Well, this article was inevitable - first mentioned here). Francis Heylighen has been talking about this for a few years now as has myself in discussing Hayek, distributed cognition and co-evolved mind and sociality not to mention my ongoing interest in stigmergy which I argue is a species of EM.
Abstract: This article explores the notion of the Web-extended mind, which is the idea that the technological and informational elements of the Web can sometimes serve as part of the mechanistic substrate that realizes human mental states and processes. It is argued that while current forms of the Web may not be particularly suited to the realization of Web-extended minds, new forms of user interaction technology as well as new approaches to information representation do provide promising new opportunities for Web-based forms of cognitive extension. In addition, it is suggested that extended cognitive systems often rely on the emergence of social practices and conventions that shape how a technology is used. Web-extended minds may thus depend on forms of socio-technical co-evolution in which social forces and factors play just as important a role as do the processes of technology design and development.
Keywords: cognition, cognitive extension, cognitive technology, extended mind, Internet, linked data, Web science, World Wide Web.
July 17, 2012
Short URL Andy Clark, Cognition, Cognitive science, complexity, Extended Mind, Externalism, Francis Heylighen, Friedrich Hayek, Mind, Stigmergy complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, global brain, network theory, networks, neural networks, social connectionism, social epistemology, sociocognition, spontaneous orders, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy
Check out this new book I’ve just come across – Wiley’s lists, across disciplines, is certainly looking very strong these days. Also check out two colleagues’ excellent Wiley offerings – Ted Lewis’ Network Science and of course Ken Aizawa’s and Fred Adams’ The Bounds of Cognition.
June 5, 2012
Short URL Agent-based model, Cognition, Cognitive science, complexity, Computational Sociology, Extended Mind, Fred Adams, Ken Aizawa, Network Science, Simulation, social epistemology, Social science, Sociology, Spontaneous order, Ted Lewis cognitive modeling, cognitive science, cognitive systems, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computation, computational intelligence, computational psychology, computer science, computer simulations, Fred Adams, Ken Aizawa, network theory, networks, social connectionism, social epistemology, social networking, social ontology, stigmergy, systems, ted lewis
Here is the line-up for the forthcoming special issue of Cognitive Systems Research Marge Doyle and I have just edited. It’s been a long time coming because of the highly technical nature of some of the papers not to mention the various disciplines involved.
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Stigmergy 3.0: From Ants to Economies - Margery Doyle, Cognitive Research Scientist/ Leslie Marsh, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
Cognitive Stigmergy: A Study of Emergence of Social Structure in Small Groups - Ted Lewis, Professor of Computer Science and Executive Director, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Naval Postgraduate School
Emergence in Stigmergic and Complex Adaptive Systems: A Formal Discrete Event Systems Perspective - Saurabh Mittal, Founder and Principal Scientist, Dunip Technologies, Tempe, AZ
Stigmergy in Human Practice: Coordination in Construction Work - Lars Rune Christensen, Global Interaction Research Initiative, Technologies in Practice Group, University of Copenhagen
Stigmergic Self-organization and the Improvisation of Ushahidi - Janet Marsden, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Stigmergic Dimensions of Online Creative Interaction - Jimmy Secretan, Principal Scientist, Korrelate, Orlando.
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June 1, 2012
Short URL Cognition, Cognitive science, Epistemology, Extended Mind, Stigmergy, Ted Lewis collaboration, collaborative filtering, collective intentionality, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, network theory, networks, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence
Here is Troy Camplin’s intro to his paper for Hayek in Mind.
In many ways this paper is necessarily an introduction. I want to introduce away to understand F. A. Hayek’s ideas on both spontaneous orders and the brain by understanding network structures. More, I want to distinguish between networks that emerge top-down in organizations and cellular regulatory networks and those that emerge bottom-up in self-organizing systems and spontaneous orders, whose relations to each other follow similar patterns. Socialists argue, contrary to Adam Smith’s thesis that the economy selforganizes from the bottom-up (1776), that the economy should be consciously designed and given goals. Hayek modernized Smith with spontaneous order theory. At the same time, self-organization theory emerged in physics and chemistry, complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory emerged in biology, and network theory emerged in several disciplines; these are all in the same conceptual family as spontaneous order theory. Hayek was part of the 20th century revolution of bottom-up self-organization theorizing that sees the universe emerging on its own through natural processes. If everything in the universe is self-organized, where do we get this idea, resurrected by socialists, that conscious design is the norm? Humans, like most animals, evolved to immediately, instinctively recognize the signs of others of their species. With wolves, lions, and other strongly territorial species, scent signs mark territory to warn off others. But humans are more visual, so we leave visual evidence of order. As a consequence, we associate the presence of order with an orderer or designer, and the development of creationist theories to explain nature, soul theories to explain the mind, and governments to order society. Darwinism and self-organization theories replaced creationist theories (for most people); top-down soul theories, including Descartes’ homunculus theory, evolved into CAS theories of the brain’s network structures, out of which the mind emerges; top-down social theories (where the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church was reproduced in other Western social structures, for example) gave way to Adam Smith’s bottom-up self-organizing ‘‘invisible-hand’’ theory. While life and mind have continued to evolve toward theories of self-organization, our social theories took a u-turn when socialism emerged as a respectable theory of economic ordering. The designer fallacy, increasingly abandoned in theories of life and mind, was readopted in our social theories.
