Steve Watson

There is a question whether Yoga is necessarily a religion or whether it is possible to be a practitioner and remain, for example, a good Christian. Now, ‘Yoga’ is the name of a wide variety of beliefs and practices – we might compare it to the Dao of the classical Chinese culture – but in this context the yoga intended is obviously the physical practice of assuming poses associated with and supposedly justified by the particular metaphysics found in the classic Hindu Samkhya–Yoga darshana. This yoga is roughly speaking Hatha yoga – as described in the Hathayoga Pradipika, and the ideological underpinning tends to look to the Raja yoga and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which make no specific theological claims. The exact stemma of the typical modern western yoga is pretty confused, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much at the moment. Suffice it to say that it is that form transmitted to us by Vivekananda, Yogananda, Sivananda, Kuvalayananda, Hariharananda, Krishnamacharya, and others.

Note that Vivekananda deliberately sought to create a secular practice suitable to be taught to the whole world, and Krishnamacharya’s version, which he taught to BKS Iyenagar, K Pattabhi Jois, and TKV Desikachar, was an extraordinary mix of techniques from hatha yoga, British military calisthenics, and South-western Indian wrestling traditions (Sjoman, NE, The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, New Delhi:Abhinav:1996 ref. in White, DG (2011) “Yoga, Brief History of an Idea” (Chapter 1 of Yoga in Practice)) Thus it would probably be a surprise if there was a coherent religious essence to the resultant practice.

The arguments that have been presented for considering yoga to be a necessarily religious practice have both trivial and even more trivial forms. The trivial form can be seen in the claim that as yoga is a product of a certain religious tradition, and the very Sanskrit names of the asanas are references to various Hindu religious concepts – like the surya namaskar ‘Salute to the Sun (God)’ – the practice of yoga will lead one willy-nilly to performing religious rituals and thus participating in another religion. (Kremer, W. “Does doing yoga make you a Hindu?” BBC News Magazine.) “Religious intentions may not be there to begin with but practising yoga might lead them to develop.” But it’s not at all clear that there is a necessary connection between the performance of the postures and the holding of certain beliefs. What counts is always the intention, and unless the claim is that the intention will be generated by habit, if the intention to worship is not there then there is no worshipping being done.

The even more trivial form is that now endorsed by the Indian Supreme Court: that yoga is traditionally understood to be a religious practice and therefore must always be that. But this is really a determination that in the cultural circumstances of India, the law will simply define yoga as a religious practice because it’s too hard to do anything else. I don’t see that there’s anything in that administrative decision to alarm or even interest practitioners outside India.

On the other hand, there may be religious objections to the claims that are made for yoga’s benefit to its practitioners. The traditional claim – made implicitly rather than explicitly in the older texts, so far as I can discover – is that the dedicated practice of Hatha yoga will demonstrate to the resistant mind (citta) that the body (let it be prakriti) is not part of the self (let it be purusa) and that the self and body are indeed independent. The realisation of kaivalya (independence) in more than a merely intellectual manner is the desired point of this practice, and will assist the practitioner in the achievement of whatever particular style of moksha is appropriate to the yogin. This, however, suggests at least a couple of  comments.

First, the absolute independence of body and self cannot be acceptable to all religious traditions: the Christian sinner, for example, may be a sinner because of the effect of the flesh upon the soul – in the gnostic tradition corrupting it, but in any case facilitating its decline. Certainly, Christians believe that the soul can be saved from the flesh and that it will continue to exist when the flesh is sloughed off at death; but while the soul is incarnated it forms a complete person and the flesh is not irrelevant to that person.

Secondly, the realisation of independence is a step to liberation of the purusa element from the cycle of reincarnation. This is a very much a religious doctrine.

Now, it is possible that this can all be dismissed as irrelevant to the practice of modern yoga, but in that case what is the evidence that there is any benefit at all? Is it just massively coincidentally the case that the postures intended to fulfil one very specific metaphysical function also fulfil a general physical fitness function. How lucky is that!

