--- abstract: 'To know is to cognize, to cognize is to be a culturally bounded, rationality-bounded and environmentally located agent. Knowledge and cognition are thus dual aspects of human sociality. If social epistemology has the formation, acquisition, mediation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge in complex communities of knowers as its subject matter, then its third party character is essentially stigmergic. In its most generic formulation, stigmergy is the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modiﬁcations of the environment. Extending this notion one might conceive of social stigmergy as the extra-cranial analog of an artiﬁcial neural network providing epistemic structure. This paper recommends a stigmergic framework for social epistemology to account for the supposed tension between individual action, wants and beliefs and the social corpora. We also propose that the so-called "extended mind" thesis oﬀers the requisite stigmergic cognitive analog to stigmergic knowledge. Stigmergy as a theory of interaction within complex systems theory is illustrated through an example that runs on a particle swarm optimization algorithm.' altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: - l.marsh@sussex.ac.uk - c.onof@ic.ac.uk creators_name: - family: Marsh given: Leslie honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Onof given: Christian honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2008-03-01 date_type: published datestamp: 2007-11-22 01:55:11 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/58/25 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 5825 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/5825/1/stigmergic.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: inpress issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: Stigmergy; Social epistemology; Extended mind; Social cognition; Particle swarm optimization lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:00 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: issues pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: Cognitive Systems Research publisher: Elsevier refereed: TRUE referencetext: ~ relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 38 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-11-22 01:55:10 subjects: - phil-mind - phil-epist - comp-sci-complex-theory - soc-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition' type: journalp userid: 6747 volume: Vol. 9