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Title
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances from an
Institutional Perspective
Author(s)
G. Sileno, A. Boer, T. van Engers
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FdR
Year
2014
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(pagedate: 2016-03-02)
Towards a Representational Model of Social
Affordances from an Institutional Perspective
Giovanni Sileno, Alexander Boer, and Tom van Engers
Leibniz Center for Law,
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
{g.sileno,a.w.f.boer,t.m.vanengers}@uva.nl
Abstract. The paper investigates the connection of the concept of affordance with the concept of institution, fundamental in social sciences
and in legal theory, with the purpose of delineating a working definition
of social affordance. This hybrid concept enriches the representation tools
to be used with agent-roles, knowledge components we use as basis in
explaining and interpreting socio-legal scenarios. The paper shows how
social affordances are of critical importance to model the agent-role embodiment mechanism.
Keywords: Social affordance, Institutions, Distributed cognition, Complex Systems, Agent-based modelling
1
Introduction
The dichotomy between internal and external perspectives to law — i.e. the
participant perspective of the legal scholar (cf. Kelsen’s “Pure Theory of Law”)
and the observer perspective of the sociologist — has been advocated not only
by legal scholars (Hart [15]), but also by sociologists (Luhmann [19]). Still, the
world of norms and the world of facts touch each other at a certain point. An
emblematic case is given by public administrations, as they are collective agencies
whose behaviour is defined by the legal system, and act as components of the
social system. With the purpose of improving the mutual interactions between
the different spheres of activities of public administrations, our current research
aims to a partial realignment of representations of law (traditional domain of
legal theory) with representations of power (domain of sociology) [4]. We are
performing two approaching steps, one for each pole of this imaginary path.
The first step proposes a change to the traditional focus on (legal) institutional concepts, moving the attention from obligations to powers. As observed in
[2], the power component is often neglected in normative research, more focused
on deontic aspects of norms. Nevertheless, as Hohfeld explained analyzing the
fundamental jural relations [17], power conditions underpin all obligations.
The second step deals with moving from an external to an internal perspective on agency. A pure behavioristic perspective would imply to use only
empirical observations as basis to create models for agents. However, intent is
an important factor in the interpretation of people’s behaviour according to the
2
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
law, and intent is also what drives one’s own behaviour. The intentional stance
links the observer and participant roles that humans have in the social system,
and works as basis for explanatory theories that are also generative theories [9].
In previous works [3, 28], we have identified as key concept for our research
the agent-role model, a self-other representational model which integrates the
abstraction of roles, the cognitive and motivational aspects of intentional agents,
and the jural positions related to institutional roles. What the law and more in
general institutions do, is to normatively characterize agent-roles as correct/good
and faulty/bad ones.1 The aim of the present work is to propose a model for
the agent-role embodiment mechanism. Our intuition is that an agent selects a
certain agent-role in certain social circumstances with a mechanism similar to
the one described by the theory of affordance, introduced in ecological psychology
in order to explain the situatedness of behaviour in animals.
The paper proceeds as follows. In section 2 we report some of the current
theories of affordance, relevant to our work. Then, in section 3 we circumscribe
the concept of institution, working specifically on institutional affordance, failure
and enforcement. In section 4 we integrate such concepts in the agent-role model
and informally apply them for an evolutionary analysis of institutions. Discussion
ends the paper.
2
Affordances
According to Gibson, “the affordances of the environment are what it offers the
animal, what it provides or furnishes” [13]. The concept of affordance explicitly
binds two entities: the environment and the animal. Some examples: a chair
affords that we sit on it, because our body can bend at the level of the knees;
a glass affords that we drink from it, because we can carry it in our hands
and our mouth can lean on it, etc. At a first glance, affordances can be seen
as qualities of objects, in dual relation with the shape of the agent’s body and
with his ability in performing certain actions. Their true nature is however more
complex, and manifold interpretations have been presented about its ontological
and epistemological status.2
Reed sees affordances as resources [22], providing a link between affordances
and natural selection: “affordances and only the relative availability (or nonavailability) of affordances create selection pressure on animals; hence behavior
is regulated with respect to the affordances of the environment for a given animal”. In contrast, Turvey interprets affordances as dispositions [29]. A certain
object is characterized by a dispositional property or tendency, if, under certain
circumstances, it manifests additional properties. An example of disposition is
1
2
This characterization is often given at a more abstract level. For instance a sale
is usually defined without specifying the reason why someone wants to buy, or to
sell. Then, some individual cases raise exceptions to such general dispositions (e.g. a
sale obtained by extortion), completing the normative characterization of “generic”
agent-roles with more contextualized factors.
cf. [6] for an outline of the theoretical debate around the concept of affordance.