Second – and this may matter more – the division of the casualties into non-combatants and combatants is disputed for the Gazan side. By their own telling, almost all the casualties are women and children and other innocent bystanders; but this is a claim that clearly serves their propaganda purposes and seems to be inconsistent with statistical analyses of the demographic profile of the casualties. The Israelis claim that the greater part of the casualties consists of HAMAS operatives of one kind or another. It should be noted that similar disputed claims in previous Israeli-Arab clashes have eventually shown that an accurate accounting is much closer to the initial Israeli estimates than to the Arab claims. Given that Israel is a professional modern army and its society has many routes of independent accountability, this should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, we shall consider two cases: ‘CD-A’ will label the case where 90% of the casualties are civilians and ‘B’ will label the case where 50% are.

How is the proportionality rule to be understood?

The reason that proportionality is fixed on as a point of complaint in this war is surely that proportionality is one of the criteria for a Just War in modern Just War theory. Actually, it is two of the criteria, since it occurs both in jus ad bellum and in jus in bello. We can think of them easily enough as two versions of the same rule So far as the first goes, it is claimed that in a just war the act of going to war is a proportional response to the evil that otherwise justifies the war. We can call this the first criterion of proportionality, and label it P1. The second rule, P2, requires that the harm caused by actions taken in a war should be proportional to the goods that are sought by those actions. Clearly, P1 and P2 are versions of the same rule,

P: that the harm caused by an action (or course of actions) ought to be proportional to the good gained.

There is a question that arises even before we look for the justifying moral theory for this rule P, and that is whether the judgement of justness is to be made as a judgement on the actor or the action. We typically speak as if we are judging the actions themselves, but the way the rule is phrased in P takes no account of the intentions of the actor. Is this reasonable? If it is not reasonable, then we could rephrase the rule as

P_int: that the harm intended by an action (or course of actions) ought to be proportional to the good intended.

Then again, we need to ask whether this ignores the important aspect of what the actor reasonably expects to happen. Should the rule be rather,

P_exp: that the harm foreseen by an action (or course of actions) ought to be proportional to the good foreseen.

Where’s the justification for the proportionality rule?

The fundamental difficulty with JWT is that it is usually presented as if it has no foundation in any fundamental ethical theory such as utilitarianism or Kantian ethics, but simply appears at the level of general claims about specific kinds of actions. This means that when a question arises over the judgement of some action, we have no deeper theory from which to derive an answer, but must either appeal to casuistry and the application of principles of analogy etc. to the (not very) fundamental previously accepted truths, or simply point to our intuitions.

This is obvious to almost everyone who works in this area, but is hardly taken seriously as a problem. For example, an effort is made by Hurka (T., ‘Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2005, 33:1, pp. 34-66) to investigate and clarify the notion of proportionality directly, but he repeatedly comes up against the lack of general theory that should motivate these supposed principles of justice in war; and he recognises the difficulty, but he does not make any move to address it effectively.

Hurka notes (pp. 39 f,) for example, that some (James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 27–28 – referring to ius ad bellum proportionality) have suggested that proportionality need only mean that the total good resulting should outweigh the total bad resulting. But even if it is accepted that optimality is not required – And why shouldn’t it be? No answer – the claim lacks plausibility. What if an action in pursuit of a just cause leads to some slight excess of harm over good? Is it just obvious that that makes it unjust? It isn’t obvious to me. The fact that optimality is not required means that we are not dealing with a pure consequentialism here; but then, what is it? The situation of a slight excess of harm might be accounted for if we weighed the goods more heavily than the harms (Douglas Lackey, The Ethics of War and Peace, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989, pp. 40–41), so that in the calculation the harms would have to very much outweigh the goods before the proportionality criterion would take effect. But what could be the justification for such a weighting other than an ad hoc fix to a faulty moral calculator? The difficulty may be that whereas it makes sense to count the total harms, it doesn’t make equal sense to count the total goods, but only those goods relevant to the justification of the war – which justification is not to be made on pure consequentialist grounds – otherwise we’d count all sorts of irrelevant benefits achieved through violence as making that violence acceptable (just.) But then we have the further problem of deciding precisely how widely the net of relevant goods needs to be cast; and for that we’d need some general principle or theory that tells us the conditions required for relevance – and we have no such theory.

