatures and modeling traditions, their strengths and limitations, their core ideas and their possible developments and applications. Both social scientists interested in the ideas within and behind computer modeling, and environmental studies majors should find this course relevant to these interests. We assume that improved understanding of such things is a two way street, with social and natural scientists talking with computer modelers about the concepts and processes they have in mind, and the modelers exploring these ideas with different formal versions of these ideas.; each style of work can and should learn from the other, and the literatures they have contributed to on such challenging problems. With this kind of learning in mind, these contexts and the human interactions within them will be modeled computationally as complex or “non-linear” dynamical systems, capable of orderly or “chaotic” behavior, learning, forgetting, meaningful behaviors, reproduction, evolutionary adaptation and extinction. It is an open question how well recognizable "human complexities" like meaning making, the telling of morally motivating fictional tales or truthful histories, doing complex mathematics, and societal responses to ecological crises can be understood. Computationally modeled versions of such processes will be a central issue in the course: Students without modeling capabilities will explore preprogrammed modules associated with the assigned reading; computer modelers will have opportunities to reformulate and explore such models in C, Visual Basic, and JAVA. Relevant computer science courses include those on dynamic systems, neural nets, machine learning, semantic information processing, complex adaptive systems, and other topics in (distributed) artificial intelligence. Where will we find out about what is known about such processes? Many prominent cognitive, biological, social and computational scientists associated with the study of complex systems have clustered around the Santa Fe Institute (the SFI) in New Mexico, where Professor Alker had his last sabbatical; they include Murray Gell-Mann, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, George Lakoff, Chris Langton, Thomas Ray, Brian Arthur, Robert Axelrod, Joshua Epstein, and Stephen Lansing. Besides the examples in our "Fish from Chips" text, these writers will provide the majority of additional writings discussed in the course. Others to be mentioned in the course include the late John von Neumann of 1 the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Noam Chomsky at MIT, and Lars Erik Cederman at UCLA. Roughly, these authors can be grouped together as "chaos and complexity theorists," as in the title of the course's main text: Gary Flake’s The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation. Alternatively, they might be described as attempting to account for complexities in natural and artificial worlds, complexities associated with evolutionary development up to "the edge of chaos," to borrow terms used by Langton and Kauffman. For a computer scientist, this course explores through concrete, programmed examples, the possibilities for the adaptation, extension and revision of a style of computational modeling into a different domain, where the humanities, the cognitive and the social sciences have traditionally held sway. Hence Flake's "From chips to flying fishes" book cover. Hence our look at the metaphorical constructionist projects of Lakoff and Nunez's inventive mathematicians. From the perspective of a humanistically oriented social scientist, there are many cautionary challenges to be made along such pathways, as well as intriguing possibilities for new ways of understanding. Can we extend the insights of a style of thinking developed in physics, chemistry and biology into the domain of characteristically human activities? To the study of life choices, societal devevelopment, ecological politics, or political morality? We shall offer both "distance to destination" billboards and cautionary signposts along these roads, not a complete roadmap for explorations that are still continuing. Besides a variety of class exercises, the student will be required to write a relevant book review and a research paper. The research papers can be coauthored by pairs of social scientists, environmentalists, and/or computer scientists.

Required Texts*

Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation, MIT Press, 1998. Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation, Princeton U.Press, 1997. (paper) J. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali, Princeton University Press, 1991. (paper) George Lakoff and Rafael E. Nunez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, Basic Books, New York, 2000 (0-465-03770-4) Hardback; OR George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, Basic Books, New York 1999. Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell, Creating Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up, MIT Press and Brookings, 1996. (paper). * To be purchased at the USC bookstore.

Requirements and Grading

There will be several relatively easy computer exercises, mostly designed to exercise the illustrative programs made available with Flake’s book. These will be required of all participants; those with greater computer skills will be encouraged to use them. A more important focus of faculty evaluation will be two papers: a textbook review, and a research review and/or extension paper. Overall grades will be composed in the following manner:

 laboratory exercises (35% of course grade);  a textbook review, one from the list of introductory complexity texts below (20%); and  a research review and/or extension paper (30% of grade);  Class attendance and participation (15%). 2

