This article is really creating a buzz (sorry!!) The idea has some resonance to an aspect of Hayek’s social epistemology (see the article that I just today uploaded).
In much the same way that synapses are strengthened while unused linkages weaken and wither away, so too are paths to salient social knowledge strengthened or weakened – “social connectionism,” if you will.
Here is a draft of my entry for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.
Namit Arora in a themed issue of Philosophy Now considers the complexity of consciousness and its implications for artificial intelligence.
But despite the big advances in computing, AI has fallen woefully short of its ambition and hype. Instead, we have ‘expert’ systems that process predetermined inputs in specific domains, perform pattern matching and database lookups, and algorithmically learn to adapt their outputs. Examples include chess software, search engines, speech recognition, industrial and service robots, and traffic and weather forecasting systems. Machines have done well with tasks that we ourselves can pursue algorithmically (ie, in a series of small specifiable steps) – as in searching for the word ‘ersatz’ in an essay, making cappuccino, or restacking books on a library shelf. But so much else that defines our intelligence remains well beyond machines – such as using our creativity and imagination to understand new contexts and their significance, or figuring out how and whynew sensory stimuli are relevant or not. Why is AI in such a brain-dead state? Is there any hope for it? Let’s take a closer look.
Daniel Kahneman’s recently released book Thinking, Fast and Slow aimed at a popular audience is certainly generating a great deal of press, so far as I can tell, most of it very positive. Here he is outlining his experimental work in a Ted Talk. As a behavioral economist much of what he says about rationality will have resonance for Hayek and Simon and other situated cognitive theorists. I think that much of what Kahneman says is consistent with Gunderman from the previous posting though they are of course very different thinkers.
Here’s an article in this month’s Atlantic.
Rejecting the views of classic political philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau that primitive humankind started out as a collection of scattered, unorganized individuals, Fukuyama writes: “Human sociability is not a historical or cultural acquisition, but something hardwired into human nature.” Nowhere is Wilson, who pioneered this view, even mentioned.
Wilson is of course famous for his work on stigmergy:
• Sematectonic stigmergy.
• Sign-, cue-, or marker-based stigmergy.
Sematectonic stigmergy denotes communication via modification of a physical environment, an elementary example being the carving out of trails. One needs only to cast an eye around any public space, a park or a college quadrangle for instance, to see the grass being worn away, revealing a dirt pathway that is a well-traveled, unplanned and thus indicates an ‘‘unofficial’’ intimation of a shortcut to some salient destination.
Marker-based stigmergy denotes communication via a signaling mechanism. A standard example is the phenomenon of pheromones laid by social insects. Pheromone imbued trails increase the likelihood of other ants following the aforementioned trails. Unlike sematectonic stigmergy which is a response to an environmental modification , marker-based stigmergy does not make any direct contribution to a given task.
Wilson, E. O. (1975/2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Here is an uncorrected proof (do not cite) of my introduction to Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Further details will be made available just as soon as the publisher has updated the webpage for this book (according to Amazon the book will be made available on December 13th). A dedicated website to the volume can be found here.
Here’s a co-authored paper by one of the leading complexity theorists Vitorino Ramos.
John Graves shares his worth with Wiki-to-Text and Stigmergy & Wealth of Networks for a Learning2gether session.
Here is a video intended to stigmergically (a) promote wiki-to-speech and (b) using the concept of stigmergy to illustrate the script’s capabilities.
Seeing What You Mean
Knowledge Has Always Been Networked
Behaviourism vs. Phenomenology
The metaepistemology of knowing-how
The New Theories of Moral Sentiments
Nature, nurture and liberal values
Andy Clark – “Do Thrifty Brains Make Better Minds?”
The neuroscience of happiness
Patricia Churchland
Enaction and Dance