And so it continues. A thoroughly typical expression of exasperation is found on page 57:

when it can find some more abstract value that underlies them and see how far each instantiates that value. But the considerations in play here seem irreducibly diverse: political self-determination and the protection of a national home on the one side, death and suffering on the other. This leaves their comparison to direct intuition …

Nonetheless, he continues, “I hope to have vindicated the common-sense view that …”; but he hasn’t: he has only shown us where our intuitions take us in several special cases. We will get nowhere until we get more basic.

Notwithstanding references to Cicero or Augustine or to other naïve first steps towards a theory of moral warfare, the basic shape of modern JWT is due to work done in the tradition of St Thomas Aquinas. The roots of JWT are found in the Summa Theologiae II-II, 40, in which it is stated that

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. …

Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. …

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.

These criteria, however, are derived by Aquinas according to his own understanding of the sources of morality in the Natural Law imposed by God upon the World. That Law we can come to know through reason, on the assumption that it is intended by the Lawgiver for the benefit of those for whom He is responsible and over whom He has authority. God, being reasonable, will make to be the case that which reason shows must be the case if God’s purposes are to be achieved. And because God is good, the purpose of God’s laws will be human flourishing. Therefore, to discover what God’s laws are, we need only ask what laws would lead to human flourishing.

The difficulties this poses for our question are many and obvious. The most significant problem is that if God is denied – as He usually is in modern philosophy – then morality is basically without any foundation. This is now a commonplace observation – especially since G. E. M. Anscombe (‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy 33, No. 124 (January 1958).) But even if we accepted the assumptions necessary to Aquinas’s scheme, the only principle that lies underneath the various rules to be adopted as a moral code is that we think (or agree) that by treating those rules as if they had moral force humans would flourish (or, alternatively, that we think that if everyone actually followed those rules humans would flourish.) The argument then moves on to justifying the claim about the increased likelihood of flourishing, or perhaps we would need to deal with the definition of flourishing.

An article by Peter at Conscious Entities considers the question of whether philosophical zombies have rights. It seems to me that under most forms of ethical theory that have been attractive to philosophers they would do. Let’s consider them systematically:

(a) Teleological theories

a.1 – Consequences are Utilities

A consequentialist theory – if it grants rights to any moral agents at all – does so because the consequences of that grant are better than the consequences of not doing so. Obviously, the most important of these are the members of the class of Rule Utilitarian ethical theories, in which it is claimed that rights are rules of social interaction that, if everyone follows them, together with the other rules that are in force and observed, will lead to greater utility than would be the case if any other rules were followed.  

a.1.1 – Utilities are Felicities

If utility is understood to be some kind of happiness or pleasure, then the moral agent in question, being a zombie, does not contribute to the result of the felicific calculation. What difference would this make to the result of the calculation? Suppose we got a different result by zeroing out all the contributions to the final sums made by the happiness (positive or negative) of the moral agent. Is this equivalent to considering the case of the calculation for the society as if that agent was simply not a member? Well, not quite, because the agent, operating according to the various rules imagined to be in force, will produce felicific effects in other members of the society. We can say, however, that unless the felicific significance of the zombie agent is greater than that of random other members, there is no reason to believe that it will affect the final outcomes.

a.1.1.1 – proportion of zombies

We might also wonder whether it makes a difference how many zombies there are. In the penultimately extreme case that there is just one non-zombie in the society, it is still likely that the happiness of that one member would be maximised by the calculations that justified the grant of rights in the zero-zombies situation. In the case of a society entirely constituted of zombies, there is no felicific consequence to be considered and no such thing as a distinction between right and wrong or good and bad.

a.1.1.2 – determinability of zombiehood

We might also note at this point that it makes a difference for these kinds of theories whether we are able to determine the fact of zombie-nature and the ease and accuracy with which this determination can be made. If it were possible to make this determination easily and accurately then clearly rules might include conditional statements of application relating to the zombie-status of the agents and patients involved. Such a rule might very well be the rule that came top in the appropriate felicific calculation, and such a rule might very well exclude zombies from the possession of rights. Counting against that possibility, we would have to consider that the philosophical zombies are likely to behave just as non-zombies would behave if systematically discounted in ethical calculations; which is to say, they would likely behave as if they saw themselves as alienated from the moral system in force and this might plausibly lead to more unpleasantness for the non-zombies than if they were all treated identically.