It is expected that each student will write a 5-6 page, single spaced textbook review (see recommended list below). These textbook reviews will be due April 10, and may be distributed to the rest of the class by the Professor as course enhancing material. In reading through these introductory works, the student should ask the same questions we shall be addressing in class:  What makes "chaos," “complex models,” "complexity," “cognition,” “evolution/adaptation” or “artificial life” exciting subjects? Can "smart" nanorobots be dangerous?  Journalists and politicians love to talk about the world's complexity, about living on the edge of chaos (from which we are being saved by their efforts!) Are complexity and chaos parts of "received knowledge"? Heuristic ideas? Measurable things? Or are they a kind of awesome or scary Metaphysics?  Is there an implicit or explicit notion of hierarchy or development towards the more complex, or the less chaotic in thought, in life, in the world, in virtual reality?  Is there an implicit or explicit, well supported idea of a system’s renewal, viability or decline? How far have computer scientists and others got towards understanding the complex events and achievements that good historians have discovered actually happens in human experience?  What "concepts" or "computational models" contribute the most to such discussions?  Do the journalists, teachers, politicians or scientists we hear from about chaos and complexity have a sophisticated understanding of the natural, cognitive and social sciences and the relevant work therein?  How are the key concepts operationalized for research or policy purposes?  What are the researchable scientific topics identified, and what do we know about them? Of what are we ignorant?  What suggestions are made for future pure and applied work, especially regarding evolutionary adaptation, reproducibility, viability or sustainability?  How is the human-machine relationship envisioned, discussed, evaluated in existing, already published studies? Is this engagement environmentally focussed? Could it be improved upon?

The research review/extension paper may be a critical literature review and/or an extension of such literatures. It should start with a field of complexity studies introduced in class and addressed in one or more of the books on the “more advanced” recommended books list below. The student should bring in the discussion additional related literatures, include a reasoned statement of his or her own views, and (if possible and feasible) the results of his or her own research. Approval by Professor Alker of the topic of this paper should be part of this process.

Students requesting academic accommodations based on disability are required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP when adequate documentation is filed. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me (or to TA) as early in the semester as possible. DSP is open Monday- Friday, 8:30-5:00. The office is in Student Union 301 and their phone number is (213) 740-0776.

Readings and Assignments

I.Thinking about Complexity

Tuesday, Jan 9: Introduction and discussion of syllabus If possible, obtain from Alker’s office and read ahead of class Alker’s “Bit Flows, Rewrites and Social 3 Talk,” Information and Its Functions, Tokyo University Press, 1986; also read Flake's Table of Contents and Preface (pp. vii-xviii of "Fish from Chips", my brief title for Flake's The Computational Beauty of Nature)

Thursday, Jan 11: Flake's Computational Vision of Natural Hierarchies. Introduction, Number Systems and Infinity, and Epiloque. (“Fish from Chips,” pp. 1-22; 425-34)

Tuesday, Jan. 16, Thursday, January 18.: Evolutionary, Cognitive Conceptions of Complexity Read these two classic sources, and try to place Axelrod's writings on Campbell's hierarchy:: Donald T. Campbell, "Methodological Suggestions for a Comparative Psychology of Knowledge Processes," General Systems Yearbook 6(1961): 15-29. R. Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation:Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration, Princeton, pp. 3--94, 124-144.

Thursday Jan 25,Tuesdays, Jan. 23 and Jan. 30, An Embodied Mind Approach to Human Cognition Students will be introduced to a biologically grounded approach to human cognition employed by a growing body of contemporary cognitive scientists, literary theorists and philosophers. Those with some mathematical and computer science backgrounds (have had a calculus course and or a formal logic course) and wanting to reexplore these subjects in terms of the sustained motivational quests of these subjects' creative pioneers will focus on: G. Lakoff and R.E. Munez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, Basic Books, New York, 2000. Pp. 1-255, 420-322. OR Alternatively, we will look at the way Lakoff has reframed the causal understanding of human action, with applications to liberal and conservative political morality and human rational choice: Lakoff and M. Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, pp. 2-334, 513-538. Further reading of Lakoff's Moral Politics (see below) is highly recommended. So are "philosophy/artificial intelligence" studies of human practical reasoning by Roger Schank, Robert Abelson and their students. Related studies by+ Douglas Walton and Anna Wierzbicka are also most relevant and stimulating.

Book Report Choice Due January 30. By this date, students will choose a book from the Recommended Introductory Texts List below, and inform Professor Alker about this choice (which may be negotiated if too many students choose the same book). The student is responsible for obtaining a copy of the textbook in question; they have not been placed on reserve. It is expected that each student will write a 5-6 page, single spaced book review. These book reviews will be due April 10, and may be distributed to the rest of the class by the Professor as course enhancing material. In reading through these introductory works, the student should ask the same questions we shall be addressing in class:  What makes "chaos," “complex models,” "complexity," “cognition,” “evolution/adaptation” or “artificial life” exciting subjects? Are they dangerous?  Are complexity, chaos or viability parts of "received knowledge"? Heuristics? Measurable things? Or are they a kind of Metaphysics?  Is there an implicit or explicit notion of hierarchy or development towards the more complex, or the less chaotic?  Is there an implicit or explicit , well supported idea of a system’s renewal, viability or decline?  What "conceptual" or "mathematical/computational" frameworks are proposed, and what role do they play, in such discussions?  Does the author have a sophisticated understanding of the natural, cognitive and social 4 sciences and the relevant work therein?  How are the key concepts operationalized for research or policy purposes?  What are the researchable scientific topics identified, and what do we know about them? Of what are we ignorant?  What suggestions are made for future pure and applied work, especially regarding evolutionary adaptation, reproducibility, viability or sustainability?  How is the human-machine relationship envisioned, discussed, evaluated? Is this engagement environmentally focussed?

