Special Topics in Cognition: Collective Cognition and Collective Behavior

Humans, like other social species, move, live, and work together in groups. Although our individual actions may be simple, emergent patterns of collective behavior can be complex, as in ant colonies, bird flocks, and work teams. Similarly, as individual humans, we know little. We overestimate our knowledge and the depth of our arguments. Yet as a society we have achieved great things through a community of knowledge, guided by shared intentionality. This has enabled us to build ships and economies, but also leads to the belief that we know more than we do and can amplify vacuous ideology, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. In this seminar, we will investigate what can be learned from the parallels and divergences between collective behavior and collective cognition. We will draw from literatures in animal behavior, complex systems, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, and computer science.