BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment

[Tom Johnson]

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                505-473-9646
===================================

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Gillian Densmore]

A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Eric Charles-2]

Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC, so I guess it isn't that weird after all.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[David Eric Smith]

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!

On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC, so I guess it isn't that weird after all.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

So, the question is, “What is the meta-pattern in behavior that constitutes a “a personality”.  A personality is just a constant bias in behavior of an individual across all situations.  “Jones comes late to every occasion; that’s just his personality.”  “My computer crashes no matter what program you run on it: it has its own personality.”  “Rover is scared of every damned thing—thunderstorms, motor cycles; even squirrels freak him out;  he has a timid personality.”   Nick

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:25 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment

 

Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC, so I guess it isn't that weird after all.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

 

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                <a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646
===================================

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

 

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

So, I looked up David Chalmers …  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn’t have HAD  to look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

 

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

 

This is one of those “TED” insights, to which the only rational response is, “Duh!”  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to say that “humans are conscious” if it were not possible to discover that (1) things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact, conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don’t; once we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or … we are dishonest.  It’s really quite simple, actually.

 

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment

 

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!

 

 

On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC, so I guess it isn't that weird after all.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

 

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email].                <a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646
===================================

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[John Kennison]

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer
--other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by      environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers …  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn’t have HAD  to look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those “TED” insights, to which the only rational response is, “Duh!”  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to say that “humans are conscious” if it were not possible to discover that (1) things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact, conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don’t; once we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or … we are dishonest.  It’s really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC, so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.                505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.  

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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[John Kennison]

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about  will be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps  over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by      environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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[Nick Thompson]

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.  

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?  

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.  

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about
will be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[John Kennison]

Nick,

I'm game for going slowly, particularly as I will soon go to bed and I know, from experience, that I shouldn't write emails when I'm tired.
In any case, there's a lot to chew over and I will eagerly start to work on it in the morning.
--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:07 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant     colony  'personalities' shaped  by      environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about
will be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, John  Perhaps Russ Abbot will have something to say, in the
meantime.  It's only dinner time where he is.  N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I'm game for going slowly, particularly as I will soon go to bed and I know,
from experience, that I shouldn't write emails when I'm tired.
In any case, there's a lot to chew over and I will eagerly start to work on
it in the morning.
--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:07 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant     colony  'personalities' shaped  by
environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  [phone]      Cell:  [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.  

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?  

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.  

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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============================================================
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[Nick Thompson]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  [phone]      Cell:  [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.  

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?  

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.  

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
===================================

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Because there is no physical card.  Although if I were handed a deck I could find the instance of the card I have in mind.

Frank

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone
(505) 670--9918

On Aug 15, 2014 9:53 PM, "Nick Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20995-8715" value="[phone]">[phone]      Cell:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918" value="[phone]">[phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]">505-473-9646<tel:<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]">505-473-9646>
===================================

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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[Steve Smith]

Sorry guys, but it sounds to me as if you are "in your cups" and maybe
have only "one oar in the water"...

