[ECCO] GOA-project submitted!

[Francis Heylighen]

I have just submitted the final version of our revised GOA-proposal, 
which is ECCO's best chance yet to get substantial funding. The 
proposal (over 50 pages) is well worth browsing through as an 
overview of ECCO's expertise, activities, and future plans to 
investigate the self-organization of distributed cognition. 
Unfortunately, I didn't yet have the time to say much about our 
latest ideas on governance and particle-flow networks, but the 
approaches described in here are also very relevant to our emerging 
"ECCO paradigm".

We'll know whether this is successful some time in October. If it 
succeeds, the money will become available from next January on.

You can check it at 
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ECCO/ECCO-papers/GOA-projectDistr.Cognition.pdf

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The Self-Organization of Distributed Cognition:    a connectionist approach
Research Proposal for a "Geconcerteerde Onderzoeksactie",
submitted to the Research Council of the VUB by
Francis Heylighen & Frank Van Overwalle

Summary
This research project is proposed by a multidisciplinary team led by 
F. Heylighen and F. Van Overwalle. Its members have expertise in 
cognitive science, psychology, AI, philosophy, economics, political 
science, law and linguistics, and advanced research experience in 
connectionist simulation, complex systems, self-organization, and 
group experiments.
	The project aims to develop an integrated theory of the 
self-organization of distributed cognition. Distributed cognition is 
seen as the confluence of collective intelligence, and "situatedness" 
or the extension of cognitive processes into the physical 
environment. It concerns the information processing and learning that 
occurs on the social level, by the propagation of information from 
agent to agent across media. The theory we wish to develop would 
have a wide range of social and technological applications, 
including: better understanding of socio-economic development and 
diffusion of information, control of cognitive biases and social 
prejudices, knowledge management and organizational learning, and the 
development of an intelligent, "semantic" web.
	Our approach is based on five basic assumptions inspired by 
earlier research: 1) groups of agents self-organize to form a 
coordinated system, 2) the system co-opts external media for 
transmission of information, 3) the resulting distributed cognitive 
system can be modelled as a connectionist network, 4) information in 
the network is propagated selectively, 5) novel knowledge emerges 
through non-linear, distributed processes. These hypotheses will be 
elaborated and tested using a combination of theoretical modelling, 
computer simulation with multi-agent systems and recurrent 
connectionist networks, and empirical observation, both in 
controlled laboratory experiments with groups and open-ended 
observation of "real-world" processes.

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Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html