Social Science and CS

Modified: 2024-01-03 4:46 PM CST

The Sciences

*see other sections for biology, psychology, and linguistics/language
Scientific Disciplines (Modified from American Association for the Advancement of Science Membership Categories)

Notice that the Social Sciences include the most disciplines and that geography is a physical and social science.

• Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences (Google Books Preview)
  • Ron Sun's book (above) argues that cognitive science should include the social science disciplines
  • Specifically:
    • He views anthropology as a part of cognitive science (and see below)
    • Political scientists should study emotion, discourse, ethics, anxiety and anger and model those with traditional variables such as gender education and age
    • He sees religion as a special case that could be studied traditionally or via cognitive science
    • He sees economics, too, as amenable to cognitive science theorizing by challenging fundamental assumptions about the rationality of human behavior
    • He proposes "neuroeconomics" a subfield that would integrate decision making and look at social, psychological, and biological variables
    • The "grounding" discussed relates to unifying social sciences under cognitive science
    • The reviewer notes that such grounding is an ambitious goal and may actually undermine social science research
    • The reviewer also worries about how qualitative data and quantitative data might interact and the need for having to integrate macro and micro approaches
  • So, there is reason to include the social sciences under the umbrella of cognitive science

History of the Social Sciences (as they relate to CS)

• Anthropology
• The study of: societies, cultures, and origins of human beings
• 4,000,000 year old history of hominins
• Emerged from natural history (especially after 'discovery' of N. America and S. America), subfields include:
  • Physical anthropology: study of teeth, bones
  • Cultural anthropology: study of human artifacts (pots, tools)
  • Linguistic anthropology: study human communication
  • Archeology: the analysis of, usually, buried remains of human existence
• Bender, Hutchins, and Medin (2010): Anthropology in Cognitive Science this article covers the relationship between anthropology and cognitive science. To help you read it I have outlined its parts below:
  • Early On
    • CS's beginning as an "exotic marketplace"
      • Meaning the first meeting was an eye opener to the promise of CS
    • Common subfields of Anthropology: archeology, biological, linguistic, socio-cultural
    • D'Andrade: psychologists study how people think while anthropologists study what people think
    • Anthropologists should study (in step with CS): features, prototypes, fuzzy categories, schemas, mental (cultural models)
    • Methodologies: e.g., multidemensional scaling, cultural consensus modeling
    • Empirical achievements in: ethnobiology, color cognition
  • Alienation
    • Partly due to anthropology's split between its scientific (biological/physical and archeology) and it humanistic (sociocultural and psychological) sides
      • This was an issue within anthropology itself
    • Boster: "...cognitive anthropology differs from cognitive psychology in that the former focuses on content (not process), communities and social contexts (not individuals), natural settings (not labs), capturing real‐world phenomena, even if it requires some relaxation of rigor, and worries about whether data collected actually mean what they may seem to mean on first glance."
      • Note how Boster differentiates cognitive anthropology from cognitive psychology (p. 377)
        • In 2012, Boster added:
          • "Cognitive anthropology contributes to cognitive science as a complement to cognitive psychology. The chief threat to its survival has not been rejection by other cognitive scientists but by other cultural anthropologists. It will remain a part of cognitive science as long as cognitive anthropologists research, teach, and publish."
  • Rapprochement
    • "One area of potential bridging between anthropology and the rest of cognitive science are studies that focus on particular domains of cognition such as naïve biology, naïve psychology, naïve physics, language, categorization, numerical competency, spatial and temporal cognition, food cognition, kinship and other social networks, moral judgment, and (cognitive aspects of) emotions" (p. 379)
    • Anthropology casts a wider net than psychology in terms of its participants
      • Anthropologists take pain to travel and study people from around the world
      • Psychology's participants have long been described as American university sophomores
      • Heinrich's WEIRD analysis has recently demonstrated that difference
        • WEIRD stands for:
          • Western
          • Educated
          • Industrialized
          • Rich
          • Democratic
        • See below for more on WEIRD
  • The Future
