An agent-based reconciliation of narrative--论文代写范文精选

51Due论文代写网精选essay代写范文：“An agent-based reconciliation of narrative” 科学的世界观是基于法律,这应该是可以肯定的。在世界观中，通过文学、神话和宗教,是基于故事,与经历的事件在一个特定的主题环境。这篇哲学essay代写范文讲述的是关于基于世界观的一些观点论述。根据坎贝尔，最基本的故事情节背后，都有自身的神话和童话故事。人们一直在寻找一个概念性的框架,帮助他们理解宇宙,以及生活的意义。也许最好的这一术语包括哲学体系，是一个世界观。当考虑到世界观,我们可以区分两个主要竞争者:宗教和科学。前者是古老的,可以追溯到人类的起源。后者是相对近期的,启蒙运动和工业革命。下面的essay代写范文将进行详述。

Abstract
The scientific worldview is based on laws, which are supposed to be certain, objective, and independent of time and context. The narrative worldview found in literature, myth and religion, is based on stories, which relate the events experienced by a subject in a particular context with an uncertain outcome. This paper argues that the concept of “agent”, supported by the theories of evolution, cybernetics and complex adaptive systems, allows us to reconcile scientific and narrative perspectives. An agent follows a course of action through its environment with aim of maximizing its fitness. Navigation along that course combines the strategies of regulation, exploitation and exploration, but needs to cope with often-unforeseen diversions. These can be positive (affordances, opportunities), negative (disturbances, dangers) or neutral (surprises). The resulting sequence of encounters and actions can be conceptualized as an adventure. Thus, the agent appears to play the role of the hero in a tale of challenge and mystery that is very similar to the "monomyth", the basic storyline that underlies all myths and fairy tales according to Campbell [1949]. This narrative dynamics is driven forward in particular by the alternation between prospect (the ability to foresee diversions) and mystery (the possibility of achieving an as yet absent prospect), two aspects of the environment that are particularly attractive to agents. This dynamics generalizes the scientific notion of a deterministic trajectory by introducing a variable “horizon of knowability”: the agent is never fully certain of its further course, but can anticipate depending on its degree of prospect.

Introduction 
People have always been searching for a conceptual framework that helps them to understand their place within the cosmos and that gives a meaning to their life. Perhaps the best term for such an encompassing philosophical system is a worldview [Aerts, Apostel et al., 1994]. When considering worldviews, we can distinguish two main “families” of contenders: mythical-religious, and scientific. The former are the oldest ones, dating back to the origins of humanity. The latter are relatively recent, having emerged with Enlightenment and the Industrial revolution. Due to its great - 2 - successes in prediction and application, the scientific worldview has become largely dominant in our modern age. 

Yet, it is still being actively challenged by various incarnations of the mythical-religious worldview, including Creationism, fundamentalist Islam, and New Age thinking. Given the overwhelming amount of evidence for the scientific way of thinking, it may seem strange that its dominant position remains so precarious, and that the mythical-religious way of thinking remains so popular. In the present paper, I wish to explore the hypothesis that this is due not so much to the concrete content of the science, but to its form, that is, the way it is presented. Scientific knowledge is typically expressed in the form of laws, i.e. absolute, timeless rules that govern the behavior of all entities, thus allowing us to predict exactly what will happen to those entities in any circumstances. Mythical-religious knowledge, on the other hand, is typically expressed in the form of stories, which relate a sequence of events that happened to one or more protagonists. 

We immediately note three fundamental differences between these modes of knowledge (which Bruner [1986] calls “paradigmatic”, respectively “narrative”): 1) stories follow the arrow of time, while laws are normally time-independent; 2) stories take place in a concrete, local context centered on one or more subjects, while laws attempt to be universally and objectively valid; 3) a good story always includes an element of mystery, suspense or surprise, i.e. uncertainty about the outcome, while laws try to maximally exclude uncertainty. Science tries to minimize the impact of time, context, subject and uncertainty [Heylighen, 1999] because these reduce our powers of prediction, and therefore of control: theories that only work sometimes, at a particular time and place, and for a particular subject, are much less useful than theories that are accurate always and everywhere. This strength of scientific theories is also the weakness of mythicalreligious narratives: while a story relating the trials and tribulations of a particular hero, god, or prophet may be inspiring, it is not clear what lessons to draw from it for another person living in a different context and epoch. This explains the proliferation of multiple, mutually contradictory interpretations of the same scripture.