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
3
being fragile. In opposition to Reed, Turvey’s account on affordances is nonselectionist. Dispositions depend on the possibility of existence of actualizing
circumstances; for example, nothing is soluble if there are no solvents. If affordances are dispositions, they depend first of all on the possible presence of
animals that can actualize them. In addition, affordances must be complemented
by fit properties of animals.
Chemero proposes an alternative account in [6]. Considering a certain behaviour φ, he starts by defining the logical structure of affordance as:
Affords φ(environment, organism)
(1)
In continuity with Gibson, the affordance of a specific behaviour (or a single
action) is expressed by a relation between an environment and an organism
(including animals, agents, etc.). Then, Chemero investigates the relata of (1).
First, he observes that the environmental parameter consists of features of
contextual situations, rather than generic properties of things. Such difference is
quite critical. Already at conceptual level, features and situations are higher-level
abstractions than properties and objects. But there is something more. Dismissing all theories of direct perception (affirming that the environment contains
meaning in itself), we necessarily take an inferential position (i.e. the environment transports meaning, as it is interpreted by an observer). In general, in
Kantian terms, inferences may involve analytic statements (whose truth is determined by definition or deduction) or synthetic statements (matter of facts).
In our case, the analytical position would be expressed in two steps: (i) the
recognition of objects via certain defining conditions, (ii) the inference of their
relative properties from first principles. However, as Clark observes in [7], features are cognitively directly related to perception and correspond to the direct
attribution of a state to the context. They are a good example of synthetic statements: they are progressively acquired and usually grow out of experience (for
the individual) or evolution (as a species).
Second, the organism parameter describes the possibility of the animal of
effectively performing a certain action, not considering the environmental contingency (e.g. I can drink, even if I don’t have a glass of water now). For this
reason, they are called also effectivities, as in [29], who associates them to dispositions. Chemero, however, argues that they are rather abilities. The definition of
disposition contains a degree of necessity: in the right conditions, the conditional
property associated to the disposition has to become manifest; on the other hand,
“having the ability to walk does not mean that one will not fall down even in the
ideal conditions for walking”. This is an important point, which underlines the
connotation of subjective or agentic perspective intrinsic to the whole concept of
affordance, to be opposed to the objective perspective given by dispositions.
In consideration of the above, the definition of affordance becomes:
Affords ′ φ(features, ability)
(2)
4
3
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
Institutions
The focus of social investigation is on the relations found to exist among human
beings in their groupings. In general, a social system is defined by social components (individual or groups) and relations between them; within the relations,
a social structure corresponds to a series of patterns related to the composition and the behaviour of social entities. A social institution is considered as a
mature, specialized, and comparatively rigid part of the social structure. The
first characterization of institutions is epistemic; however, as they are embodied by individual social members, they manifest an ontological nature as well.3
As epistemic entities, institutions exists only in the agents’ mental domains.
The collective flavour is given by a comparatively similar representation in each
individual of the community.
The generation of institutions may be related to different factors. Traditionally four main classes of institutions are considered, depending on whether they
“have arisen from, or have been moulded by: (a) animal instinct, (b) religious
emotion, (c) certain abstract principles as to right behaviour, we may term
humanistic; and (d) deliberate planning, whether empirical or scientific, being
particular forms of social organisation devised in order to attain specific ends,
for which class we use the term technical ” [31].
A complementary perspective on institutions has been introduced by Searle
in [24, 26], and more recently in [25], as an outgrowth of his study of language.
As speech acts are always embedded in social settings, illocutionary forces as
promise, assertion, command, inquiry, etc. express key concepts in the processes
of constitution, operation and maintenance of social institutions, which include,
in those terms, games, social customs and legal norms.