    • Psychology is larger than anthropology and cognitive science is larger than cognitive anthropology
    • All disciplines must work to for the "common endeavor to understand human cognition"
    • Hopefully, CS will someday "cease to segregated by disciplinary borders"
    • Unfortunately, as you have read in Nuñez et al. these hopes appear not be have been fulfilled
• WEIRD
  • Heinrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010)
  • The weirdest people in the world
  • Abstract:
    • Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population.
    • Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results acrosspopulations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers.
    • The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moralreasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ.
    • The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, andbehavior – hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based onsampling from a single subpopulation.
    • Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of humannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We closeby proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.
  • Heinrich followed up this article with a book: The WEIRDest People in the World as of today, I'm on page 116 and only have 564 pages to go :-)
  • The point (see the abstract) is well taken. We are the weird ones and anthropologists have been trying to tell us that for a good while
• Geography
  • Study of Earth's places
  • Physical geography: study of Earth's land masses, oceans, and rivers
  • Cultural geography: study the interaction between people and Earth's physical features (e.g., climate)
  • Cognitive Geography: Montello (2009)
    • Again, I have outlined this article for you. Read the article yourself
      • Study of cognition (primarily human) about space, place, and the environment
        • Notice that he agrees with our inclusion of humans, non-human animals, and machines within his definition of cognitive geography
      • Interests: spatial orientation, geographic education, map design, urban planning and landscape design, spatial behavior and interaction (including travel communication and economic activity)
        • He notes that the fundamental issues in geography are:
          • space
          • place
          • environment
      • Related to behavioral geography
        • Behavioral geographers, for instance, changed the idea of physical distance to a more cognitive dimension
          • Note how, perhaps, your ideas about distance have changed in the internet age and moreso now because of the pandemic.
          • Are you any "closer" now to friends and family because of your ability to communicate with them better thanks to e-mail, social media, and digital movies?
      • Differs from: environmental, social physics, economic geography, as well as its methodologies and epistemological assumptions
        • Disaggregate level of analysis
          • Focus on the individual and variation
          • Individual's variation is non-random and related to other constructs such as:
            • gender
            • age
            • education
            • culture
            • residence
            • activity
            • social class
        • Behavior is subjective
          • Behavior is only partially due to objective reality
          • Subjective reality may differ greatly from objective reality
          • Much of cognition is unavailable to us
          • We often fool ourselves into making causal connections
            • Maya Angelou returns to Stamps (video)
              • In 1982, Maya Angelou returned to her home town of Stamps, AR
              • She spoke at SAU (I was there) and spoke of the bridge in the video above, the bridge that separated (and still separates) the races in Stamps.
              • At SAU she remarked how long that bridge was to her as a child. When she returned she saw the bridge as much shorter. What a good example of cognitive geographywa
              • This is a test question, be sure to watch the video
        • Human and environment relations go in both directions
          • Environmental determinism nor cultural determinism are good models
          • The relationship is dynamic
          • Humans are active processors of information
        • Cognitive neuroscience is revealing new data
          • Mind, brain, and neuroscience are emerging in cognitive geography
          • Minds are embodied and immerse in social and cultural contexts
      • Research areas:
        • Geographic knowledge and reasoning--cognitive maps (e.g., mental representations)
          • FYI: When I teach this course in a classroom I'll ask for volunteers to tell me how to get from SAU to Walmart
          • I'll ask for students who live in Magnolia and those who do not
          • The cognitive maps of both groups are usually quite different
            • Often those who do not live in town will go south on Jackson, take a left on Main, take a left at US 79, and drive north to Walmart.