Conclusion 
This paper has tried to lay the foundations for a unification of the “two cultures”: the scientific and narrative modes of looking at the world. At first sight, these two perspectives are completely opposed: science strives to formulate objective, timeless and context-independent laws, while narrative describes unique sequences of events happening to particular subjects in particular contexts. Moreover, science seeks rationality, predictability and certainty, while narrative delights in emotion, surprise and mystery. Yet, on a more abstract level, both aim to provide dependable knowledge, by formulating rules about how agents are supposed to behave in different circumstances. 

In that sense, both science and narrative function as a guiding framework that helps us to act, to decide, and to understand the complex world we live in. My approach towards integrating these frameworks was inspired by cybernetics and complex adaptive systems (CAS), two relatively new approaches that aim to extend scientific methods towards the more complex and dynamic phenomena that are typical of life, mind and society. Possibly the most fundamental scientific insight developed in the 20th century is the observation that there are contextdependents limits to knowledge, or what I have called “horizons of knowability”. This - 34 - precludes the existence of an omniscient observer like the demon of Laplace, and therefore the possibility of predicting with certainty. It entails that any realistic model of behavior will have to take into account uncertainty, mystery and surprise. Cybernetics and CAS have shown how agents can cope effectively with that uncertainty, by using regulation to counteract unforeseen disturbances and exploration to discover novel affordances. 

I have proposed to integrate the insights from these approaches by introducing the concept of navigation as a combination of regulation, exploration and exploitation. Navigating means setting out and following a course of action while taking into account any foreseen or unforeseen diversions. Diversions are the phenomena that make an agent depart from its ideal or intended course of action, thus forcing it to correct that course. A course of action should therefore not be conceived as a predetermined trajectory—like the one followed by a planet around the sun—but as an adventure, i.e. a goal-directed activity affected by unpredictable and often mysterious encounters. These upsets, whether positive, negative or neutral, are the fundamental triggers of emotions: they produce the arousal or excitement that prepares body and mind for corrective action. Campbell’s [1949] analysis of the “hero’s journey” shows how a simplified and exaggerated narration of such an adventure provides the basic storyline for all myths, legends and fairy tales: the hero (agent) in a quest (search) for a magical boon (fitness enhancing resource) explores a mysterious world (uncertain environment), having to overcome difficult trials (disturbances), while sometimes receiving unexpected aid or making surprising discoveries (affordances). 

The same ingredients assembled in a more complex and realistic course of action and with a more subtle description of the concomitant emotions form the basis for modern forms of narrative, such as novels, movies [Vogler, 2007], and computer games [Dickey, 2006]. While navigating, agents are attracted to prospect, because the ability to foresee diversions helps them to set out a more effective course of action. However, at the same time they are attracted by mystery, which is the potential for an even better prospect. Mystery may be the most important trigger of exploratory behavior, as it invites agents to leave behind their ordinary, known environment and embark on the adventure of the unknown. Effective exploration means that mystery dissolves itself into prospect. 

However, the horizon of unknowability principle implies that this prospect will eventually expose new mysteries. The resulting alternation between prospect and mystery, supported by the flow experience, appears like a particularly effective mechanism for driving the action forward—both for the agent living the adventure and for the audience empathizing with its narration. It may even be argued that this variability of prospect is precisely what makes life most interesting, by fueling curiosity and an enduring drive for exploration. However, such a varying degree of foresight is as yet absent in scientific models of behavior. Unlike the idealized agents of Newtonian theory, real-life agents are neither blind to everything but their most immediate surroundings, nor omniscient like Laplace’s demon. It is as yet unclear how best to incorporate this missing dimension - 35 - into scientific models—although simple computer simulations of agents navigating through a virtual environment point the way towards a first formalization and operationalization of this idea. Further research will need to address this issue in order to develop a more concrete unification of narrative and scientific modes of representation.（essay代写)

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