Stigmergy yet again – well, there is no escaping it. While I wouldn’t call stigmergy a new paradigm (that’s too pompous – in any event, paradigms only have shape in a historical sense), stigmergy is one of the most fruitful mechanisms around that speaks to distributed cognition. Check out this paper nicely titled “Standing on the…
Born on this day in 1899
Here is the recently published book by my chum Erol Başar who as it happens is also contributing to my forthcoming edited book entitled Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Not surprisingly, there is much reference to Hayek’s The Sensory Order peppered throughout Erol’s book most notably in section 2.12 (pp. 39-41). Other distinguished neuroscientists who appreciate…
Here are some terrific stigmergic simulations by architectural student Yang Chenghan that I chanced across: The first is a 3D simulation deploying 45-70 agents (source code) The second a 2D simulation deploying 20-30 agents (source code) Here are some great synthetic stigmergic stills Yang has created.
Check out the latest themed issue of Swarm Intelligence. Here is the freely available introduction. Nice to see the term “cognition” used since I have been using the term in this regard for a few years.
At last Colin Klein’s terrific critical notice of Rob Rupert’s fine-grained critique Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind is now available in the latest issue of The Journal of Mind and Behavior.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences has published a bumper themed issue devoted to EM as well as other related theses, now collectively known as 4E. There is a “whose who” of contributors including the old firm Adams and Aizawa, Barnier, Sutton, Menary, Sterelny, Harris and others. This promises to be a super “must read” collection. Congrats…
Here’s a nice poster from Janet Marsden at Syracuse: Abstract — Geospatial technologies in conjunction with wireless grids will offer a context for locating and coordinating team activities in such a way that the nature of each team member’s effort may be known and understood by other members. This constructed group knowledge enables teams to respond to unforeseen and emergent contingencies…
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…
After some very middling opinion articles in this forum we have Andy Clark who is both a superb stylist and actually has interesting things to say. The title of the piece echos Alva Noë’s recent Out of Our Heads. Andy references some great images recently featured in the NYT that I was tempted to say something…
manwithoutqualities 