Category Archive Browsing Category: stigmergy

In its most generic formulation, stigmergy (an optimization technique) is the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment.

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stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Swarm References

Several months ago I floated the idea of compiling a database for all things “stigmergical”. I’m pleased to say that Simon Garnier has come up with a much better conceived idea (and database platform) for all things SWARM (which includes stigmergy). This is a timely project since the literature has of late witnessed an exponential increase in…

distributed knowledge, episteme, epistemology, extended mind, google, hayek, liberalism, liberty, political philosophy, social cognition, social epistemology, stigmergy

Hayek on distributed knowledge

Cass Sunstein writes on the TPM Blog that Hayek’s ideas of distributed knowledge “bear directly on open source software, wikis, prediction markets, and perhaps much more”.  Yes, indeed. The mechanism that captures this aggregating phenomenon is called STIGMERGY: the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment. Indeed, much of what goes on in the complex…

Chalmers, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, Edelman, epistemology, extended mind, hayek, leslie marsh, liberalism, neurophilosophy, oakeshott, philosophy of mind, social cognition, social epistemology, social ontology, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition

My recent co-authored paper now available to download through MindPapers. The abstract: To know is to cognize, to cognize is to be a culturally bounded, rationality-bounded and environmentally located agent. Knowledge and cognition are thus dual aspects of human sociality. If social epistemology has the formation, acquisition, mediation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge in complex…

cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, extended mind, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, social cognition, social epistemology, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

The Outsourced Brain

A journalistic take on what is essentially active externalism or the thesis of the extended mind. David Brooks (yes, THAT David Brooks) implicitly refers to notions of collaborative filtering, swarming, stigmergy, and even memetics. Of course, one suspects that Brooks has only the slighest conceptual inkling of what’s going on. Notions of the extended mind enjoy currency both in academic and popular literature: the ‘‘global…

cognitive modeling, cognitive science, consciousness, embodiment, epistemology, extended mind, metaphysics, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, social cognition, social epistemology, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Perspectives on social cognition

The September 7th issue of Science is a special issue devoted to social cognition: the table of contents found here. I reproduce the introduction “Living in Societies” by Caroline Ash, Gilbert Chin, Elizabeth Pennisi and Andrew Sugden. The appearance of this issue has prompted me to post the introduction to the special issue of social cognition…

cognitive modeling, cognitive science, stigmergy, swarm intelligence, videos

Complex Systems Resource

Thanks to the stigmergic properties of the Web I am thrilled to make the acquaintance of Vitorino Ramos of the Evolutionary Systems and Biomedical Engineering Lab., IST, Technical University of Lisbon. For those interested in all things related to Artificial Life and Intelligence, Bio-Inspired Computation, Collective Intelligence and Complex Systems, Evolution, Self-Organization and emergent Cognitive Learning,…