:Cognitive Science Colloquium

:Wednesday, March 20. 2013, 14:00 – 16:00

:[http://www.buffalo.edu/buildings/building?id=park 280 Park Hall, University at Buffalo]



'''[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith Barry Smith]

'''On the Ontology of Massively Planned Social Action'''

Philosophers who study the phenomena of social agency have tended to
base their theories on small-scale actions involving individuals who
share common goals. In his “Massively Shared Agency” [1] the legal
theorist Scott Shapiro shows how authorities are needed to bring about
the meshing of shared plans of large numbers of individuals over time.
Shapiro conceives the need for the meshing of plans as one important
element in an understanding of the nature of law. Drawing our examples
from musical performance, urban design, and organized warfare, we
shall build on Shapiro’s ideas to explore the role of documents as
vehicles, not merely for the communication of plans across different
levels in an organizational hierarchy, but also for the correction and
enhancement of such plans over time [2].

[1] http://www.lex.unict.it/tcrs/numero/2012/Shapiro.pdf

[2] http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/HowToDoThingsWithDocuments.pdf