Example 1. Suppose an agent A promises to perform a certain action, and an
observer/agent B expects A will do that. Stated equivalently, B associates to
A’s promise the creation of an obligation about the promised performance. This
inference underpins that A has, in regards to B, the (institutional) power, i.e.
his speech act does change the institutional domain of reference. B’s expectation
may not hold if B knows that A is an unreliable person: A won’t have the
power of promising, and, despite his promise, no obligation will be created, nor
expectations about his actions.
The example above shows the strong connection between obligation and
power with expectation. These two concepts rewrite respectively “necessity” and
“possibility” in institutional terms.
A powerful semiotic instrument to describe all jural relations has been introduced in legal theory by Hohfeld [17, 23] (Fig. 1). The first square — concerning
3
“It is often said that the Pilgrims in the Mayflower brought over to these shores their
English institutions. They did, but where did they bring them? Were they packed
in a cedar chest? Were they stowed in the hold of the Mayflower? No, they were in
the minds of the pilgrims.” [16]
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
obligation
power
correlative
liability
correlative
opposite
opposite
opposite
opposite
obligative
right
correlative
no-right
5
correlative
privilege
disability
immunity
Fig. 1. The two Hohfeldian semiotic squares: obligations and power concepts.
directed obligations — can be read as: an obligative-right is a person’s (enforceable) claim against another person, which in turn has an obligation (or duty)
concerning this claim towards the first person; privilege is one’s freedom from the
claim of another person, which in turn has no-right on this claim with the first.
The second square — related to power (called also ability in Hohfeld’s terms)
— can be read similarly.
Example 2. In modern legal systems, a sale is usually structured as unilateral or
bilateral sale contract. In general, a bilateral contract arises from the exchange of
mutual, reciprocal promises (the offer and the acceptance) between two persons
(the offeror and the offeree) that require the performance or non-performance
of some act by both parties. In a sale contract, the two parties are the buyer and
the seller, and, once the acceptance is declared, the buyer has the obligation to
proceed to the payment and the seller to the delivery.
offers
de sel
liv ler
er
s
offeror
entrance
offer
(seller or buyer)
delivery
r
ye s
bu ay
p
(buyer or seller)
ac
ce
pt
s
acceptance
offeree
entrance
conclusion
payment
Fig. 2. The sale transaction, as a bilateral contract
The process is summarized in Fig. 2, including an entrance condition for
each party. Intuitively, the buyer should own the required amount of money (in
the moment of payment) and the seller should own the good to deliver (in the
moment of delivery). In a second analysis, these conditions represent only what
is necessary to fulfil the obligation derived from the promise. More in general,
however, entrance conditions reify the power ascribed to people, and they are
synthetic statements.
3.1
Institutional roles
Terms like buyer and seller denote agents acting within the sale institution.
However, there is an intrinsic difference between the actual participants and the
role they play. An institution concerns persons, but not “whole” persons: each
one enters into it via an adequately trained and specialized part of himself. These
“parts” are embodying specific institutional roles.
6
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
Institutional roles are defined with certain abilities (equivalently, powers),
obligations and expectations about the other roles. Following the description
given by the sale contract, a buyer may accept a previous offer, and if he does
that, he has to pay, expecting to receive the delivery. All these steps are synthesized in one word: a buyer may buy. Therefore, institutional roles are defined
in a first place by actions that may be taken, in an adequate institutional setting, in order to achieve certain outcomes. Going further, we observe that the
possibility of buying exists because there is a seller who has offered, who will
receive acceptance and payment, and finally will deliver the object. Both roles
are strictly necessary: there cannot be a buyer without a seller.
In this line of thought, it is evident that in general a sale does not concern
only one buyer and one seller: sales occur in a whole market, composed by
several competing economic actors. Although it is not explicitly present in the
formal description of the sale institution, the presence of an alternative seller
(we synthesize in just one role all the competitors), and an alternative buyer is
obviously not negligible for the social institutional dynamics.4 These relations
are involved in the evaluation of the offer, action meant to judge the acceptability
of the offer. Evaluation, however, was not made explicit in the definition of the
sale process. Institutional roles defined by law circumscribe social institutional
roles. In principle, the resulting looseness characterizes the degrees of freedom
of the behaviour of social components, i.e. the domain for competition, coalition
construction, moral and religious prescriptions, trends, free will.5
A complete scheme about the process can be drawn unifying procedural and
institutional descriptions. In this spirit, we map in Fig. 3 the jural relations
holding in a sale in which the seller acts as offeror. The gray circle means that
the performance of the action is not sufficient to proceed, but it has to return a
positive result.
