Distributed cognition: a perspective from social choice theory

List, Christian ORCID: 0000-0003-1627-800X (2008) Distributed cognition: a perspective from social choice theory. In: Albert, Max, Schmidtchen, Dieter and Voigt, Stefan, (eds.) Scientific Competition: Theory and Policy. Conferences on New Political Economy (25). Mohr Siebeck (Firm), Tübingen, Germany, pp. 285-308. ISBN 9783161494130

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Abstract

Distributed cognition refers to processes which are (i) cognitive and (ii) distributed across multiple agents or devices rather than performed by a single agent. Distributed cognition has attracted interest in several fields ranging from sociology and law to computer science and the philosophy of science. In this paper, I discuss distributed cognition from a social-choice-theoretic perspective. Drawing on models of judgment aggregation, I address two questions. First, how can we model a group of individuals as a distributed cognitive system? Second, can a group acting as a distributed cognitive system be ‘rational’ and ‘track the truth’ in the outputs it produces? I argue that a group’s performance as a distributed cognitive system depends on its ‘aggregation procedure’ – its mechanism for aggregating the group members’ inputs into collective outputs – and I investigate the properties of an aggregation procedure that matter.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	http://www.mohr.de/index_e.html
Additional Information:	© 2008 Christian List
Divisions:	Government Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method CPNSS
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2008 14:16
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2025 00:57
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/19606

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