[MD] Social Ants?

[Horse]

Hi Arlo, Steve, Case et.al

Sorry for the delay - kids take up a lot of time! Anyway, where was I?

In between various other activities I've been mulling over what it is 
that constitutes the difference between what appear to be social 
patterns of value in biological networks such as ants, bees etc. and 
social patterns of value which we apply to human societies. After 
several junked posts I came up with some tentative ideas which I'd like 
to try out on you to see if they make sense. As usual, criticisms are 
most welcome.
The first, and I think the most important idea that popped up was the 
difference in structure. Ant, bee and wasp colonies/nest are monolithic 
whereas human societies are distributed.
Monolithic structures, in the sense that I'm using the term, are rigid 
and uniform where, in general, the whole network functions around a 
single point of reference. Distributed structures on the other hand are 
decentralized and diverse - no single node is, of necessity, more 
important than any other node.
Within a monolithic structure there is a main component which, if 
destroyed, results in either a severe malfunctioning of the network or, 
in most cases, the destruction of the entire structure.
Distributed structures can sustain destruction of many nodes and still 
continue to operate - although with some degrading of efficiency.

Where we're talking about learned behaviours and instinctive behaviour 
I'm not sure if the two become overlapped to a great extent. As with 
most animals, behaviour that is 'instinctive' is often taught to 
children so we should distinguish between generally learned behaviours 
and the transmission of novel behaviours within and between social networks.

Steve mentions self-similarity in fractal structures and I think that 
this has some bearing when comparing ant/bee/wasp groups and 
human/primate groups as there are also areas where similarities also 
occur. I'd hazard a guess and say that although the hymenoptera group 
display some social level patterns they do not possess sufficient 
complexity and novelty. Neither is the network structure distributed or 
sufficiently diverse. It's my guess that these would be the necessary 
minimum to place a group/network of biological patterns within the 
social level.

Something else that occurred to me while I was thinking about this and 
reading some of Steve's posts was that celebrity is not a basic 
constituent of the social level. It appears as if it is more like an 
emergent property of social level structures. It's probably more to do 
with consolidation of social patterns of value. There are also overtones 
of monolithic structures occurring sometimes with celebrity as in the 
case of cults. Just a thought!

Anyone got any comments as it's an area I'd like to investigate further.

Cheers


Horse



Arlo J. Bensinger wrote:
> A quick question for Horse. Let's say we consider an ant colony as a non-social,
> biological network. What then distinguishes social human activity from this ant
> activity? Would it be language, whether vocal, gestural or the like? Would it
> be, as I think Steve(?) suggested, "learned behavior" as opposed to
> "instinctual behavior"? Would it be, as maybe Ham would agree, some form of
> conceptual awareness of self? Or, if the social level is reserved, as Pirsig
> suggests, for humans, is the social level contingent upon some form of unique
> human biological trait (btw, Tomasello in The Cultural Origins of Human
> Cognition argues just that)?
> 
> In other words, in this conversation about whether or not ant activity is
> social, I've lost track of what we are saying would constitute the "bare
> minimum" of activity, conception or biological precursor, that we would say
> places something on the social level. 


Steve Peterson wrote:
 > My position on what type of behaviors would constitute social rather
 > than biological patterns is as you say to try to distinguish
 > instinctual behaviors from socially learned ones.
 > I don’t think that your “whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts” 
 > idea defines social achievement. That happens across all scales as a
 > molecule is not just a bunch of atoms and an organism is not just a
 > bunch of cells.
 > I think that social learning occurs as unconscious copying of 
behavior > as a response to social quality that may be best understood as
 > celebrity rather than as genetically programmed responses to 
inorganic > and biological quality.
 > This social learning is distinct from biological patterns because it
 > is not passed on through genes but instead forms a culture that is
 > passed on through other means.
 > If Quality is an organism’s response to it’s environment then we are
 > looking for a new type of quality other than biological quality that
 > an animal must be responding to to call its behavior social.
 > Pirsig seems to say that celebrity may be the best way to understand
 > this new type of quality: “Celebrity is the Dynamic Quality that
 > primitive social patterns once used to organize themselves.” “It
 > becomes an organizing force of the whole social level of evolution.
 > Without this celebrity force, advanced complex human societies might
 > be impossible.  Even simple ones.”
 > I think we should be looking for something like celebrity and an
 > ability to respond to celebrity among animals to think that they have 
 > social patterns.
 > As for social patterns being contingent on some biological trait, 
I’ve > speculated that a capacity for emotions may be this trait. An
 > emotional reaction may be the biological correlate to a response to
 > social quality.
 > Is anyone aware of accounts of animal behavior that fit my 
description > of social patterns as distinct from biological ones?
 >