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Army ants ‘mind the gap’ efficiently

BBC popular write up of Simon Garnier’s co-authored Army ants dynamically adjust living bridges in response to a cost–benefit trade-off. antscollective behaviorcomplexitydistributed cognitionoptimizationroboticsself-assemblySelf-organizationSimon GarnierSpontaneous orderStigmergySwarm intelligence

Meet the New Boss

This article from The Atlantic. A FEW YEARS AFTER Philip Rosedale graduated from college with a degree in physics, he joined RealNetworks, then an audio-streaming company. It was a top-down, command-and-control kind of place, where difficult software projects were outlined in advance and executed according to carefully conceived plans. Rosedale hated it. As a teenager…

Hayek and the “Use of Knowledge in Society”

Here is a draft of my entry for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences. Hayekuse of knowledge in society

Trailing Hayek in Mind

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…

Stigmergy and City Planning

Here’s an interview conducted by Howard Rheingold with Mark Elliott who like myself has been promoting the virtues of stigmergy. The application of the concept to city planning and consultation is especially interesting since it’s a world I have recently come into contact with.

Autopoiesis and Cognition

Maturana and Varela’s classic Autopoiesis and Cognition is freely available here (H/T to Paul Loader). What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and…

Symposium on Mind in Life

Check out this special issue (Ed. Tobias Schlicht) of Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life. Participants include Dennett, Grush, Hutto, Siewert, Van Gulick, Wheeler, Zahavi and others. Journal of Consciousness Studies

Friedrich Hayek

Born on this day in 1899