May 16, 2012
Short URL Adam Smith, Austrian School, Complex adaptive system, Friedrich Hayek, Hayek, Smith, Social theory, Spontaneous order, TROY CAMPLIN hayek, network theory, networks, philosophy of social science, Troy Camplin
Here’s a recent WSJ article summing up the state of play in mapping brain connectivity. Here is Susan Bookheimer who holds the Joaquin Fuster Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience chair at UCLA – Fuster is off course a name many readers will recognise from my postings here and here. The images are from the Human Connectome Project.
“The study of connectivity is as hot as hot can get,” said Susan Bookheimer, a neuropsychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is the new head of the Organization of Human Brain Mapping, a large international professional society of neuroimaging researchers.

February 14, 2012
Short URL Cognitive neuroscience, connectome, Sebastian Seung, Susan Bookheimer cognitive science, neurophilosophy, connectionism, neuroscience, neurobiology, complexity, computational intelligence, Neurophysics, brain science, brain, neuron, networks, joaquin fuster, brain scans, network theory, neural signals, neural correlates, neural networks, Susan Bookheimer
Here is a rather scathing review of David Weinberger’s Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.
The renaissance of Marshall McLuhan in the era of the Web is disappointing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its rather dull obviousness. There is little surprise that the quotable, evidence-free, technology-obsessed Canadian English professor would thrive in a technology-obsessed era where pithy quotes about the deep meaning of digital devices too often stands in for evidence. McLuhan, of course, was the master theorist of the medium; beyond the over-used “medium is the message,” McLuhan’s major insight was to argue that socio-technological systems — such as the media — operate on a grand scale, largely independent of the day-to-day interest us mere mortals might have in their actual content. McLuhan’s primary flaw, on the other hand, was to decouple this understanding of socio-technical system from any relationship to economics, politics, or society. As leading communications theorist James Carey put it, “McLuhan sees the principal effect [of communication technology] as impacting sensory organization and thought. McLuhan has much to say about perception and thought but little to say about institutions.”
German philosopher Martin Heidegger is less quoted in Silicon Valley than Marshall McLuhan, and not just because he was a Nazi. McLuhan and Heidegger are equally poor writers, but whereas McLuhan’s inscrutable prose has led to him being more read than he ought to be, unintelligibility has had the opposite outcome for Heidegger. A dazzlingly complex philosopher — probably the greatest of the 20th century — the most important aspect of Heidegger’s thought for our purposes is his understanding that human beings (or rather “Dasein,” “being-in-the-world”) are always thrown into a particular context, existing within already existing language structures and pre-determined meanings. In other words, the world is like the web, and we, Dasein, live inside the links.
February 3, 2012
Short URL David Weinberger, distributed knowledge, Epistemology, Facts, Knowledge, social epistemology constructing the world, constructivism, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, Heidegger, internet, Marshall McLuhan, network theory, networks, social cognition, social connectionism, social constructivism, social epistemology, social facts, social networking, social ontology, social reality
Here’s a co-authored paper by one of the leading complexity theorists Vitorino Ramos.
October 27, 2011
Short URL collaboration, collaborative filtering, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, network theory, networks, self organizing systems, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, Vitorino Ramos
Here is the table of contents for my forthcoming (in press) edited volume focusing on The Sensory Order – this is the first salvo of shameless promotion.