3.2
Institutional affordance
As any other institutional action, buying is successful only if performed in a
social environment that responds accordingly. Following this line, we can extend
the expression (1) quite intuitively:
Affords φ(social environment, social agent)
(3)
The existence of the institution guarantees the underlying link between the institutional action φ — performed by the agent playing the institutional role related
4
5
This perspective, first presented by Commons in [8], is considered fundamental in
institutional economics.
Mingers [20] gives a clarifying example considering the game of chess. The rules
governing the moves are strictly defined and cannot be modified during the game.
However, habitual players may apply many additional rules, associated to tactics
and strategies used in previous games or exchanged with other players. This informal
knowledge is constructively created by the history of games of the individual player,
and of the community of players.
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
buyer
seller
outcomes
prior condition
liability to
acceptance
power of
offering
7
(dual) actions
offer
prior condition
receive
offer
outcomes
power of
accepting
evaluate
offer
obligation
of delivering
obligative right
on payment
liability to
acceptance
receive
acceptance
obligative right
on payment
obligation
of delivering
accept
power of
accepting
receive
payment
pay
obligation
of paying
deliver
receive
delivery
obligative right
on delivery
obligation
of paying
obligative right
on delivery
Fig. 3. A sale transaction (without enforcement) illustrated in terms of actions, with
jural positions as pre and post conditions (neglecting their terminations).
to that action — and the response to φ given by the social environment — i.e.
agents playing the network of institutional roles dual to φ.
As any generic action, an agent can perform it, if he has the ability of doing
it. In this case, however, the concept of ability encapsulates both its practical
meaning — e.g. being able of performing the associated speech act — and the
institutional ability, of transforming that action in an socially meaningful act.
Leaving aside the practical layer, the first feature demanded to the social environment to be successful in the performance of φ, is therefore compliance. This
is quite intuitive: before acting, the agent expects that the environment generates
the (supposedly) correct response to his act. Consequently, (2) becomes:
Affords ′ φ({compliance}, ability)
(4)
However, this is not sufficient to be successful in completing an action in an
actual social settings. Contextual market features, as the average market price,
may suggest for instance that there would be no offeree sensitive to that offer.
The complete figure is expressed as:
Affords ′ φ({compliance, market features}, ability)
3.3
(5)
Institutional failures and enforcement
The social world is not a world of necessity, at least, not in the same sense as
the physical world. If I throw a stone against a mirror in order to break it, I’m
almost certain that the mirror will break. The relation between my ability (e.g.
of throwing a stone) and relevant features of the environment (e.g. fragility) is
expressed by the affordance, but it relies on essential characteristics of the physical world (including my body). If I pay for an object purchased on the internet,
I may not receive the object, not only because there may have been a problem with the shipping, but also because the seller may have never intended to
deliver it. Cognitive and motivational factors play a fundamental role in social
8
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
systems. In general, scenarios of non-compliance cause a failure of the institutional system. If I lived in a country in which all promises are systematically not
maintained, I would evaluate the affordance of any behaviour relying on others’
promises (e.g. buying) as not holding. The “promise” institution would become
irrelevant, because any person would avoid to perform actions related to it. And
the same fate would occur to all institutions based on promises (e.g. sale).
M
M
B
S
B
S
B
S
B
S
AB
AS
AB
AS
AB
AS
AB
AS
Fig. 4. The topology of a sale: main transactional channels (a), communication channels for reputation construction (b), sensing channels for ex-post (c) and ex-ante (d)
failure monitoring.