      

      • Navigation and orientation--locomotion and wayfinding, where are you (orientation)
      • FYI: my smartphone map app has saved me from going the wrong direction more than once.
      • On a trip we stopped for gas and a meal on US 59 in Mississippi. I did not notice afterwards that we were headed in 180 degrees the wrong (south) direction for several miles.
      • The map app confirmed that we were doing that and we turned around, I was chagrined.
      • Learning and development of geographic knowledge--landmarks, routes, and survey knowledge
        • Animals too, learn landmarks. The SAU tower might serve that role for pigeon navigation locally. Birds also learn to follow highways as navigational aids
          • FYI: I might still be lost in the brackish swamp near Leeville, LA were it not for this bridge.
          • I could see if from anywhere were I was fishing and I knew my truck was parked near it
      • Symbolic sources of geographic information--maps, photos, remote imagery (e.g., satellites), physical models, movies, language
        • Notice how paper maps have all but disappeared and that online maps of all kinds now proliferate

        Policeman giving directions cartoon (New Yorker):

      

      • Notice the difference in clarity of the directions of both men

      • Geographic knowledge is low among American college students
        • World Geography Quiz take it!
          • I got them all :-)
• Political Science
  • Scientific study of governance
  • Plato and Aristotle each studied political science, albeit quite differently
    • Plato argued for "philosopher kings"
    • Aristotle and his students analyzed Greek governments of all kinds
      • They recommended constitutional republics
  • Political scientists focus on the hows and whys of political power
  • Gunnell (2007): Are we losing our minds? Cognitive science and the study of politics
    • In this long (27 page) article, Gunnell analyzes the relationship between political science and cognitive science
      • Let me know if you would like to read the entire article, I can send it to you.Yahoo or SAU
    • Mind is central he claims and goes on to provide a kind of primer about cognitive science for political science
    • The concept and definition of mind is elusive
    • He briefly describes theories from many contemporary and past theorists
    • He concludes with four points
      • Everyone should be aware of new data from neuroscience
      • Philosophy and neuroscience each attempt to reconcile such new data
      • Social theorists and scientists often put those attempts into their own theorizing but sometimes fail to see inherent conflicts
      • It is difficult for all to understand and interpret the "language, and ideology, of social and political life." (p. 722)
      • He ends with an interesting discussion memes
        • He writes (p. 727): "Memes, or ideas constituting units of culture, eventually transform the computational architecture of the brain"
  • Moles and Heintz: Cognitive science and policy making
    • Their course: Cognitive Science and Policy Making at Central European University asks:
      • Can CS inform policy making?
      • Can policies be improved via CS theories?
      • Will using CS make policymakers more influential? Is that good or bad?
      • Nudges: reframing so that one decision is more likely (especially default decisions)
        • What is a nudge?
          • New insights from psychology and behavioural economics have encouraged a paradigm shift in policy debates towards a focus on ‘Nudge’ strategies that are influenced by an understanding of the cognitive, social and even moral factors driving human decision making. In areas such as environmental policy Nudging holds considerable potential as a tool of government to help change citizen and corporate behaviour. . (Moseley & Stoker, 2013)
  • Moseley, A, & Stoker, G. (2013), Nudging citizens? Prospects and pitfalls confronting a new heuristic, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 79, 4-10.
  • The Cognitive Science of Political Thought
    • In a special issue of the journal, Cognition, authors offer recommendations for:
      • Don't assume you know the electorate
      • What to do about extremism
      • How to get people to listen to each other
      • How to understand leaders and hold them accountable
    • FYI, many of these issues have become part of today's headlines and will continue to do so, most likely, in the near future.
    • Watch for those during the electoral year 2024
• Economics
  • Scientific study of society's use of resources
  • Factors of production: land, labor, capital, and enterprise
  • Two major fields:
    • Macroeconomics: Examines large scale economic factors such as-growth, inflation, interest rates, employement, revenue, and taxes
    • Microeconomics: Studies how individuals make economic decisions about purchases, savings, and other individually made economic decisions
  • North (2010): Economics and Cognitive Science.

  • Cognitive science is potentially of great relevance to economics not just insofar as it tries to explain how human beings learn and meld beliefs with preferences to reach decisions and hence the choices that underlie economic theory, but also how and why they develop theories in the face of pure uncertainty, what makes those theories spread amongst a population or die out, and why humans believe in them and act upon them. In this essay I explore these issues in the expectation that cognitive science may give us some definitive answers that can serve as major breakthroughs in economics and the social sciences generally.

