[MD] Social Ants?

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Arlo,


> [Arlo]
> No one, least of all me,
> is claiming that ant social behavior is in any way
> similar in sophistication to
> human social behavior. But its also foolish to say
> that because their behavior
> is not exactly as sophisticated as ours, then they
> are not social.

Steve:
I agree that it is not a matter of sophistication or
complexity. It is a categorical difference between
biological and social behavior that we are interested
in distinguishing.


> [Steve]
> Instincts are biological while learned behavior is
> social. I guess we even need
> to be more specific about types of learning. The
> sort of conditioning with
> treats that we do to train a dog is making use of
> biological patterns. If a dog
> copied another dog's behavior out of its sense of
> that behavior having Quality,
> that would certainly be social learning. I don't
> know enough about dogs to say
> whether that ever happens.
> 
> [Arlo]
> "Insticts" versus "learned behavior" is an
> interesting distinction. However, I'd
> say that reduces social patterns to the level of the
> biological individual. 

Steve:
I don't see what you mean. Can you explain?


Arlo:
>I'd
> say that whenever biological individuals work
> together to achieve something
> greater than what each could achieve alone, you are
> witnessing social pattern
> of value. That "ant colony" is a "higher form of
> evolution" than "individual,
> biological ants" in the same way that "a city" is a
> higher form of evolution
> than "individual, biological humans".

Steve:
I think you are making a big leap in yor analogy. I
tend to think that a more appropriate analogy may be
cell : body as ant : colony.

I'd also rather look at specific ant behavior patterns
to make up my mind than considering a colony as a
possible biological pattern. If ant colony is
analogous to society then colony is too broad a term.
It would include biological and social patterns in
that case.

What ant behavior patterns do you consider social? 

Arlo:
> However, I would place "instinctual social behavior"
> on the very primative and
> crude end of the social level. 

Steve:
I recall a pattern called imprinting where, say, a
chicken will attach itself to a "mother" and that this
pattern can be fooled into working to attach a baby
chicken to another animal.

This sounds like the sort of pattern that you would
consider both social and instinctual.

>And "learned
> behavior" on the more sophisticated
> end.

Steve:
I think unconscious copying is key to understanding
how social patterns develop in humans. I think so more
and more as I watch my baby daughter hold my cell
phone up to her ear and mimic sounds on the verge of
speach.

I've also thought about emotional sense as a
biological awareness that is needed to develop social
patterns. I think emotions are biological patterns
that are the gateway to social patterns as words are
social patterns that are the gateway to intellectual
patterns.

That of course would not be a ssignificant a
distinction for you since you draw the line at a
different place.

> [Steve]
> Personally I don't think that ants display learned
> behavior or copy the behavior
> of other ants. The roles that different ants play
> seem biological rather than
> social to my understanding of the levels. There are
> no ant celebrities, for
> example. The queen has a special role but the other
> ants don't subconsciously
> try to be like her.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Again, I'd only comment that the social patterns
> emerging from ants certainly
> don't display the level of sophistication we find
> among humans. But this is
> like comparing a "cell" to a "human body" and saying
> that because the cell
> doesn't have a "nervous system" it must'nt be
> biological.

Steve:
I really think what Pirsig means when he talks about a
social level distinct from the biological level is
more like culture (which later also includes
intellectual patterns once they evolve). It is
independent of the individual biological entities. If
you hatch a bunch of ants that never had anything to
do with other ants they would form the same sort of
colony as any other ants in that species. This sort of
biological determination doesn't sound to me like a
categorically different level of evolution. However,
it we secretely switched all the baby monkies in the
womb between teh two monkey islands I described, they
would participate in different social patterns than
their parents, so their social patterns would not be
biologically determined.

I recognize that you would draw the line differently,
but can we agree that that is what Pirsig means? --a
"culture" to what ever level of sophistication that
gets passed on from biological entity to biological
entity by some means other than DNA?

Regards,
Steve


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