Intelligence
Cf.
Forms and versions in use:
- cognitive intelligence
- embodied intelligence
- social intelligence
- emotional intelligence
- ecological intelligence
- artificial intelligence
- collective intelligence
- swarm intelligence
- crowdsourced intelligence
- organizational intelligence
Relate to decision-making.
Roudavski, Stanislav, and Douglas Brock. “From Dingoes to AI: Who Makes Decisions in More-than-Human Worlds?” TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies 11 (2025): 56–96. https://doi.org/10/g89xj8.
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.
Cf. with the discussion of information resources and their use in niche construction theory.
Odling-Smee, John C. Niche Construction: How Life Contributes to Its Own Evolution. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2024.
Intelligence, Creativity, Subjectivity, Imagination
"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
References
Relevant
Schlanger, Zoë. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. New York: Harper, 2024.
Generic
DiMatteo, Larry A., Cristina Poncibò, and Michel Cannarsa, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence: Global Perspectives on Law and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Sternberg, Robert J., and Scott Barry Kaufman, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Backlinks