Systemic maintenance reasons could therefore explain the existence of the
enforcer, an institutional role present in some form in any institution.6 Enforcement actions are expected to provide an institutional remedy to failures
and to strengthen the general compliance, using rewards and sanctions.7 In order to perceive a failure, the enforcer must have some sensing ability on the
institutional actions of the agents. For this reason, the first enforcer is usually
the same agent who believes to be victim of a social failure. However, in modern
systems, the enforcement role is not played solely by the victim, but normally
refers to collective entities liable to provide a legal repair, remedy or punishment,
if the failure is confirmed. Bringing the case to the court and providing proofs is
equivalent to creating an ex-post, asynchronous monitoring handled by a collective enforcement agency (Fig. 4c). In certain (and hopefully limited) contexts,
however, the monitoring may also be applied ex-ante, in real-time (Fig. 4d).
Vatiero [30], amongst others, notices that the enforcement related to obligations is naturally exogenous to the institution, as enforcement actions are
different from the institutional actions of reference. Conversely, the enforcement
related to power relations is endogenous. The successful participation to the institution counts in itself as a reward, in many senses: (a) the agent has been able
to achieve its objectives; (b) if this success is publicly observable, other agents
can see that he is able to conduct the transaction.8 The concept of reputation
6
7
8
There are interesting situations, like regulations of right-hand/left-hand traffic,
where there is a kind of “natural” enforcement. Not being compliant with the correct
driving direction would have direct and possibly terrible consequences.
cf. Dari-Mattiacci and Geest [10] for an institutional/economic investigation on the
mechanism of carrots and sticks.
This publication may occur at the offeror’s node, or at offeree’s node. The offeree
node is evidently more sensible, because a priori it has no interest in the publication,
apart sharing information with other offerees about the offeror, so as to create a new
line of communication between pairs (Fig. 4b).
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
9
turns out to be fundamental at this level: it gives a collectively constructed
measure of the reliability of an agent.
4
An integrated approach
So far, we have considered only one institutional frame. In reality, the behaviour
of an agent is influenced by several institutions simultaneously. For example, each
of us is part of a family, citizen of a country, employed by some private or public
company, etc. In case of conflicting institutions, a non-compliant behaviour in
one layer could be a consequence of an obligation holding at another layer. On the
other hand, conformant behaviours might still hide unfair competition schemes.
The pure institutional role is not descriptive enough to cover the full picture of
social scenarios.
4.1
The agent-role model
Taking an internal perspective toward the social system, we assume this general
working principle: when an agent discovers a successful scheme of behaviour
(after guidance, via mimesis or by chance), and possibly goes through subsequent
repeated reinforcements, he acknowledges goal-oriented plans of actions, dual to
specific social contexts. A possible representation for this knowledge is given by
the agent-role model, first introduced in [3] with the purpose of representing
scenarios of compliance and non-compliance elicited from legal experts.9
Agent-roles are self-other representations, modeling how the agent behaves
(generative/prescriptive perspective), and how the other agents behave (explanatory/descriptive), in a certain social setting. Agent-roles are deterministic models: they are basically scripts structured on a intentional architecture and provided with institutional logic [3, 28]. More in detail, an agent-role consists in:
– a set of abilities, related to the actions he is able to perform in adequate
conditions,
– a set of susceptibilities, or sensitivities towards certain events: when he perceives one of them, he modifies his internal state,
– a set of goals, describing what he wants to achieve,
– a set of plans, i.e. courses of actions that he believes would bring about
certain goals,
– a set of beliefs, i.e. propositions about the world that he believes to be true.
The first two are observable as messages, the other are ascribed to the agent
which is supposedly embodying that agent-role.
In general, the social abilities of an agent-role rely on institutional roles, or
equivalently, an agent-role can be seen as a coordination of institutional roles,
9
For support in psychological studies, see Fonagy and Target [12]. In addition, considering the investigations done on scripts, you may refer also to Abelson [1].
10
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
provided with a second-order intentional layer. Therefore, agent-roles are characterized by two topologies: an internal topology, concerning the internal coordination of institutional roles, and an external topology, defined by complementary agent-roles. In the case of the buyer of our example, the internal topology
concerns the agent-roles of evaluator, offeree, payer and various monitors. The
external topology deals with the seller.
When regulators define legal institutional roles, they consider actual or hypothetical agent-roles, and specify the legal roles in order to scope a restricted
relevant set of their characteristics: this explains the mechanism of circumscription observed in 3.1.
