Showing papers by "Cristiano Castelfranchi published in 2015"

The Mirror World: Preparing for Mixed-Reality Living

Abstract: A new kind of smart space is emerging in which digital, physical, and social layers are strongly intertwined. These spaces extend the classic assistive functionality of ambient intelligence toward more proactive possibilities, where the smart environment not only monitors people as they perform tasks but also influences their plans and intentions. The authors explore this concept of the smart space as a mirror world, looking in particular at how it will affect our cognitive abilities and noting some of the research challenges that will need to be addressed. This department is part of a special issue on smart spaces.

The Relevance of Categories for Trusting Information Sources

Abstract: In this article, we are interested in the fact that relevance and trustworthiness of information acquired by an agent X from a source F strictly depends and derives from X's trust in F with respect to the kind of information. In particular, we are interested in analyzing the relevance of F's category as indicator for its trustworthiness with respect to the specific informative goals of X. In this article, we analyze an interactive cognitive model for searching information in a world in which each agent can be considered as belonging to a specific agent's category. We also consider variability within the canonical categorical behavior and consequent influence on the trustworthiness of provided information. The introduced interactive cognitive model also allows evaluation of the trustworthiness of a source both on the basis of its category and on past direct experience with it, thus selecting the more adequate source with respect to the informative goals to achieve. We present a computational approach based on fuzzy sets and some selected simulation scenarios together with the discussion of their more interesting results.

Recommendation of categories in an agents world: The role of (not) local communicative environments

Abstract: Due to Internet and social media web, the world as we know it is deeply changing integrating two different aspects of the social interaction: the one that develop in the real world and the one that develop in web society. In this paper we focus on the importance of generalized knowledge (agents' categories) in order to understand how much it is crucial in these two worlds. The cognitive advantage of generalized knowledge can be synthesized in this claim: "It allows us to know a lot about something/somebody we do not directly know". At a social level this means that I can know a lot of things on people that I never met; it is social "prejudice" with its good side and fundamental contribution to social exchange. In this study we will analyse and present some differences between the social relationships in the two worlds and how they influence categories' reputation. On this basis, we will experimentally inquire the role played by categories' reputation with respect to the reputation and opinion on single agents: when it is better to rely on the first ones and when are more reliable the second ones. We will consider these simulations for both the two kind of world, investigating how the parameters defining the specific environment (number of agents, their interactions, transfer of reputation, and so on) determine the use of categories' reputation and trying to understand how the role played by categories will be important in the new digital worlds.

Trusting Information Sources Through their Categories

Abstract: In this paper we want to focus our attention on the importance of categories for trust in information sources (TIS). We analyze an interactive cognitive model for searching information in a world where each agent can be considered as belonging to a specific category. We also consider some kind of variability within the canonical categorial behavior and their consequent influence on the trustworthiness of provided information. The introduced interactive cognitive model also allows to evaluate the trustworthiness of a source both on the basis of its category and of the past direct experience with it, selecting the more adequate source with respect to the informative goals to achieve. We present some selected simulation scenarios together with the discussion of their more interesting results.

A cognitive framing for norm change

Abstract: Norms are within minds and out of minds; they work thanks to their mental implementation but also thanks to their externalized supports, processing, diffusion, and behavioral messages. This is the normal and normative working of Ns. Ns is not simply a behavioral and collective fact, 'normality' or an institution; but they necessarily are mental artifacts. Ns change follows the same circuit. In principle there are two (interconnected) loci of change with their forces: mental transformations vs. external, interactive ones. Ns change is a circular process based on a loop between 'emergence' and 'immergence'; that is, changes in behaviors presuppose some change in the mind, while behaviors causal efficacy is due to their aggregated macro-result: acts that organize in stable choreographies and regularities build (new) Ns in the minds of the actors. More precisely the problem is: which are the crucial mental representations supporting a N conform (or deviating) behavior? And which kinds of 'mutations' in those mental representations produce a change in behavior? I will focus my analysis on Social Norms, in a broad sense.

