Sunday, 8 June 2014


Domains and Dimensions of Group Cognition


GEORG THEINER
Villanova University
Department of Philosophy

 VIDEO

Overview: Groups of people working together in a collaborative fashion can accomplish things that would completely baffle individual human beings. The nature, speed, scope, and interdependence of group collaboration have been dramatically expanded by web-based technologies which support the large-scale distribution of cognition across space, time, and people. This development has led many people to speak of groups as ‘distributed cognitive systems’ in their own right. But what exactly does that mean? Building on the psychological infrastructure of joint and collective intentionality (Tomasello, 2014), I distinguish between various forms of joint cognition, distributed cognition, and collective cognition, and illustrate the resulting taxonomy with research from various fields and cognitive domains.

READINGS:

(available via http://villanova.academia.edu/GeorgTheiner)
Gordon, B.R. & Theiner, G. (forthcoming). Scaffolded Joint Action as a Micro-Foundation of Organizational Learning. In C.B. Stone & L.M. Bietti (Eds.), Contextualizing Human Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding How Individuals and Groups Remember the Past. London: Psychology Press.
Theiner, G. (2014). Varieties of Group Cognition. In L. Shapiro (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (pp. 347-357). New York: Routledge.
Theiner, G. (2013). Transactive Memory Systems: A Mechanistic Analysis of Emergent Group Memory. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(1), 65-89.
Theiner, G., Allen, C., & Goldstone, R. (2010). Recognizing Group Cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 11(4), 378-395.
Theiner, G. & O’Connor, T. (2010). The Emergence of Group Cognition. In A. Corradini & T. O’Connor (Eds.), Emergence in Science and Philosophy (pp. 78-117). New York: Routledge.
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22 comments:

  1. vveitas17 July 2014 at 07:35

    I wonder where would you put the collective problem of global climate change in the framework of Steiner's Taxonomy of Tasks: additive, compensatory, disjunctive, conjunctive or discretionary (or maybe combination of any)?

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    1. Robert Thibault17 July 2014 at 07:47

      I think the problem is so big that it would be divided into many tasks touching on all Steiner's types of collaboration.

      Delete
    2. vveitas17 July 2014 at 08:34

      Agree.
      But I think the climate change is a nice problem that can help to frame the whole discussion about collective intelligence. If we (1) accept that climate change is a global problem (i.e. should be perceived collectively and individuals sometimes do not even are aware of it) and (2) we are not able to deal with it neither individually nor as a group of smart individuals then (3) it seems logical that we need some sort of 'higher order' intelligence to solve it. Otherwise we are going to have problems.
      Given all that, would we like for such 'higher order' / group / collective intelligence to emerge and can we help it somehow (if yes)?

      Delete
  2. Rachel17 July 2014 at 07:45

    I am curious why you listed Bryce Huebner's book under collective cognition. Based on the table you showed of joint intentionality vs. collective intentionality, I would have categorized Professor Huebner's ideas about the transactive memory of old couples with joint intentionality (direct engagement with the self + a significant other and a perceptual common ground) vs. the indirect engagement and cultural common ground of collective intentionality. Perhaps I misinterpreted Professor Huebner's ideas.

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  3. Unknown17 July 2014 at 07:45

    You said that collective intentionality needs that people share a common culture ground, but it seems to me that we could share some beliefs, acceptances, desires, preferences, responsibility, guilt, epistemic agency and emotions with someone that does have the same culture. What leads you then to say such thing?

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  4. Eltaani Redha17 July 2014 at 07:49

    This was a very nice talk thank you, my question is about the leader or “Leaders” in group, do you think that the leader can and do influence the global intentiality of the group! And if it is, under which mechanism can we understand this

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  5. Maxwell J. D. Ramstead17 July 2014 at 07:51

    Fascinating talk! Professor Theiner mentioned that there were bonuses and maluses for joint action. My question is whether the same can be said for collective intelligence. More specifically, are there significant disadvantages to working collectively, as opposed to jointly, with others? Is something lost in moving from the second-personal to the transpersonal?

