Peter Watts: Conscious Ants and Human Hives

 This post goes through the lecture by Peter Watts, expanding on the references he makes.

Are ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) capable of self recognition? (2015)

In front of a mirror, and consequently of their reflection view, ants behaved otherwise than when in front of nestmates seen through a glass. Seeing nestmates through a glass, ants behaved as usual, i.e. without taking close notice of them. In front of a mirror, they rapidly moved their head and antennae, to the right and the left, touched the mirror, went away from it and stopped, cleaning then sometimes their legs and antennae. As long as they could not see themselves in a mirror, ants with a blue dot painted on their clypeus did not try to remove it. Set in front of a mirror, ants with such a blue dot on their clypeus tried to clean themselves, while ants with a brown painted dot ‒ of the same color as that of their cuticle ‒ on their clypeus and ants with a blue dot on their occiput did not clean themselves. Very young ants did not present such behavior. Contrary to the other kinds of marking, a blue dot on the clypeus induced aggressiveness in nestmates. The front part of the head is thus an essential species specific character for leading to acceptance. Although further experiments are required, preferentially on ants and social hymenoptera with an excellent visual perception, our observations suggest that some ants can recognize themselves when confronted with their reflection view, this potential ability not necessary implicating some self awareness.

Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910), Italian philosopher and poet. Not much is known about him. I read about him from The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

Michelstaedter's biographers and critics have speculated that his despair of humanity's ability to become disentangled from its puppet strings was, in conjunction with accidental factors, the cause of his suicide by gunshot the day after he finished his dis­sertation. Michelstaedter could not accept a stellar fact of human life: that none of us has control over what we are--a truth that extirpates all hope if what you want to be is invulnerably self­ possessed ("persuaded") and without subjection to a life that would fit you within the limits of its unrealities ("rhetoric," a word oddly used by Michelstaedter). 

We are defined by our limitations; without them, we cannot suffice as functionaries in the big show of conscious existence. The farther you progress toward a vision of our species without limiting conditions on your consciousness, the farther you drift away from what makes you a person among persons in the human community.

Transcending all illusions and their emergent activities --- having absolute control of what we are, and not what we need to be, so that we may survive the most unsavory facts of life and death --- would untether us from the moorings of our self-limited selves. The lesson: "Let us love our limitations, for without them no­ body would be left to be somebody."