> Hi Frank,
>
> Thanks for putting your oar in.
>
> How is your question different from the following question?
>
> I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
> me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
> the same cup.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
> environment
>
> Nick,
>
> Re:  Your cup.
>
> I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
> when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
> to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
> access to one's mind.
>
> Frank
>
>
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> [hidden email]     [hidden email]
> Phone:  [phone]      Cell:  [phone]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
> environment
>
> John,
>
> Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
> famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
> moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
> "insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
> because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
> its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
> notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
> criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
> This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
> like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.
>
> I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
> appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
> my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
> game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
> thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
> suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
> thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
> open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
> metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
> box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
> by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
> words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
> exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
> the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
> asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.
>
>
> But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
> have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
> provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
> now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
> mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
> contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
> imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
> the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?
>
> How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
> of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
> view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
> is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
> example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
> that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
> "have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
> conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
> of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
> your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
> your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
> behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
> "self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.
>
> I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
> track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
> need the exercise.
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
> environment
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
> tell what errors you might see in what I said.
> And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
> necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.
>
> I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
> life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
> what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
> things.
>
> I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
> quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
> I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
> be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
> feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
> me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
> over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
> analysis.
>
> --John
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
> [[hidden email]]
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Cc: James Laird
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
> environment
>
> Hi, John,
>
> Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
> high horse.
>
> Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...
>
> First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
> something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
> wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
> is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
> realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
> "inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
> really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
> to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
> really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
> absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
> own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
> instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
> what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
> because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
> say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
> years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.
>
> On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
> to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
> account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
> A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
> most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
> self-conscious.
>
> Nick
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
> environment
>
> Nick,
>
> I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
> subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
> problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
> life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
> that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
> consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
> seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
> Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
> mistake is.
>
> --John
> ________________________________________
> From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
> [[hidden email]]
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
> environment
>
> So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
> look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index
>
> A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
> that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
> consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
> this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
> they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
> the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.
>
> This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
> "Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
> say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
> things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
> conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
> we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
> It's really quite simple, actually.
>
>
> N
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
> environment
>
> Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!
>
>
> On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
>
>
> Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
> that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
> flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
> so I guess it isn't that weird after all.
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Lab Manager
> Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
> Room 203A
> 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
> Washington, DC 20016
> phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
> email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
> <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
> A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
> Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
> often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
> to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
> his forray into science was from the 90s.
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
> <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
> So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?
>
> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268
>
> ===================================
> Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
> 505-473-9646<tel:[phone]>
> ===================================
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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>
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[Nick Thompson]

Thanks, frank,

 

Since it is too late for me to think, let me just leave you with a quote from Wittgenstein.  Perhaps it will distract you until I can regroup.

 

“Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a ‘beetle.’  No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.  – Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.  – But suppose the word ‘beetle’ had a use in these people’s language?  – If so it would not be used as the name of a thing.  The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.  – No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.”  -- Wittgenstein,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:57 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment

 

Because there is no physical card.  Although if I were handed a deck I could find the instance of the card I have in mind.

Frank

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone
(505) 670--9918

On Aug 15, 2014 9:53 PM, "Nick Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20995-8715">[phone]      Cell:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918">[phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

        Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

        I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>.
<a href="tel:[phone]">505-473-9646<tel:<a href="tel:[phone]">505-473-9646>
===================================

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[Steve Smith]

On 8/15/14 10:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Sorry guys, but it sounds to me as if you are "in your cups" and maybe have only "one oar in the water"...

... and did I neglect to mention that one or both might "working without a full deck" in this instance?

Can't wait to have you back in NM Nick!  What's your schedule?

>> Because there is no physical card.  Although if I were handed a deck I could find the instance of the card >> I have in mind.
>>
>>Frank

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  [phone]      Cell:  [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

    Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

    I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email][hidden email]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email][hidden email].
505-473-9646<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="tel:[phone]"><tel:[phone]>
===================================

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Steve,

Now I suppose you'll say that our reasoning (or Wittgenstein's) needs to be debugged.

Frank

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone
(505) 670--9918

On Aug 15, 2014 10:18 PM, "Steve Smith" <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 8/15/14 10:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Sorry guys, but it sounds to me as if you are "in your cups" and maybe have only "one oar in the water"...

... and did I neglect to mention that one or both might "working without a full deck" in this instance?

Can't wait to have you back in NM Nick!  What's your schedule?

>> Because there is no physical card.  Although if I were handed a deck I could find the instance of the card >> I have in mind.
>>
>>Frank

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20995-8715" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]      Cell:  <a href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

    Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

    I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email][hidden email]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email][hidden email].
<a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646<a href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank"><tel:[phone]>
===================================

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[Steve Smith]

Frank -

I'm not sure about *that* but I am pretty sure we are beginning to "bug" a few folks here already!

- Steve

Steve,

Now I suppose you'll say that our reasoning (or Wittgenstein's) needs to be debugged.

Frank

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone
(505) 670--9918

On Aug 15, 2014 10:18 PM, "Steve Smith" <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 8/15/14 10:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Sorry guys, but it sounds to me as if you are "in your cups" and maybe have only "one oar in the water"...

... and did I neglect to mention that one or both might "working without a full deck" in this instance?