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    1. Unknown17 July 2014 at 08:10

      One obvious downfall or working with people of different specializations is communication. Differences in terminologies, perspectives, etc. create "emergent" problems which weren't there in a homogeneous group. When working jointly, some form of "interpersonnal intelligence" helps to ease the communication friction. In a collectivity, you need a form of cultural scaffolding, else you end up with people spending more time understanding each other than actually working on the problem.

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    2. Robert Thibault17 July 2014 at 14:12

      I think 'cultural' scaffolding is the wrong word here. Culture is "the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time" (merriam-webster).

      The only thing people need to work together is the desire to work together. Culture from nations hasn't stopped the development of multi-national companies and collaborations.

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    3. Unknown30 August 2014 at 18:04

      I think what Vincent was describing here was the inefficiency of trying to translate concepts across disciplines. However, it's my feeling that researchers could and do benefit from borrowing concepts and metaphors from other disciplines. Granted, this usually occurs for the purpose of solving a domain specific problem as opposed to working across disciplines to accomplish a shared goal.

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  6. Unknown17 July 2014 at 07:54

    Dear Georg, Thank you for this nice presentation ! I have one question : If we have the priority to give a computational model of group cognition, what would be the computational bases of it and what will resist to this formalization?

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  7. Rachel17 July 2014 at 07:54

    Regarding Professor Harnad's criticism of the orchestra example because the Web does not have a conductor: One could easily use a jazz quartet instead of an orchestral performance and the example applies to the Web.

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    1. Unknown17 July 2014 at 08:06

      However, in Quartet, each member is aware of each other's actions and reacts accordingly. No such thing happens in the web.

      Delete
    2. vveitas17 July 2014 at 09:05

      Well, what about Twitter? People are not aware what they retweet?

      Delete
    3. Louis Chartrand17 July 2014 at 15:38

      Btw, at the last summer school (or was it at the SPP?) there was a poster comparing perception (by both laypeople and experts) of recordings of musicians playing simultaneously while hearing each other, and the same recording made by the same musicians recorded separately (a common technique in the music industry).

      Turns out the music made simultaneously was systematically rated better on overall quality and on most of the aspects they measured.

      Delete
  8. Spaceweaver17 July 2014 at 07:59

    Thanks for an interesting talk. I did not understand on what do you put more emphasize in group cognition. You speak about scaffolding but is this manifested more in structures and patterns that guide the participating individuals in their operations, or, it is more to do with the establishment of general procedures of coordination which are more dynamic (e.g. the way a jazz band improvise)?

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  9. Louis Chartrand17 July 2014 at 07:59

    For the record: are groups as macro-agents necessarily bounded? Would there be a universal criterion to determine whether an individual is part or not of a macro-agent?

    Please take it as an open question.

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    1. Robert Thibault17 July 2014 at 14:24

      In identifying an entity, we are at the same time identifying everything it is not. We cannot claim that macro-agents exist unless we agree that not all individuals are part of the macro-agents.

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    2. Louis Chartrand17 July 2014 at 16:30

      Robert: Really? So the whole humanity couldn't be a macro-agent? What if our species was reduced to a single tribe?

      Delete
  10. Unknown17 July 2014 at 08:15

    Do you see a way, by using your framework, to develop a method for helping institutions to behave more intelligently or to achieve common goals more efficiently?
    Maybe M. Malone would want to comment on this as well?

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  11. Unknown17 July 2014 at 08:27

    Have you studied/thought about situations where there is both joint intentionality and collective intentionality? I imagine there could be an interaction/interference between these two types of intentionality.

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  12. Robert Thibault17 July 2014 at 14:29

    I appreciate that Georg expanded on the different types of social combination (compensatory, additive, conjuctive, etc). Previously we were discussing collective-intelligence as either good or bad for a task, but not expanding on which tasks.

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