Unnerving Intelligence

Abstract

A variety of definitions of intelligence have been offered that are not exclusively human-centric. One, in particular, is taken as a starting point: end-directed behavior marked by the making of meaningful distinctions made possible by perception–action cycles. Specific examples of end-directed behavior are examined for evidence of three aspects of the kind of agency embodied in perception–action cycles, namely, prospectivity, retrospectivity, and flexibility. The chosen examples of behavior are nicely layered but otherwise unremarkable. Nonetheless, they all have an unexpected twist that challenges the kinds of explanations of intelligence qua agency that are rooted in neurobiology.

Notes

Stephanie Petrusz is now in the Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College.

¹Of course, philosophical considerations are also implicated in comparing perceiving and acting capabilities across phyla (or even across individuals), in particular, with respect to multiple realizability. Although a detailed treatment of such considerations here would obscure our larger point, it would likely turn on an argument we make later: The capability of interest—agency, as defined later—is exactly the sort of thing that does not inhere in any specific neural or anatomical assembly.

²This sense of knowing is as a natural phenomenon at a particular scale of magnitude (Turvey & Carello, 1981), as a coordinating of organism and environment, rather than as a property of mind. It is fundamentally framed in terms of behavior.

³Information as used here is in the Gibsonian, specificational sense and not the information-theoretic sense of Shannon (see Turvey & Carello, 2012, Guidelines 17 and 18).