February 6 and 8 .: Computability, Incomputability and Incompleteness: Curse or Boon? Flake, Chapters 3 and 4, pp, 23-58; Skim Flake, Ch. 17, for a possible application in Axelrod's Prisoner's Dilemma World.

II.Recursive models of Fractals, Plants, Language and Historical Narratives

February 13, 15: Self-Similarity, Fractal Geometry and Fractal Growth Flake, Chapters 5 and 6, pp. 61-92.

February 20, 21. Fractal Algebra, Imaginary Landscapes and the Mandelbrot Set Flake, skim chapters 7 and 8 (pp. 93-128), getting as much of you can of the generative algebra producing the gorgeous and famous pictures shown here (some of which will be generated in the lab). Then read carefully the synthesizing postcript to this section, on fractal simplicity and effective complexity, Chapter 9, pp. 129-136.Note that there will be a lab the 21st, but not a class the 22nd.

February 27, March 1. Human Infinities: A Generative Science of Language, Thought and Action. N. Chomsky, “Formal Analysis of Natural Languages, pp. 283-306; and G. Miller and N. Chomsky, Finitary Models of Language Users,” pp. 464-488, in D. Luce, ed., Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, Vol. II, Wiley and Sons, 1963. H. Alker, "Fairy Tales, Tragedies, and World Histories," in his Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies, Cambridge U. Press, 267-302.

One paragraph research review proposal due. By February 27, the student should have agreed on a research topic with Professor Alker, linked especially to one or more of the topics in the course, and to at least one of the books on the second list above. Since a number of course topics will be introduced in the next several weeks, a research project proposal paragraph may require a little bit of advanced reading or skimming of particularly interesting materials from the rest of this syllabus, and discussion of the matter further with Professor Alker. The research report, approximately 10-15 pages in length, double spaced, will be due the last day of class, April 26. Although the paper may be primarily a review and discussion of additional literature relevant to a course theme, those able to explore, critique or extend existing models will be given extra credit.

Tuesday, Mar. 6. More on how political arguments by generatively/constitutively modeled? H. Alker, “Historical Argumentation and Statistical Inference,” Historical Methods, 17(1984): 164-173, 270. Stephen Majeski and David Sylvan, "How Foreign Policy recommendations are Put together: A Computational Model with Empirical Applications, International Interactions, Vol. 25, No.4 (1999): 301- 332. H. Alker, "Fairy Tales, Tragedies, and World Histories," in his Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies, Cambridge U. Press, 267-302. 5

March 8, 20. Is there a Chemistry of Human Intentions and Emotions? Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Intentional Behavior as a Complex System , MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 103-213, 217-241. OR Wendy Lehnert, "Plot Units and Narrative Summarizations," Cognitive Science, 4(1981): 293-331. Alker, Lehnert and Schneider, “Toynbee’s Jesus: Computational Hermeneutics and the continuing presence of classical Mediterranean civilization,” In Alker’s Rediscoveries and Reformulations, Cambridge U. Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 104-24, 137-143.

SPRING VACATION, MARCH 12-17.

III.Societies as More or Less Chaotic, Complex Systems

March 22, 27. Possibly Chaotic Dynamics Flake, Chs. 10 and 12, pp. 137-58, 181-202.

March 29, April 3. Multi-agent modeling, societal interactions and emergence. Joshua M . Epstein and Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies, Brookings/MIT, 1996. Pages 1-181. (Advanced, optional: read chapters by Bremer and Mihalka and Bennett and Alker, in K.W. Deutsch et al., eds., Problems of World Modeling, Ballinger, Cambridge, MA, 1977.)

April 5. Cellular Automata, Autonomous Agents and Self-Organization "Fish from Chips," Chs. 15, 16., pp. 229-280.

IV. Genetics, Evolution and Artificial Life

April 10, 12. Modeling Genetics and Adaptation Flake, Chs. 20, 23, pp. 339-360; and 415-424. The textbook review is due in class April 10. This is the last week that will have a laboratory exercise.

