My only point was that we have to be careful about what we attribute to ‘instinct’. The instinct to ‘put mud where others put mud’ isn’t the same thing as in instinct to build pillars, even though that is the end result. The pillars aren’t in the individual, they only exist as a product of the combined contributions of the community members.

In any case, here is another example of stigmergy in action.

Consider a relatively non-social animal, such as a bird. A bird builds a nest using items from the environment. The bird will pick items from the environment and choose where in the environment to build. Why does the bird always pick a spot up in a tree rather than on the base of the tree or out in the open? It’s either reason or instinct, and I bet on instinct.

Back to the insects. you write:

“All it knows is that if some members of the community do something, to respond in some particular way. The end result gives you complex arches and pillars, and maze-like ant hills, but no individual has the blueprints for those structures built into their genes.”

The key phrase here is “respond in some particular way.” This is the instinct, and this is where the blueprint is, in effect, stored. No, the termite doesn’t have a picture of the pillar or any plan beyond “responding in a particular way.” But that response has been honed over the course of termite evolution so that, when termites respond in a particular way, the results are the pillars or other structures that help termites survive.

I think we are saying the same thing using different vocabulary, but my point is that the fact that insects communicate using the environment is interesting, but I don’t see what “paradox” it solves.

All the genetic ‘instinct’ gives the ant are its basic communicative resources, (the ability to produce pheremones and to translate the pheremones of others to inform their behavior), and a sensitivity to the kind of interaction that occurs between members of the species. Otherwise, the whole thing is stored in the stigmergistic (oh god I hate that word) environment.

Look, the termite’s genes don’t tell it to built an arch here or a pillar there. Where it builds an arch depends on the environment and the actions of others. All it knows is that if some members of the community do something, to respond in some particular way. The end result gives you complex arches and pillars, and maze-like ant hills, but no individual has the blueprints for those structures built into their genes.

Or to approach it from another angle, there are certain commonalities to ant hills, which is why we have a term for them: “ant hills.” Those hills would not spontaneously arise, so the commonality of the structures must come from a central plan of sorts, and I suppose that we agree that this “central regulation” is embedded, in the form of instinct, in each (or in most) of the ants’ brains. They don’t have to imagine the result, of course, but they exhibit that behavior for an evolutionarily determined purpose.

I have no problem with “sigmergy” as a method of communication, but the environment itself is simply a medium for communication, and the blueprint continues to be instinctive.

I guess I don’t get what the “paradox” is, regarding collective ant action.

They aren’t concluding that ants work as a collective, it is part of the data that needs to be explained.