Can't wait to have you back in NM Nick!  What's your schedule?

>> Because there is no physical card.  Although if I were handed a deck I could find the instance of the card >> I have in mind.
>>
>>Frank

Hi Frank,

Thanks for putting your oar in.

How is your question different from the following question?

I am looking at a Cup with an inscription.  When you [finally] come to visit
me in Massachusetts, I will show you the inscription on the cup.  It will be
the same cup.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:50 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

Re:  Your cup.

I am thinking of a card.  Can you tell me what it is?  I will ask you again
when you are present in Santa Fe.  It will be the same card.  This is just
to explain the problem I have with your claims about whether one has private
access to one's mind.

Frank


Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email]     [hidden email]
Phone:  <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28505%29%20995-8715" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]      Cell:  <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28505%29%20670-9918" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 7:08 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

John,

    Ok.  I am in.  But we have to go slowly, because, as somebody
famously said, "In philosophy, if you are not moving slowly, you aren't
moving."   Not clear where to start.  I don't want to try to defend my
"insight" that our vernacular understanding of consciousness  arises not
because it is accurate but because it makes society possible. I will say  in
its defense only that the McNauton Rule which  forms the basis for our
notion of legal responsibility, states that I can only be considered
criminally responsible If I know the nature and quality of my own acts.
This phrase, "knowing nature and quality of one's acts" sounds a heckuva lot
like a definition of [self] consciousness to me.

    I thought we perhaps could start with unpacking "interior", since it
appears in both of your messages ("access").  What does it mean to say that
my thoughts  are "inside" me.  It ought to mean, if we play the language
game of "inside" by the rules, that there is some sort of container that my
thoughts are enclosed within.   The use of the word, "access", would seem to
suggest that I have ways of getting at the insides of the "box" to "see" my
thoughts that you do not have.  Perhaps the box is a 5-sided box, and it's
open side faces me, so I can see inside and you cannot?   If that is how the
metaphor works, then you should be able to come around  to my side of the
box and look in examine its contents with me.  Or, if my access is provided
by a key, you should be able to use that key to get inside my box.  In other
words, there should be some set of conditions under which you can see
exactly what I see.  Since this entailment of the box metaphor undermines
the essential privacy of mind, I assume that you would rule it out by, say,
asserting that only I have the key to my box, and I cannot loan it to you.


But now we encounter another problem.  I think you would agree that you do
have some access to the inside of my box, beyond the access that I might
provide you by telling you what is inside it.   Certainly, if I wrote you
now the words, "I really have no interest in issues in the philosophy of
mind," you would have every reason to assert that I had misrepresented the
contents of my box to you.  So, to make the metaphor work, we would have to
imagine that, perhaps it's sides are not entirely opaque, or not opaque all
the time.  Perhaps they are sometimes translucent?

How about a different metaphor altogether?  How about the metaphor of "point
of view"?  My consciousness is just that what is seen from the  point of
view on the world from where I stand.  It is mine only in the sense that it
is indexed to me, not in the sense that I own it or that it is in me.  For
example, there is a cup on my desk whose inscription is turned toward me so
that if you were sitting across my desk from me right now, you would not
"have access to it".   The inscription is, "ONLY MUGS PAY POLL TAX."   I am
conscious of it in the sense that my behavior points to it.  From your point
of view, my consciousness is just all that my behavior designates.   When
your behavior designates the relations between me and some of the objects in
your environment, you become conscious of what I am conscious.  When my
behavior designates those same relations,  I become self-conscious.  I think
"self-consciousness is what we are principally arguing about, here.

I hope this answer is somewhat satisfying.  Thanks for running me around the
track.  I am trying to write some on this subject this summer.  I really
need the exercise.

Best,

Nick




Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 12:52 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Hi Nick,

I certainly don't think of what you said as "rude"  --in fact I asked you to
tell what errors you might see in what I said.
And in any case, I am very glad to agree that we are old friends and can, if
necessary, forgive what might appear as rudeness.

I am willing to accept your conclusion that the words "inner subjective
life" are not really very useful and do no contribute much to my idea of
what consciousness is. I don't think I claimed that they are either of these
things.