Tuesday, April 17. Is Humanity a Low Probability Accident, Whose Contingent Existence or Extinction Can be Computationally Replicated? The Cambrian Explosion in History and in Silico. S. J. Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Norton and Co., NY, 1989, pp 13-19, 263-291. H. Alker and S. Frazier, On Historical Complexity," mimeo, 1996, pp. 6-25 (a replay of Thomas Ray's multi-agent, artificial life Tierra world)

Thursday, April 19 and Tuesday, Aril 24. Human Ingenuity and Ecological Progress J. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali, Princeton University Press, 1991. (paper)

Thursday, April 26. Course Review and Discussion of the Challenges of Environmentally Sensitive Computation Modeling. Kurt Anderson, “The Next Big Dialectic,” NYTimes Op. Ed Nov. 28, 1999 suggests: “The great new philosophical and political schism of the 21st century will concern computers and their status as 6 creatures rather than machines.” (Italics in the original). Do you agree? Second Book Report/Research paper due in class. Read: Flake, pp. 427-433 over again; and Alker, "Putting Historicity into Adaptive, Multi-agent Simulations", Rikkomeikan Journal of International Relations, Vol 9 (1997), pp. 125-132; and George B. Dyson, Darwin among the Machines: The evolution of global intelligence, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1997, pp. 222-28, the concluding fable from a chapter entitled: "Fiddling while Rome burns."

Recommended Relevant Introductory Texts

Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York, 1984. Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation: agent-based models of competion and collaboration, Princeton University Press, 1997. Margaret Boden, ed., The Philosophy of Artificial Life, Oxford University Press, 1996. Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding complex systems, Routledge, London and New York, 1998. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution reveals a universe without design, with a new Introduction, W.W. Norton, 1996. George B. Dyson, Darwin among the Machines; The evolution of global intelligence, Perseus Books, Reading, MA, 1997. Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Swerve Editions/Zone Books, New York, 1997. M. Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, W.H.Freeman, New York, 1994. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, Penguin Books, New York, 1988. John H. Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, Helix Books, Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park, 1995 (paper) Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995. (paper) Janel Kolodner, Case-Based Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, 1993. Paul Krugman, Self-Organizing Economies, Blackwell’s, 1996. George Lakoff, Moral Politics, Chicago U. Press, Chicago, 1996 Christopher G. Langton (ed.), Artificial Life, SFI Proceedings VI, Menlo Park, 1989. Simon Levin, Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons, Perseus Books, Reading, MA, 1999. Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988. Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, Basic Books/Perseus, New York, 1999. Ilya Prigogine and Isabel Stengers. Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialoque with Nature, Bantam, NY, 1984. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, 1968. (or later edition) Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Grosset/Putnam, 1994. Mitchell N. Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992. Jonathan Weiner, Time, Love and Memory, Vintage Books,/Random House, 1999. 7 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, New York: Knopf, 1998.

Other, Usually More Advanced, Recommended Books

Phil E. Agre and S. J. Rosenschein, eds., Computational Theories of Interaction and Agency, MIT Press, 1996. Michael A. Arbib and Mary B. Hesse. The construction of reality. Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1986. W. Brian Arthur, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1994. Ronald D. Brunner and Garry D. Brewer, Organized Complexity, Free Press, New York, 1971. Leo Buss, The Evolution of Individuality, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1987. Lars-Erik Cederman, Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve, Princeton University Press, 1997. J. P. Crecine, Governmental Problem Solving, Markham, Chicago, 1969. Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers nad the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997. Terry Deacon, The Symbolic Species, Basic Books?, 199? Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition, Harvard U. Press, 1991. John Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order, Addison Wesley, Reading, MA, 1998. Manuel de Landa, One Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Swerve Editions/Zone Books/MIT Press, New York, 1997.. E. Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild,, MIT Press, 1995. T. A. Kohler and G. J. Gumerman, Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies, Oxford U. Press, NY, 2000. Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System, MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1999. Robert Jervis, System Effects, Princeton U. Press, 199x. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, 1999. C. G. Langton, ed., Artificial Life: An Overview, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997. Floyd Merrell, Simplicity and Complexity: Pondering Literature, Science, and Painting, U. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1998. Harry R. Lewis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Elements of the Theory of Computation, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1981. Melanie Mitchell, An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, MIT Press, 1996. Christos. H. Papadimitriou, Computational Complexity, Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park, 1994. Eric S. Ristad, The Language Complexity Game, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993. Nicholas Rescher, Complexity: A philosophical Overview, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 1998. M. Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994. Roger Schank and Robert Abelson, Goals, Plans , Scripts and Understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures:, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1977. R. Schank and C. Riesbeck, Inside Computer Understanding, Erlbaum, 1981. Brian Skyrms, Evolution of the Social Contract, Cambridge U. Press, 1996. Stephen Slade, Goal-Based Decision Making: An Interpersonal Model, Erlbaum, 1994. J.A. and B. B. Tainter, eds., Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric 8 Southwest, Santa Fe Institute, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996. Douglas Walton, Practical Reasoning: Goal-Driven, Knowledge-Based, Action-Guiding Argumentation. Rowman and Littlefield, Savage, MD, 1990. Anna Wierzbicka, Semantics, Culture and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations, Oxford U. Press, NY, 1992. Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Ablex, Norwood, NJ, 1986.