Intelligence

Cf.

Definitions

Intelligence is the ability to apply past knowledge to new problems.

Kaplan, Gisela. Bird Minds: Cognition and Behaviour of Australian Native Birds. Melbourne: CSIRO, 2015.

Intelligence, Creativity, Subjectivity, Imagination

Communication

"The continuous nature of intelligence has been described in the past by Piaget (1952, 1971). Sternberg (2017, p. 45) wrote “an appropriate way to look at the intelligence of any organism is to look at how well it adapts to the range of environments it confronts.” Viewing intelligence as a capacity necessary for survival in humans and animals alike offers an opportunity for cross-disciplinary, cross-species study free of preconceived, hierarchical categories."

Bar-Hen-Schweiger, Moran, and Avishai Henik. “Intelligence as Mental Manipulation in Humans and Nonhuman Animals.” Animal Sentience 3, no. 23 (2019). https://doi.org/10/gkfbj7.

The Purpose of Intelligence

Evolutionary, intelligence is selfish, it emerges to solve local problems for an organism and a species. It is about satisficing within constrain information and experience. It is an expensive approach to the problem of survival, not always the best.

Environment and Intelligence

When environments vary, species with inventive intelligence become more common. For example, crows. There are now more crows than ever in history. Smart birds can cope with variability.

On the contrary, the lack of variability as something many species need.

Dunn, Rob R. A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species. New York: Basic Books, 2021.

Marzluff, John M., and Tony Angell. Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans. Free Press, 2014.

Artificial Intelligence

See Artificial Intelligence


Backlinks