I am having difficulty seeing the connection between these words and a
quasi-legal understanding that I and only I get to speak for myself.
I guess I would say that my sense of what my consciousness is all about will
be different from yours because I have access to my thoughts and vague
feelings etc. that differs from the kind of access you have. It's okay with
me if you speak for myself (so to speak)  --and I imagine you will, perhaps
over the previous sentence.  I invite and will (I think) welcome your
analysis.

--John

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:38 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Cc: James Laird
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony      'personalities' shaped  by
environment

Hi, John,

Nothing like a sober, quiet, good question to knock an old warrior off his
high horse.

Ok.  Now that I am standing on the ground ...

First, let us stipulate, we are talking about self-consciousness, here, ...
something beyond sentience, right?  If so, then I think your question is a
wonderful example of a "mystery", like we talked about yesterday.  A mystery
is a state of pleasurable confusion generated by using words outside their
realm of usefulness.  So, I would predict that if we sat down and unpacked
"inner", "subjective", and "life" we would discover that these words have
really nothing to contribute beyond the assertion that "I, and only I, get
to speak for me."  In other words, under your use of "consciousness",  it is
really a quasi-legal understanding central to human interaction that, in the
absence of a legal certification of incompetence, our assertions about our
own needs, wants, thoughts, etc., are to be taken as definitive.   So, for
instance, what I just said -- that your view of consciousness is not quite
what you think it is -- would be (may be) seen as RUDE, in polite society,
because, on your own understanding of consciousness, you and only you get to
say what you think it is.  Because we have been friends for more than 40
years, I hoping you will let that rudeness pass.

On my account, an entity is conscious of something when it acts with respect
to it, and SELF-conscious, when it acts with reference to itself.  On that
account, a simple thermostat is clearly conscious, but not self-conscious.
A more complicated thermostat, which calibrates its own sensitivity (which
most modern thermostats do), would probably have to be admitted as
self-conscious.

Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 11:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Nick,

I guess my criterion for consciousness would be something like "has an inner
subjective life". It's not something that I can measure and it has the
problem of circularity  --if you ask me what I mean by an "inner subjective
life" I will soon be making a circular definition. I am willing to concede
that I don't have a suitable definition for a scientific study of
consciousness. Still the question of whether a thermostat has consciousness
seems meaningful to me. (I don't have an answer --other than "I doubt it". )
Perhaps, I am making some kind of error. If so, could you explain what my
mistake is.

--John
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped       by
environment

So, I looked up David Chalmers .  Yeh, I know:  I shouldn't have HAD  to
look up David Chalmers.   Here from Philosophy Index

A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers acknowledges, is
that it may imply the consciousness of things that we would not normally
consider to have consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential properties, even if
they are especially dull. He does not commit to the notion that they do, but
the possibility remains in the more speculative area of his thought.

This is one of those "TED" insights, to which the only rational response is,
"Duh!"  Why exactly is that a problem?  What exactly would it have meant to
say that "humans are conscious" if it were not possible to discover that (1)
things other than humans are conscious and/or that humans are not, in fact,
conscious.  Either we have a criterion for consciousness or we don't; once
we have a criterion, we either apply it rigorously or . we are dishonest.
It's really quite simple, actually.


N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 9:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] BBC News - Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by
environment

Quick, somebody call David Chalmers!


On Aug 15, 2014, at 9:25 AM, Eric Charles wrote:


Weird that they want to call it "personality" instead of more simply saying
that ant colonies seem to adapt to their local environment. Of course, the
flashiness of the claim is the only reason it is being covered on the BBC,
so I guess it isn't that weird after all.


-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall
Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email][hidden email]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Gillian Densmore
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:
A few swarm inteligence from the 90s described that.  Scott Kelly's "Fast
Cheap and Out of Controll"  touched on that. In his case they knew ants (and
often uncles) could pass around experience- and displayed something simillar
to hummans sense of experience they didn't have a explination. Then again
his forray into science was from the 90s.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Tom Johnson
<[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

So who is going to integrate this into the sugar model?

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28658268

===================================
Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM
[hidden email][hidden email].
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-473-9646<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:[phone]" target="_blank"><tel:[phone]>
===================================

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