    Economic theory is built on assumptions about human behavior-assumptions which are embodied in rational choice theory. Underlying those assumptions are implicit notions about how the mind works. Until recently economists have not self-consciously examined those implicit notions but recent work in economics and particularly game theory has forced economists to explore the sources of the beliefs that underlie economic choices and therefore to build a bridge between cognitive science and economics. In this essay I explore the path of economic reasoning that leads to cognitive science.

    • Neo-classical model of economics--decisions made from desires, wants, or preferences (imperfect model, however)
    • Humans try to reduce uncertainty
    • Creating order from disorder is fundamental driving force
    • The quest for order drives humans to create "myths, taboos, and particularly religions" (p. 7374). All those help explain the unexplainable
    • He concludes that we are good and bad at certain cognitive skills and those affect both disciplines
      • We are good at:
        • recalling similar problems from past and solving them
        • pattern recognition
          • it helps with "motor control, face recognition, deciphering hand written zip codes" (p. 7376)
      • We are poor at:
        • reasoning
          • that affects careful, sequential reasoning
    • But, coming to our aid are:
      • Scaffolding
        • where genetics and culture have already done the reasoning for us
      • Representational redescription
        • our ability to reorganize knowledge via generalization and analogy
  • FYI, it's obvious that economics and cognitive science are each still in an early stage in their interactions.
• Sociology
  • Earliest modern social science
  • Founded by: Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber
  • Comte coined word "sociology" and divided history into periods of: theological, metaphysical, and scientific
  • Durkheim held the first faculty position in sociology at the University of Bordeaux, he studied suicide, crime, law, and religion
  • Marx, famously, railed against capitalism's exploitation of workers and urged societal change, by violence, if necessary
  • Weber studied human relationships, sense of freedom, religion, and bureaucracy
  • Cerulo (2014): Continuing the story: Maximinzing the intersections of cognitive science and sociology
    • Large distance between sociology and CS at present
      • She warns that working interdisciplinarily does not mean that sociology need, "embrace cognitive scientists's propensity to reduce all neural reactions to evolution and species survival." (p. 1013)
        
    • Both must maintain their essential identities (e.g., constructionism in sociology and evolution in CS)
    • Suggests two-step agenda:
      • "Mine" data from CS
        • especially data about neural systems and operations
      • Then apply sociological knowledge
        • Use views unique to sociology's approach to thought and action
    • She studies informational sequences: victim's, performer's, contextual, and doublecasting (cast as both victim and perpetrator, think of the death of Jeffrey Dahmer in prison)
      • Violence narratives use:
        • victim sequences
        • performer sequences
        • contextual sequences
        • doublecasting sequences
      • Narrators use:
        • victim sequences for heinous crimes
        • performer sequences for justifiable violence
        • contextual or doublecasting for ambiguous violence
      • For school shootings, "storytellers initially choose sequences that attribute clear blame to the shooters. But over time journalists tend to highlight contextual elements of the shooting, thereby humanizing the shooter and taking the spotlight off of the shooter's criminal actions." (p. 1015)
      • This is a test question, FYI
      • Successful celebrity apologies also show sequencing:
        • Those: "began with a focus on the victim or wounded party and ended with either additional focus on the victim, an expression of sorrow, or a promise of corrective action." (p. 1015)
      • The embodied nature of thought
        • Seen in video games as:
          • "Copresence" when one becomes fully immersed in a game
          • Copresence influences performance and emotion
            • especially in violent video games
    • She concludes that sociologists should study the "inside" and "outside" of thought and develop more ways to collect empirical data.
    • Again, if you wish to read the article contact me and I can send it to you.Yahoo or SAU
  • FYI: sociology, then is the most removed of the social sciences from cognitive science but some sociologists are hoping to develop a symbiotic relationship between the two, a relationship that aids the discovery of new data without making sociology become subservient to cognitive science.

   

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