a.1.2 – decision theory vs. definitional theory

At this point the merely notional nature of the calculations involved prevents any further specificity, which is usually the case with this sort of thing. These calculations are never performed – they are impossible in principle; but from Bentham on utilitarians have been quite clear that their systems are not intended to be decision procedures, but they are intended to demonstrate that there really are precise conditions that distinguish in fact between right and wrong. Our inability, even in principle, to discover these conditions in any particular case, makes no difference to its rightness or wrongness, which is an objective fact of the world. Of course, this may mean that the proper rule to be followed might be a rule containing conditional statements of application relating to the zombie-status of the agents and patients involved – even if it was in principle impossible to make the determination. We would then be systematically prevented from knowing the right thing to do by yet another of the epistemological blocks to using the felicific calculus as a decision procedure.

(b) Deontological Theories

b.1 – Kantian theories

The standard alternative to the utilitarian theory is some form of deontological theory, usually derived from Kant. Rights in this case derive from the application of the Categorical Imperative. But this has several forms and is justified accordingly in several different ways. The justifications are related, of course, and the classes of good or bad actions determined by each form are supposed by Kant to coincide, so that it should not matter which of these we consider. Since this is not universally accepted, let’s look at the two most important forms of the CI: the universal law form and the principle of ends form.

b.1.1 – Universal Law

Kant’s justification for this form, though tricky in details, and missing important parts, is fairly easy to apply to the zombie case. We are told that one follows the rule:

Always act so that the maxim of your action can rationally be taken to be a universal law.

Any rational being will follow a categorical imperative, because it is only in that way that it demonstrates that it is operating with a Free Will. If it is to distinguish amongst all the things that might be covered by categorical imperatives but are not, it will apply The Categorical Imperative. All of the reasoning behind this refers only to the rationality of the moral agent. In this case the universal law form of the categorical imperative should apply to any rational being – and the zombie would be included amongst those along with robots and Martians and smart squid.

b.1.1 – Principle of Ends

According to the PE form of the CI:

Treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.

This is somewhat trickier. Let’s agree to ignore an objection that worries that zombies lack humanity and therefore are not covered by the CI:PE. This would be defining the zombies out of the question. For convenience we might rephrase it as

Treat yourself and others, always as ends and never as means only.

In any case the argument for treating oneself and others (moral agents) as ends is that one and they are unconditionally valuable: they are not valuable just because they are necessary to the achievement of some other end which has value. That would make them merely conditionally valuable. What makes them unconditionally valuable is that they are value-giving. And they are value-giving because they are rational and are able to formulate plans in which some things are conditionally valuable.

In so far as that goes, the philosophical zombies may be stipulated to be rational and therefore value-giving in just the same way that non-zombies are. The only objection might be that in the case of a zombie it is hard for us to imagine that value really is given to the necessary elements of a plan that it forms. Note that something which is conditionally valuable for the agent X is something for which it can be said that it is valued by X because it is a means to an end which X desires. If we are able to give a definition of desiring that does not exclude zombies then we‘ve got no problem, otherwise we do.

b.2 – God’s Law

Much less popular these days, but still important because the philosophical shape of our rights talk preserves the imprint of its origins therein, is the idea that rights are given to us as amongst the regulations instituted by God for the proper running of the World, His creation. The general picture of is most accessibly put forward by Aquinas, but the consequence in Human Rights is developed by Locke. According to this view, God has so ordained the world that it operates according to certain rules that He has promulgated, whose effect is to make the world perform that function for which God has designed it. (God being rational always has a reason for what He does, and thus had a reason for creating the world and man in it.) Some of these rules we do not have the choice to disobey: these are the Laws of Nature. With regard to others we may exercise our Free Will. These are the Natural Laws. Amongst the Natural Laws are our Human Rights. God has given us a certain number of rights that, if we acknowledge and respect them will lead to the proper functioning of the world.

Moreover, God has made it the case that we can identify these Natural Laws by the use of reason. Roughly speaking, we can say that, if we assume that God wants us to achieve X in the world, and it seems reasonable to the wisest amongst us that this purpose would best be achieved by organising the world thus and so, then we are justified in claiming that the world is in fact so arranged. The wisest amongst us have determined that God’s purpose is human flourishing in this world, and that this would be best achieved if we all had certain unalienable rights, therefore we do have such rights.