Groups as agent-roles Agent-roles are not played merely by individuals. A group
can be interpreted as an agent-role as well, when it shows social topology, social
action and collective intention. In this case, the agent-role will have different
identities attached to its communication terminals.
People sharing the same institutional conceptualization constitute a group
too, which forms the human ontological expression of the institution. The reinforcement of the epistemic expression of the institution within the members
of that group is performed through collective enforcement. The group influences
its members, favouring a certain institutional interpretation over others, and
encouraging/discouraging specific agent-roles.
4.2
Social affordances and agent-roles
Social affordance has been defined in respect to a certain action/behaviour. As
an agent-role is in practice an intentional characterization of behaviour, by extension, we can associate social affordances to agent-roles as well. The social
affordance associated to the situation, coupled with deliberated (ascribed) intent, selects the agent-roles the (other) agent may effectively embody. Social
affordances correspond to entrance conditions as the ones illustrated in Fig. 2.
Social affordances of non-compliant behaviours Intuitively, if I know that people
who rob a bank never succeed because they are always caught and the money
is always given back, my evaluation of the affordance of the bank robber agentrole should be negative. This consideration, however, does not apply for instance
with killing, because the killing action may still be successful whatever response
the social environment may have. Therefore, the affordance is influenced also by
repairing features of the social environment.
If this is the case, there is another important consequence. If the outcome of
a non-compliant behaviour is essentially a social agreement (e.g. property), then
the repair, if the failure is recognized, may be complete. Conversely, the strength
related to enforcement features (related to sanctions, punishments, rewards) do
not play any role in the evaluation of the affordance, but only when the agent
has to decide between possible alternative agent-roles. Although the environment
affords a faulty behaviour, the agent may decide not to perform it because it has
a too low pay-off.
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
buyer
seller
outcomes
prior conditions
liability to
acceptance
obligative right
on payment
power of
offering
(dual) actions
offer
receive
offer
obligation
of paying
receive
acceptance
accept
power of
accepting
obligative right
on payment
receive
payment
pay
power of
paying
deliver
receive
delivery
power of
delivering
liability in case
of failure
of delivery
obligation of
providing
remedy
obligation
of paying
power to
provide
remedy
receive
enforce
enforce
provide
remedy
receive
remedy
obligative right
on delivery
power to
liability to
enforce in
enforcement in
case of failure case of failure
of delivery
of payment
obligative right
on delivery
evaluate
failure
liability to
enforcement
outcomes
power of
accepting
liability to
acceptance
obligation
of delivering
liability to
enforcement
prior conditions
evaluate
offer
obligation
of delivering
power to
liability to
enforce in
enforcement in
case of failure case of failure
of payment
of delivery
11
power to
enforce
power to
enforce
obligative right
on remedy
Fig. 5. A sale transaction with delivery failure illustrated in terms of actions, with
jural positions as pre and post conditions (neglecting terminations).
General model of social affordance In order to express this idea more rigorously,
we return to the example of the sale, but increasing the granularity of representation. In Fig. 5, we represent a scenario in which the buyer has not received the
good and perform successfully an enforcement action. There are a few differences
in respect to the previous diagram.
First, we have integrated enforcement actions, empowered by specific jural
relations. We associate each obligation to the liability to enforcement if the performance fails. Then, informed by this specific story, we include the recognition
of failure of delivery (e.g. caused by timeout), which triggers the enforcement.
Finally we add the “enforce” action and the correspondent response of the seller,
with the associated jural relations.
Second, in the prior conditions, we separate the power concepts from the
others. The empty spaces in the figure reveals powers given for granted. Let us
consider the case of the buyer. We distinguish three families of actions: directaction (e.g. power of accepting, paying), reception and evaluation. Direct-action
powers are the powers in the sense used until now. Reception power can be described differently. Taking for granted his sensing abilities, the agent may receive
something only if someone else can emit and the transmission is successful. On
the other hand, evaluation abilities depend on cognitive skills/competences, and
the result of the evaluation is usually obtained processing environmental features
(e.g. average market price, average response time for delivery).
Generalizing this picture, we can recognize three areas of actions, related to
features which influence the social affordance of buying:
1. easiness to find a good offer (more in general, to find an adequate reason
motivating the trans-action), highly related to the “search frictions” studied
in economics, e.g. in [21].
