http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/BBC-News-Ant-colony-personalities-shaped-by-environment-tp7585564p7585599.html
> 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: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918
>
> -----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: (202) 885-3867 fax: (202) 885-1190
> 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:505-473-9646>
> ===================================
>
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