Strange states of "thinking matter"

Herds of sheep, flocks of birds, swarms of insects... animal collectives often exhibit large-scale properties that are reminiscent of traditional, passive matter. This is surprising, because these systems are constituted of cognitive individuals, not inert particles. But anyone who has ever been stuck in traffic will concede that cognition (intelligence, even) does not, in fact, protect against unsupervised self-organization and collective behavior. Further, "thinking matter" often finds itself in bizarre states, at odds with common phases of traditional matter. We will explore some of these strange states and consider how individual cognition might result in a higher complexity of accessible phases.