CONTENTS
“SOCIALIZING” THE MIND AND “COGNITIVIZING” SOCIALITY
Leslie Marsh
“MARGINAL MEN”: WEIMER ON HAYEK
Walter Weimer
PART I: NEUROSCIENCE
HAYEK IN TODAY’S COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Joaquín Fuster
THE NON-CARTESIAN VIEW AND THE BRAIN
Erol Başar
PART II: PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
HAYEK’S QUESTION: HOW CAN PARTS OF THE WORLD COME TO MODEL THE REST OF THE WORLD
Joshua Rust
HAYEK’S SPECULATIVE PSYCHOLOGY, THE NEUROSCIENCE OF VALUE ESTIMATION AND THE BASIS OF NORMATIVE INDIVIDUALISM
Don Ross
HAYEK, POPPER AND THE CAUSAL THEORY OF THE MIND
Edward Feser
PEIRCE AND HAYEK ON THE ABSTRACT NATURE OF COGNITION AND SENSATION
James Wible
HAYEK’S POST-POSITIVIST EMPIRICISM: EXPERIENCE BEYOND SENSATION
Jan Willem Lindemans
A NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF MACH’S PSYCHOLOGY IN HAYEK’S PSYCHOLOGY
Giandomenica Becchio
PART III: MIND AND SOCIALITY
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIND: HAYEK’S ACCOUNT OF MENTAL PHENOMENA AS A PRODUCT OF SPONTANEOUS PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ORDERS
Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo
HAYEK’S SELF-ORGANIZING MENTAL ORDER AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE MIND
Chiara Chelini
BEYOND COMPLEXITY: CAN THE SENSORY ORDER DEFEND THE LIBERAL SELF?
Chor-yung Cheung
COGNITIVE OPENING AND CLOSING: TOWARDS AN EXPLORATION OF THE MENTAL WORLD OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Thierry Aimar
GETTING TO THE HAYEKIAN NETWORK
Troy Camplin
September 8, 2011
Short URL behaviorism, brain, brain reading, brain science, Chiara Chelini, Chor-Yung Cheung, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, cognitive systems, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, concept of mind, connectionism, consciousness, constructivism, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, don ross, dualism, edward feser, Embedded, embodied cognition, embodiment, emergence, enaction, enactivism, epistemology, erol basar, evolutionary psychology, folk psychology, francesco varela, friedrich hayek, functionalism, Fuster, gerald edelman, ghost in the machine, Giandomenica Becchio, Gilbert Ryle, Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo, group cognition, hayek, individualism, James wible, Jan Willem Lindemans, joaquin fuster, joshua rust, knowing how knowing that, liberalism, mirror neurons, network theory, networks, neural correlates, neural networks, neurobiology, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phenomenology, philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, physicalism, Popper, quantum brain, reductionism, representationalism, self-referentiality, self-synchronizing systems, situated cognition, social cognition, social connectionism, social constructivism, social epistemology, social ontology, sociocognition, spontaneous order, stigmergic cognition, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, the sensory order, Thierry Aimar, Troy Camplin, walter weimer
The new issue of Swarm Intelligence is now available. The excerpt below from the editors’ introduction – they may not realise it, but it this is as Hayekian as one can get:
Swarm Cognition is a novel multidisciplinary approach that encompasses research in neurosciences, cognitive psychology, social ethology and swarm intelligence, with the aim of studying cognition as an emergent collective phenomenon in which perception, attention, decision making and other cognitive processes are brought forth by a multitude of elementary units tightly interacting among each other. Within the Swarm Cognition framework a broad view of cognition is adopted, so that its definition also includes the behaviour displayed in a distributed system like an ant colony. Indeed, an ant colony can display complex cognitive functions as a result of the interactions among the system components. The parallel with brain activities is straightforward. An ant is part of a colony, much as a neuron is part of a brain. An ant cannot do much in isolation, but a colony is a highly resilient adaptive system. Similarly, a neuron is individually able to only make limited interactions with other neurons, but the brain is capable of highly complex cognitive processes. In other words, both ants and neurons behave/act in perfect harmony with other conspecifics/cells to accomplish tasks that go beyond the capability of a single individual. Out of metaphor, Swarm Cognition aims at studying cognitive processes as the emergent result of the collective dynamics in a distributed system, be the system composed of autonomous agents like ants or basic control units like neurons.
Therefore, Swarm Cognition can be considered part of swarm intelligence, above all for those studies that recognise cognitive processes in the behaviour of distributed systems. In this respect, swarm intelligence can offer a wide range of tools and techniques to understand, study and implement complex behaviour in distributed systems. Swarm Cognition can broaden the perspective of swarm intelligence by applying such techniques to the study of cognitive behaviour, and by exploring the relationship of the behaviour of complex distributed systems with studies in neuro- and cognitive sciences, which are not commonly targeted in the context of swarm intelligence.
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January 22, 2011
Short URL collective intentionality, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, hayek, network theory, networks, neuron, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence
Not a deep surprise but still nice to see some empirical work coming through. Check out this brief report just published online in Nature Neuroscience. The upshot: participants with larger amygdalas typically had more people in their social lives and maintained more complex relationships.

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December 27, 2010
Short URL Amygdala, Bradford Dickerson, brain, brain scans, brain science, Christopher Wright, cognition, cognitive science, complex adaptive systems, Kevin Bickart, Lisa Feldman Barrett, network theory, networks, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science, psychology, Rebecca Dautoff, situated cognition, social cognition, social networking, sociocognition