We could simply stop at this point and just point out that this is essentially the position that we had in the case of the rule utilitarians, except that now we have the claim that utility equal flourishing. For utilitarians the obligation to obey the utilitarian rule comes from the idea that obligations are always conditional on delivering our preferences, and this principle will best deliver our preferences. For Natural Law theorists, the obligation to follow the Law comes from the authority of the creator to organise His creation. (Yes, that’s a moral notion. No I don’t know how it’s justifiable.) But this difference applies only to the originating source of all moral normativity, and we are here concerned with the particular rules which partake of that normative force.

b.2.1 – Zombie flourishing

Let’s assume that human flourishing is in fact the worldly function. The questions relating to rights for zombies in this case are pretty obvious, and the first question would have to be: does God’s plan include the flourishing of (human) zombies? We can make some headway on this if we can establish what normal human (non-zombie) flourishing would be. If this flourishing essentially required something like ‘Joy’ or the experience of the love of God or some other such internalia, then this would be something that a zombie could not achieve, and therefore the flourishing of zombies could not include it. This being the case, zombies would be in the position of beings incapable of participating in God’s plan for the world, and therefore the world was not designed for the flourishing of zombies. Zombies are here to be considered as incidental parts of God’s plan, like animals and plants and the landscape.

If, on the other hand, human flourishing was something like the development of souls able to know God, then whether or not zombies could flourish would depend on unanswerable questions like whether they had souls (they were not stipulated to lack them) or whether it was possible to ‘know’ God in the proper way without an experiential capability. And on the answer to such questions would hang the possibility of zombie flourishing. We don’t seem to be getting very far in these theological speculations.

b.2.2 – Zombie rules

But happily, none of that may be necessary. It may be sufficient to consider that since zombies behave in exactly the same way that non-zombies do, we could say that the flourishing of the non-zombies under the regulations that would be proposed to allow the flourishing of a population without zombies would be completely unchanged. Unless there was the possibility of some form of regulation that would preferentially encourage the flourishing of non-zombies, there is no reason to modify the Natural Laws that would have been derived for the non-zombie case; and therefore we conclude that zombies would be attributed all the same rights and duties as non-zombies. And so, they do have all our rights and duties.

b.2.2.1 – discriminating Zombies

In the alternative case that we are able to discriminate zombie from non-zombie, and this discrimination may be achieved practicably, the possibility might well arise that we could conditionalise the Natural Law so that some rules would apply differently according to zombie-status. If that were the case, we would again have to refer to the kind and possibility of zombie flourishing before we could know what God would have us so.

Many works refocus attention from the individual to the collective; others prioritize discourse over the systematic scrutiny of behavior; some researchers approach identity as a source of mobilization rather than a product of it; and the analysis of virtual identities now competes with research on identities established in the copresent world. This essay explores all such agenda. 

Theorizing Identity, Nationality and Citizenship: Implication for European Citizenship Identity by Lynn Jamieson,

This paper reviews theoretical approaches to the key concepts of ‘identity’ and ‘citizenship’ exploring their implications for the possibility of ‘European’ identity and ‘European’ citizenship.

Types of Groups in Openstax collection ‘Introduction to Sociology’

Summary:

• Understand primary and secondary groups as the two sociological groups
• Recognize in-groups and out-groups as subtypes of primary and secondary groups
• Define reference groups

Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory by Jan E. Stets, Peter Burke. Social Psychology Quarterly 2000, Vol 63, No. 3, 224-237

In social psychology, we  need to establish a general theory of the self, which can attend to both macro and micro processes, and which avoids the redundancies of separate theories on different aspects of the self.

Sociology: How are Identities Formed?

A mind map

Class Identities and the Identity of Class by Wendy Bottero, Sociology, 2004; 38; 985

The uneasy relationship between older and newer aspects of ‘class’ within renewed class theory means the wider implications of inequality considered as individualized hierarchy (rather than as ‘class’) have not been fully explored.The debate on class identities (an important example of this new form of class analysis) illustrates these dif?culties.

