Formal Approaches to the Ontology & Epistemology of Resilience Update 2018 Q4

PI(s), Co-PI(s), Researchers: John Symons

HARD PROBLEM(S) ADDRESSED

Metrics

PUBLICATIONS

Epistemic entitlements and the practice of computer simulation (with Ramon Alvarado) Minds and Machines (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-018-9487-0

What does it mean to trust the results of a computer simulation? This paper argues that trust in simulations should be grounded in empirical evidence, good engineering practice, and established theoretical principles. Without these constraints, computer simulation risks becoming little more than speculation. We argue against two prominent positions in the epistemology of computer simulation and defend a conservative view that emphasizes the difference between the norms governing scientific investigation and those governing ordinary epistemic practices.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS

This project offered two presentations to the research community on topics of Resilience and Emergence.

Social Ontology Workshop, St Louis University (October 13, 2018)

Methodological School in Social and Human Sciences, Moldova State University (November 16, 2018 - By videoconference)

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES:

The graduate seminar on Emergence and Resilience enrolled students from engineering, linguistics, psychology, medicine, music, and philosophy. It was a very highly rated course with some of the strongest student evaluations I have ever seen. In addition to graduate student participation, faculty from computer science and psychology also attended the seminar.

The collaborative projects had the following topics:

(a) the comparative resilience of healthcare systems,

(b) the emergence of resilient social norms

(c) resilience in ecology

(d) music and social cohesion

(e) non-graph theoretic representations of resilient properties

(f) null models in network science

(g) resilient architectures for IoT