The Daily Ant

The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the thirty-eighth contribution in the series, submitted by Liam Kofi Bright.

The Value Free Ideal for Scieants

It’s not easy running a colony. Eggs need to be laid, food needs to be gathered, tunnels need to be dug – lots of work, by lots of ants, over lots of time. Of course as Antistotle taught us, the ant is by nature a political insect, so such living together is something we are generally well adapted to. But despite our generally being a eusocial bunch, we still occasionally have our disagreements, alas, and where we do we often form political factions based on our competing visions of the world. Should any ant ever be allowed to disobey the Queen’s slightest whim? Should we ruin that picnic? Does the zombie threat justify marshal law until our soldiers can get this threat under control? These are matters about which reasonable ants can disagree, and such sociopolitical debates among those who take rival views on these matters are a mainstay of colony life.

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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the thirty-seventh contribution in the series, submitted by Dr. Ross Cameron.

Ants in Time

The A-Theory (short for ‘Ant Theory’) says that there is a special moment in time: NOW. Harry the ant has just found a delicious crumb of bread. According to the A-Theory, there is something special about present events (like Harry’s finding the crumb), as opposed to past ones (like the crumb’s having been dropped by the race of clumsy giants), or future ones (like the congratulations Harry will receive from the colony). The dropping of the crumb has been and gone, and the congratulations of the colony are as yet simply something to look forward to: what is now is merely the finding of the crumb. Ants believe in the specialness of the now: there is some sense in which the present happenings are more real than past ones which merely happened, and future ones which merely will happen.

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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the thirty-sixth contribution in the series, submitted by Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel from one of his publications.

The Antarean Antheads

On the surface of a planet around Antares lives a species of animals who look like woolly mammoths but who act much like human beings. I have gazed into my crystal ball and this is what I see: Tomorrow, they visit Earth. They watch our television shows, learn our language, and politely ask to tour our lands. It turns out that they are sanitary, friendly, excellent conversationalists, and well supplied with rare metals for trade, so they are welcomed across the globe. They are quirky in a few ways, however. For example, their cognitive activity takes them on average ten times longer to execute. This has no overall effect on their intelligence, but it does test the patience of conversation partners unaccustomed to the Antareans’ slow pace. They also find some tasks easy that we find difficult and vice versa. They are baffled and amused by our trouble with simple logic problems like the Wason Selection Task (Wason 1968) and tensor calculus, but they are impressed by our skill in integrating auditory and visual information.

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