2. compliance, i.e. proneness of agents to respect social expectations,
12
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
3. effectiveness of control structures, i.e. ability of enforcement processes to
furnish remedies to infractions.10
The figure does not make explicit the nature of the remedy. The buyer has an
inherent motive: to acquire a certain good, via a certain payment. If the remedy
entails the delivery, then the initial desire is satisfied (in this case, the term
repair is usually preferred). If not, the buyer’s primary intent will be unsuccesful.
Intuitively, the social affordance attributed to that behaviour (agent-role) should
lose consistence. Therefore, more strictly, we should replace the third item with
effectiveness of control structures in repairing the failure.11
The abilities necessary to the buyer for the performance of buying can be
easily read by following in vertical the actions reported in Fig. 5: to monitor
and to evaluate offers, to accept; to pay, to monitor delivery and to evaluate its
failure; to enforce, to monitor the enforcement and evaluate its failure.
The complete social affordance of an agent-role can be therefore expressed as
composition of these abilities and features, obtaining a far more rich description
of the entrance condition of the sale.
Evidently, a similar analysis can be performed for an agent-role intentionally
non-compliant; the related feature in this case would be the absence of control
structures, or their disability to enforce.
B
S
E
C
C
P
AB
AS
AE
AC
AC
AP
Fig. 6. Three prototypical scenarios of non-compliance: monopoly or cartel, swapscheme, short-circuit.
4.3
Prototypical patterns of non-compliance
In this section, we will present three prototypical schemes of non-compliance,
using the concepts presented so far.
If there is only one seller who offers a certain product, all interested buyers
are subjected to the price chosen by this seller. The topology of this scenario
shows a cut on the connection with the alternative seller (Fig. 6, left). This may
happen because of a monopoly, or because of a cartel coordination (multiple
sellers acting as one): the related agent-role directs two supposedly competing
institutional roles. The resulting institutional context is not balanced towards
the buyers. The more the seller raises his price, the more the potential buyers
will lack the power to accept the offer. This process is of no harm to the seller,
10
11
We use the plural form as we could extend the figure with a hierarchical structure of
enforcement processes. If the first enforcer fails, the second one is liable to enforce
the first, etc.
The compensation may still interact positively with other agent-roles the agent is
embodying, determining a general positive payoff.
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
13
because, as long as there will be a buyer accepting his offer, his action will be still
successful. However, the general functionality of the institution will be damaged,
because many agents are simply cut out from it.
A typical example of swap scheme is vote-buying. A candidate promises the
performance of a certain action in exchange of the vote of an elector. Stated
in this way, this is not different from any political campaign, directed often
towards specific communities or groups of interest. Social aggregates use their
social influence on their members to support selected politicians. This is not
forbidden. What changes in a vote-buying scheme is that the coordination is
strict: there is control on individual vote performance.12 The agent-role involved
in a swap-scheme plays two dual institutional roles (e.g. elector and candidate),
monitoring and timing the performance of those. When this coordination is set,
the connections with competing candidates, and competing electors disappear.
The affordance of cartel and swap schemes is determined by two factors: the
actual ability of the agent-roles to control the performance, and the lack of
adequate reactivity and reparation from the social environment.
The impact of technological innovation is often relevant in respect to institutions as well. The possibility of copying and sharing at almost no cost copyrighted
material gives to the consumer the practical ability to easily perform these actions. With the sharing, in particular, any consumer becomes provider too. This
results in a short-circuit in the market of consumers/providers of contents. The
remedy part given by the copyright institution is not relevant in the social affordance formula: there is no physical equivalence to restitution of duplicated digital
content. Furthermore, this agent-role does not sell the content, but shares it: as
a provider he has no expectations of compliance. The environmental parameter
of the affordance formula is in this case practically irrelevant.13
4.4
An evolutionary perspective
Considering the account on affordance given by [22], people’s behaviour would be
selectively constructed in relation to the social affordances given by the contextual social environment. Although his account is not prevalent in the affordance
community research, this point makes sense in respect to social affordances.