A Sociological Approach to Self and Identity by Jan E. Stets, Peter J. Burke; Chapter for Handbook of Self and Identity, edited by Mark Leary and June Tangney, Guilford Press

Because the self emerges in and is reflective of society, the sociological approach to understanding the self and its parts (identities) means that we must also understand the society in which the self is acting, and keep in mind that the self is always acting in a social context in which other selves exist (Stryker, 1980). 

Introducing Identity by David Buckingham; Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24. doi:10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.001 

There are some diverse assumptions about what identity is, and about its relevance to our understanding of young people’s engagements with digital media.  

Let X be an ensemble.
We say x is a Conscious Member of X if x ∈ X & B_x[ x ∈ X ]
X is a Conscious Ensemble if (∀x ∈ X) B_x[ x ∈ X ]

• Note that it is widely accepted that groups are necessarily conscious ensembles; i.e.:
  γ(G) → (∀x ∈ G) B_x[ x ∈ G ]

The conscious memberships of an individual define its Identity wrt society. Thus for the individual x who is a conscious member of ensembles X₁, …, X_n, the identity of x is that collection, and we write:
ID(x) = {X₁, …, X_n} iff x ∈ X₁ ∩ … ∩ X_n & B_x[ x ∈ X₁ ∩ … ∩ X_n ]

Some sets of ensembles are mutually exclusive wrt membership. A collection of such ensembles δ = {X1, …, Xn}, that minimally covers another ensemble, X, is a Division of that ensemble and we write δ|X. Thus,
{X₁, …, X_n} is a division of X iff:

1. X₁, …, X_n are relatively disjoint, and
2. X ⊂ ∪_i=1,…,n X_i, and
3. For i = 1, …, n, X ∩ X_i ≠ ∅.

Where δ is a division of X and x ∈ X, ID(x|δ) is the element of δ of which x is a conscious member. Read it as the Identity of x wrt δ. Thus: For δ = {X₁, …, X_n}, δ|X, ID(x|δ) = X_j iff x ∈ X_j & B_x[ x ∈ X_j ]

• Where δ₁, …, δ_n are divisions of X, we can call A = {δ₁, …, δ_n} an Identity Analysis of X.
• Let A = {δ₁, …, δ_n} be an analysis of X. Then the identity of x wrt that analysis is:
  ID(x|A) = {ID(x|δ₁), …, ID(x|δ_n)}

This paper gives an introduction to stochastic actor-based models for dynamics of directed networks, using only a minimum of mathematics. The focus is on understanding the basic principles of the model, understanding the results, and on sensible rules for model selection.

TUTORIAL ON AGENT-BASED MODELING AND SIMULATION PART 2: HOW TO MODEL WITH AGENTS (pdf) by Charles M. Macal, Michael J. North

This tutorial describes the foundations of ABMS, identifies ABMS toolkits and development methods illustrated through a supply chain example, and provides thoughts on the appropriate contexts for ABMS versus conventional modeling techniques.

AGENT-BASED MODELS (pdf) by Nigel Gilbert

This ?rst chapter begins with a brief overview of agent-based modeling before contrasting it with other, perhaps more familiar forms of modeling and describing several examples of current agent-based modeling research.

Modeling Social Mechanisms: Mechanism-Based Explanations and Agent-Based Modeling in the Social Sciences (pdf) by Cyril Hédoin

This article evaluates the relevance of ABM to representing (social) mechanisms. It emphasizes the difficulties surrounding the representation of a particular form of social mechanisms I call “institutional mechanisms”, where the behavior of the social system and of its components (the social agents) are determined by institutional objects such as norms or conventions.

Some Links to Simulation Resources on the Web. Materials supporting sociology 242G by Robert Hanneman of the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.
From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-Based Modeling (pdf) by Michael W. Mac, Robert Willer

Like flocks of birds, human group processes are highly complex, nonlinear, path dependent, and self-organizing. We may be able to understand these dynamics much better not by trying to model them at the global level but instead as emergent properties of local interaction among adaptive agents who influence one another in response to the influence they receive.

Why Sociology Should Use Agent Based Modelling by Edmund Chattoe-Brown

Although Agent Based Models (hereafter ABM) are now regularly reported in sociology journals, explaining the approach, describing models and reporting results leaves little opportunity to examine wider implications of ABM for sociological practice. This article uses an established ABM (the Schelling model) for this.