The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology

Abstract: What is the relationship between actors’ mental representations (e.g., beliefs, goals) and the conflicts between them? And what is the relation (if any) between individual/subjective conflicts (among my goals) and social conflicts? How does one build a systematic ontology of conflicts taking into account objective and subjective types, the internal or individual and the external or social? Do external conflicts require internalized/mentalized conflicts? Are there objective conflicts that agents are unaware of? How do they work? What is the relation between contradictions and conflicts and the need for mental coherence?

A Trust Metric to Lattes Curriculum Data

Abstract: Lattes Curriculum is an academic social network, that is a database from Brazilian researchers. In this context, the trust is an important aspect to be analysed to improve the cooperation in research. Differently of Social Network Analysis metrics, in this paper, we propose a metric basing to trust. Firstly, we show our trust metric and after, we conducted some experiments to evaluate the metric using Lattes Curriculum data.

The Utility of Categories through their Recommendation in an Agents World with Local or not Local Communication.

Abstract: In this paper we focus on the importance of generalized knowledge: agents' categories. The cognitive advantage of generalized knowledge can be synthesized in this claim: "It allows us to know a lot about something/somebody we do not directly know". At a social level this means that I can know a lot of things on people that I never met; it is social "prejudice" with its good side and fundamental contribution to social exchange. In this study we experimentally inquire the role played by categories' reputation with respect to the reputation and opinion on single agents: when it is better to rely on the first ones and when are more reliable the second ones. We will consider two different scenarios: one strongly influenced by the spatial distance between agents (localized world); the other totally independent by the spatial distances (non-localized world), quite similar to the modern web society, in which the communicative distance follows different routs with respect to the spatial distance. We want to investigate how the parameters defining the specific environment (number of agents, their interactions, transfer of reputation, and so on) influence the importance of categories' reputation in these two different worlds.

Valorizing prejudice in MAS: a computational model

Abstract: In MAS studies on Trust building and dynamics the role of direct/personal experience and of recommendations and reputation is proportionally overrated; while the importance of inferential processes in deriving the evaluation of trustees' trustworthiness is underestimated and not exploited. In this paper we focus on the importance of generalized knowledge: agents' categories. The cognitive advantage of generalized knowledge can be synthesized in this claim: "It allows us to know a lot about something/somebody we do not directly know". At a social level this means that I can know a lot of things on people that I never met; it is social "prejudice" with its good side and fundamental contribution to social exchange. In this study we experimentally inquire the role played by categories' reputation with respect to the reputation and opinion on single agents: when it is better to rely on the first ones and when are more reliable the second ones. Our claim is that: the larger the population and the ignorance about the trustworthiness of each individual (as it happens in an open world) the more precious the role of trust in categories.

The Positive Power of Prejudice: A Computational Model for MAS.

Abstract: In MAS studies on Trust building and dynamics the role of direct/personal experience and of recommendations and reputation is proportionally overrated; while the importance of inferential processes in deriving the evaluation of trustees’ trustworthiness is underestimated and not enough exploited. In this paper we focus on the importance of generalized knowledge: agents' categories. The cognitive advantage of generalized knowledge can be synthesized in this claim: "It allows us to know a lot about something/somebody we do not directly know". At a social level this means that I can know a lot of things on people that I never met; it is social "prejudice" with its good side and fundamental contribution to social exchange. In this study we experimentally inquire the role played by categories' reputation with respect to the reputation and opinion on single agents: when it is better to rely on the first ones and when are more reliable the second ones. Our claim is that: the larger the population and the ignorance about the trustworthiness of each individual (as it happens in an open world) the more precious the role of trust in categories. In particular, we want investigate how the parameters defining the specific environment (number of agents, their interactions, transfer of reputation, and so on) determine the use of categories' reputation. This powerful inferential device has to be strongly present in WEB societies.

Information Sources About Hydrogeological Disasters: The Role of Trust

Abstract: One issue particularly relevant in cases of risk of flooding and landslides caused by specific conditions of the weather, is the ability of citizens to take the right decisions on the basis of different information sources to which they have access.