Donald, amongst others, observes in [11] how mimesis is at the base of many
human abilities. In his definition, mimesis is not simple imitation: it is an “ability
to produce conscious self-initiated representational acts that are intentional”. In
our terms, this definition is equivalent to the ability of acquiring and playing
agent-roles. We assume as general working principle that people tend to reproduce behaviours—to embody agent-roles—which they believe are affordable, and
12
13
One of the most recent practice is the use of mobile cameras during the vote, invaliding the secret ballot principle. Another option, valid in case of referendum, is to
check whether people do not go to the polling station.
Strengthening enforcement actions may help to reduce the number of agents that
will actually share materials, because of negative payoffs, but it does not modify the
evaluation of affordance. The impact of technology has been structural.
14
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
with better payoffs (not necessarily of economic nature). The perspective of a
social agent, however, is internal to a specific social setting. It is in this respect
that he associates affordances and payoffs to agent-roles, rather than a strictly
legal-institutional perspective. This explains why certain agent-roles are intentionally non-compliant, and others are believed to be compliant, while they are
not.14
If the number of “faulty” behaviours increases too much, the institution may
be compromized. Enforcement actions may partially reduce this, but when the
change affects social affordances/dispositions, the problem is on a more structural level. In this case, a more structural reaction is required on the institutional
level (changing norms within the institution), or on the super-institutional level.
5
Conclusion and discussion
The motivation behind our research is that the focus on agent-roles can effectively support operational and design processes in legal/administrative systems,
bringing the human factor into a central position in contemporary infrastructures. By collecting agent-roles known in the target social setting, policy-makers,
regulators and administrators would have a more systemic representation of actual social structures. We are working on concrete applications: (i) a knowledge
base of collected agent-roles can be used in operations, in order to support the
execution of (positive and negative) enforcement actions; (ii) in an adequate
design framework, it can provide a testing ground where to tailor new regulations, in order (a) to calibrate rewards and sanctions, and (b) to create a new
institutional layer, introducing new agent-roles in the legal system. In this framework, the concept of affordance, as subjective component of power, is of critical
importance for the contextualization of agent-roles.
Related literature In the literature the use of the term social affordances
is not without ambiguity. A domain-specific interpretation, not relevant to our
research, refers to the study of human-computer interfaces for social media. We
proceed rather in continuity with [13]: “[..] economic behavior, political behavior
- all depend on the perceiving of what another person or other persons afford, or
sometimes on the misperceiving of it”. Kaufmann and Clément provide in [18]
a recent overview of the several interpretations of affordances related to social
behaviour. These studies are highly relevant, but focus mostly on components of
social behaviour that occur at pre-symbolical level (gestures, expressions), which
can be neglected at our level of description. In our terms, the nature of social
14
On the other hand, in certain situations, people may not see other choice than
non-compliance to achieve even basic goals. In some of these cases, this choice may
actually exist, but they were not able to acquire the relative agent-role, or to evaluate
positively the relative affordance. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer, we noticed
here an interesting connection between social affordance and the capability theory
introduced by Sen (e.g. [27]), which remains to be investigated in the future.
Towards a Representational Model of Social Affordances
15
affordance is that of a synthetic statement too, but it is more related to the AI
qualification/ramification problem, rather than pre-symbolic processing.
Computational implementation A natural extension of this study is to validate the proposed conceptualization via computational simulation. The agentrole model has strong connections with BDI frameworks used in current MAS
practices and research. We developed our first prototypes on the platform Jason, which implements and extends the AgentSpeak(L) language [5]. At the moment, the integration of social affordances in an agent program is still matter of
study. Interestingly, the event-condition-action (ECA) rule form, characterizing
AgentSpeak(L), naturally models the practical reasoning related to affordances.
For instance:
event When I want to achieve a certain goal,
condition if I evaluate positively the affordance of a certain action (that I know
to bring about that goal),
action I start performing that action.
Relevant research questions concern how to model the computation of features
and abilities performed by the agents (e.g. how the last failure in receiving delivery impacts the buyer’s perception of the seller’s compliance? and of the market
overall compliance?). Neglecting psychological factors, and focusing on the computation, the problem of passing from propositions to features has already been
investigated in qualitative reasoning [14], but insofar we have not found any
related implementation in Jason or similar platforms.
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