Event Timeslots (1)

Friday
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Can groups of biased scientists outperform groups of unbiased ones? Can citizens with only a slight preference for having like-minded neighbors give rise to a highly segregated city? Can rational epistemic agents polarize over the truth of a sentence? The effect of individual actions on the collective outcome has always fascinated philosophers of many disciplines. In the last decade, to answer these and many more questions, philosophers have extensively used agent-based models. Agent-based models are computational programs that allow to explore the behaviour of a group of agents, starting from the rules guiding the actions of the individuals. As such, it is the ideal tool to explore the collective outcome of individual practices. This course is meant to teach participants how to build an agent-based model from scratch. No pre-existing knowledge about programming is required: philosophy students with no computational background, you are welcome! At the same time, the course is also ideal for people already experienced with programming who want to learn about how to use agent-based models. We recommend taking this course in combination with the course “Agent-based simulations in philosophy: theoretical part”, although you can also take each of them separately (that would make sense if you followed the theoretical part last year). Each course can provide up to six credits. The course is composed of four parts. 1. In October, I will teach you some fundamental basics required for programming. You will learn what program to use, how to install it, and which procedures are useful when building an agent-based model. 2. In November, we will go through some of the most famous examples of agent-based models in philosophy. I will teach you how to program them, and how to collect data from them. 3. Finally, December and January are dedicated to you building your own model. We will discuss together how to formulate nice ideas on which model to build, and I will help you step-by-step in building your own model. 4. The final three lectures will be dedicated to you presenting your work.