CBI Seminar: A discussion about key distinctions to make when speaking about collective behaviour/intelligence/representations

Speaker: Malinda Carpenter (School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews)

It seems to me that many very different concepts have been conflated under the same term ‘collective behaviour’ (or ‘collective intelligence’ or ‘collective representations’).  In this session, I would like to start a discussion in which we take a step back and consider, in a more theoretical, systematic, top-down way, some key distinctions that could be helpful to make – perhaps coming up with some new terms in the process.

The suggested reading, Siposova and Carpenter (2019), is a paper that resulted from similar discussions about the related topics of joint attention, common knowledge, and joint action.  Different scholars within the same fields, and across different fields (e.g. psychology, philosophy, computer science) often use those terms differently, and that creates confusion and arguably hinders further progress.  No need to have read the whole thing (or to read it at all) to participate in the discussion.  The most relevant parts are sections 1, 2 (including 2.1-2.5), and 6.2.  If it ends up being helpful, we can also talk about the early development of these and related skills in human infants.