TY - GEN
T1 - Levels of Analysis in Computational Social Science
AU - Krafft, Peter M.
AU - Griffiths, Thomas L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. Special thanks to Josh Tenenbaum, Sandy Pentland, David Krakauer, and Jessica Flack who helped stimulate an initial investigation into these ideas; to Josh for his suggestion to think about the example of waiting in line; and to Nick Logler, Steph Ballard, and Lavi Aulck for their special assistance. This work was supported by DARPA Cooperative Agreement D17AC00004.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Marr's levels of analysis constitute one influential approach to the central program of cognitive science-the multilevel analysis of cognition as information processing. The distinctive aspects of Marr's framework are an emphasis on identifying the computational problems and constraints faced in cognition, and conceptual machinery to relate cognitive mechanisms to that computational level of analysis. Although related ideas have been explored in a range of social science disciplines, Marr's framework, and particularly its notion of the precise formulation of computational problems and solutions, has yet to be applied widely in social analysis. In the present work we develop a formulation of Marr's levels for social systems, provide examples of this approach, and address potential criticisms. The consequence is a computational perspective on the sociological school of structural functionalism, and an apparatus for conducting multiscale analysis of social systems.
AB - Marr's levels of analysis constitute one influential approach to the central program of cognitive science-the multilevel analysis of cognition as information processing. The distinctive aspects of Marr's framework are an emphasis on identifying the computational problems and constraints faced in cognition, and conceptual machinery to relate cognitive mechanisms to that computational level of analysis. Although related ideas have been explored in a range of social science disciplines, Marr's framework, and particularly its notion of the precise formulation of computational problems and solutions, has yet to be applied widely in social analysis. In the present work we develop a formulation of Marr's levels for social systems, provide examples of this approach, and address potential criticisms. The consequence is a computational perspective on the sociological school of structural functionalism, and an apparatus for conducting multiscale analysis of social systems.
KW - analytical sociology
KW - Computational social science
KW - computational social theory
KW - Marr's levels of analysis
KW - structural functionalism
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85098861196
T3 - Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018
SP - 1963
EP - 1968
BT - Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2018
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
T2 - 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Changing Minds, CogSci 2018
Y2 - 25 July 2018 through 28 July 2018
ER -