From micro to macro and back again: Agent-based models for sociology (pdf) by Federico Bianchi

In this paper the importance of agent-based simulation is advocated for mechanism-based sociology [1]. The main epistemological reasons are to be found in the analogies between mechanism-based sociological theory [1.1], the study of complexity and emergent properties [1.2] and the generative explanatory power of computer simulations [1.3].

Finally, an Amazon wish: Agent-Based Computational Sociology [Hardcover] by Flaminio Squazzoni

This book looks at a new research stream that makes use of advanced computer simulation modelling techniques to spotlight agent interaction that allows us to explain the emergence of social patterns. It presents a method to pursue analytical sociology investigations that look at relevant social mechanisms in various empirical situations, such as markets, urban cities, and organisations.

A Norm is an action-directing rule, n, for which

(∃C_x,applies ⊂ C_x) (∃α_bad(x) ⊂ α(x)) (∀c_x,0 ∈ C_x,applies) (∀a_x ∈ α_bad(x)) [n & a_x |– ⊥ ]

• An equivalent condition might be written positively as
  (∃C_x,applies ⊂ C_x) (∃α_good(x) ⊂ α(x)) (∀c_x,0 ∈ C_x,applies) (∀a_x ∉ α_good(x)) [n & a_x |– ⊥ ]

• C_x,applies and C_x are sets of contexts for x. C_x is the set of all possible contexts for x.
• The condition that makes n normatively prescriptive is a logical condition: the forbidden action is logically inconsistent with the norm. Accurate logical reasoning is at least a part of the process by which x goes about determining his action in the circumstances, though we cannot depend upon it being a main part or that it will be very accurate.

An agent x is an Acceptant of the norm n iff x accepts the rule n. We will write

K(n) = {x: B(x)[ n ]}

• In this case, there is a condition for accepting that B(x)[ n ] based on the notion that we can discover whether x really accepts a norm by observation of his behaviour. Thus
  B(x)[ n ] → (∃C_x,applies ⊂ C_x) (∃α_bad(x) ⊂ α(x)) (∀cx,applies ∈ C_x,applies) (∀a_x,bad ∈ α_bad(x))
  [n & a_x |– ⊥ → A(x, c_x,0) ≠ a_x]
  which is to say that, if x produces an action in a circumstance in which the norm determines that that action is impermissible, then x cannot be said to accept that norm.
• The reasons why x might fail this test are many. It might just be that x is not very clever and fails to reason logically accurately; perhaps the norm is too complex for any human; perhaps information is lacking; etc. We do not need to assume that x is actually dishonest.
• It would seem, on the face of it anyway, that it’s quite possible that ~B(x)[ n ] & B(x)[ B(x)[ n ]]; and other curiosities of epistemic logic may also apply. It will be necessary eventually to decide which axiomatization of epistemic logic is most appropriate for the operator B. We can ignore the question for now.
• The condition given for x being an acceptant of n may not adequately reflect the fuzziness of our belief states, or the degrees to which we believe something. Assuming that we wish to do so, and that this cannot be done by massaging the context variable of the action function as it applies to the conditions under which we will apply the norm, we may propose the following refinement:

  B(x)[ n ] → (∃C_x,applies ⊂ C_x) (∃α_bad(x) ⊂ α(x)) (∀cx,applies ∈ C_x,applies) (∀a_x,bad ∈ α_bad(x))
  [((n & a_x |– ⊥) &
  (&forall>a_x,alt ≠ ax)~B(x)[ (T(C(a_x,alt, c_x,0, x), I(x), x) ] >> T(C(a_x, c_x,0, x), I(x), x)) ]))
  → A(x, c_x,0) ≠ a_x]

  Which is simply stating that x will not contravene n unless he estimates that the total satisfaction to be gained by doing so is sufficiently greater than the satisfaction to gained by abiding by n.

• The degree of excess expressed by ‘>>’ is left deliberately vague – as in other uses of it. (To be set, perhaps, by empirical research.)

A Norm Formation is a set of norms, N = {n₁, …, n_n}.

• an agent x is an acceptant of the norm formation N iff x accepts the rules in n.
  K(N) = {x: B(x)[ N ]}
• Standard classes of norm formations are conventions, traditions, etc. (which may be analysed later.)