Artificial Sociality in the Light of Old and New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

Artificial Sociality in the Light of Old and New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches


Shmerlina I.A.

Cand. Sci. (Philos.), Leading Researcher, Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, Moscow, Russia shmerlina@yandex.ru

ID of the Article:

Rubric: Theory. Methodology

For citation:

Shmerlina I.A. Artificial Sociality in the Light of Old and New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2024. No 1. P. 5-14


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Abstract

The article critically analyzes the problems of artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial sociality (AS) from several theoretical and methodological positions. First, it is shown that the concept of IS actualizes extra-subjective approaches to understanding social ontology and is comparable with a number of concepts developed in the history of sociology, in particular, with P. Sorokin’s “conductors” (“mediums”). In this respect, AI is similar to other cultural (“artificial”) phenomena. Second, in the perspective of the Slavophile concept of “integral knowledge”, the limited epistemological horizons of AI as “rational cognition” are scrutinized. Third, sociological interpretations of AI that do not provide clarity in understanding its agentic status in social interactions (“participant” or “mediator”) are subjected to revision. Fourth, it is argued that a sociologically correct formulation of the IS question should focus not on natural or artificial agents of sociality, but on forms of sociality as ways of implementing social order. Today’s social reality, so the author of this paper, has not led so far to destruction of old and emergence of fundamentally new forms of social interactions, which, in the situation of insufficient theoretical comprehension, renders IS issue a journalistically superficiality.


Keywords
artificial sociality; artificial intelligence; social forms; “conductors” (“mediums”) according to P. Sorokin; extra-subjective approach; raciomorphic structures; “gnosеological ontologism”; A.S. Khomyakov; “living knowledge”

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