All content © RJ Robinson 2002-8
by RJ Robinson (2005)
Synopsis
Taken as a whole, The Birth of Reason is divided into three parts. Part 1 summarises what intelligence is. It consists of three chapters. Chapter 1, The Architecture of Reason, analyses the structure of intelligence at its most abstract level – the level of subject, object and world. Chapter 2, Rational Action, summarises the dimensions of intelligent activity in terms of three very general dialectics – of appearance and reality, of the present and the absent, and of self and other. These dialectics arise spontaneously from the structure described in the previous chapter, and provide a general model for intelligent activity and a general framework for the development of intelligence. Chapter 3, The Originality of Intelligence, describes other elementary ways in which intelligence departs from any previous form of matter (especially the organic), including its abstractness and the ways in which it is historical and conscious. These additional dimensions sow how intelligence expresses itself and provides a preliminary analysis of its the any ways in which intelligence is inexplicable in biological terms.
Part 2 explains how intelligence came into existence. Although intelligence is qualitatively different from any previous form of matter, its origins necessarily lie in its predecessors, and its emergence from them must be understood in ordinary biological terms. To this end, Chapter 4, The Evolution of Intelligence, describes a process whereby routine Darwinian processes of variation and selection could have produced something as unDarwinian as intelligence. Chapter 5, The Nature of Sensorimotor Reflexes, outlines the structures out of which intelligence is assembled, while Chapter 6, The Road to Reason, explains in some detail how this assembly actually comes about. This argument is completed by Chapter 7, The Shape of Evolution, which describes how the development of intelligence fits onto the larger canvas of evolution, leading from the depths of organic activity to the radical supersession of the biological. Chapter 8, The Natural History of Technology, then provides an extended case study of how what seems to be a major continuity between biology and intelligence in fact illustrates their qualitative difference.
The purpose of Part 3 is to reinforce the very general arguments for regarding intelligence as truly novel with a range of more concrete and substantive arguments and examples. Chapter 9, Intelligence Proper, describes various facets of intelligence that flow from its specifically non-biological character, which therefore cannot be reduced to biological terms. Chapter 10, The Strategic Direction Of Intelligence, outlines the long-term implications of this novelty, such as rationality, the rationalisation of the world through production, and the implications of this process for our ideas of truth and freedom. Finally, Chapter 11, After Biology, shows how the logic of intelligence defeats even those apparently insuperable biological foes, evolution and death.
Just how all this is achieved is detailed in the next few sections.
Chapter 1: The Architecture of Reason
The most basic elements into which intelligence can be analysed, subject, object and world, are contrasted with their closest organic counterparts, which are organism, stimulus and environment. Whereas subject, object and world are all characterised by a stable (if imperfect) identity (and so a mobile usability), organism, stimulus and environment are inherently fragmented, unstable and rigid, with only a limited plasticity available to them through adaptation, learning, and other forms of flexibility. The consequences of these differences, though superficially slight, are profound and immense, not least in that the non-intelligent organism is limited to similarly fragmented and transitory forms of activity and experience. The structuring of intelligence as a single, fully integrated, universal subject enables it to organise the physical, chemical, biological and intelligent structures by which it is surrounded and of which it is composed into stable and mobile objects, and then into an increasingly coherent, consistent, complete and correct world.
These objective, worldly products of intelligent activity exist independently of the intelligence that created them. They are moreover recognised by that intelligence as having an independent existence, and indeed are created precisely for the sake of their independence of the subject that created them. Hence the unique forms of culture and technology that embody human history and consciousness, whose significance lies precisely in their ability simultaneously to embody their subject-creator’s intentions and to exist and operate on their own terms. Hence the possibility of objects and worlds that not only extend intelligence far beyond the immediate reach of any single subject (or, a fortiori, organism) but also but also of imbuing wider and wider swathes of the universe itself with intelligible shape, order and direction, and so of meaning, value and significance.
In other words, not only does this projection of itself through objects enable the intelligent subject to fight its corner far better than any non-intelligent organism, but it can also extend its existence into the most remote depths of the universe, without having to reach that far in person, so to speak. The subject can express itself through the forms of physical systems, chemical reactions, biological processes and even other intelligent beings. But at the same time, its lack of predetermined forms (at the level of intelligence, at least – an intelligent organism is after all still an organism) entails that these are the only means at intelligence’s disposal: so intelligence has no choice but to embed itself in the universe in this way. Again, this is strikingly different from the situation of life in general, whose engagement wit hits is inherently limited and one-sided. Likewise, given intelligence’s ability to express itself through its objects, a single intelligence can share its existence with an indefinitely large society of fellow intelligences, human or otherwise, regardless of their biological origins. Such changes extend intelligence into realms the non-intelligent organism cannot detect, let alone create for itself.
Chapter 2: Rational Action
There are equally radical functional differences between life in general and intelligence in particular. For intelligence operates in terms of three interrelated dialectics that have no significance from a biological point of view: of the present and the absent, of self and other and of appearance and reality. These dialectics are only made possible by the structures described in the previous chapter (i.e., by our subjectivity, objectivity and worldliness), so all three remain wholly inaccessible to the non-intelligent organism by the lack of comparable structures among biological structures.
These three dialectics allow intelligence to engage in extremely powerful and entirely novel forms of activity. These include means-end relationships, experimentation and reflexivity, none of which is present in any other organism except those (notably, but not solely, some of our primate cousins) with the clearest claims to genuine intelligence. These functions also introduce critical differences into the many kinds of activity that seem to be shared by both human beings and all other organisms, such as feeding, reproduction and (as argued in detail in Chapter 8, The Natural History of Technology), tools. Finally, they place a number of completely new resources at our disposal, such as concepts and logic and mathematics, and science itself.
Chapter 3: The Originality of Intelligence
A much higher-level view of intelligence as a whole is then presented, emphasising two of its most essential yet apparently contradictory features: its uniquely concrete historical and conscious structure, and its unique abstractness. These unprecedented features are fundamental to any explanation of human nature, which relies so greatly on both its concrete sensitivity to the most immediate and exquisite details of reality and its ability to produce equally abstract structures such as bureaucracy, roles and money and abstract functions such as economic exchange.
This paradox also explains how it is that a simple activity such as smiling can have strictly biological roots, yet completely transcend any possible biological moorings or constraints. Thus I can smile in greeting or out of politeness or deference – but also, as Shakespeare put it, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile. In other words, I can use the same biological structures for completely contradictory purposes. What is more, I use them this way precisely because I want that very structure to perform a completely deceptive function. Of course, it is now well established that other organisms can deceive, but again this seems to true only for those organisms with a more or less compelling claim to intelligence anyway.
The global reach and nature of the aspects of intelligence outline din this chapter lead to a further conclusion. Insofar as intelligence supersedes life, it supersedes life as a whole. That is, intelligence is defined not as individual cognition (which might conceivably be accommodated to a more general organic picture of business) but as a totality of elements and processes that is fully analogous to the full gamut of biological structures and functions, from the expression of genes and the operations of metabolism to the forces of natural selection. In sort, the relationship between biology and intelligence is one of qualitatively different natures.
Chapter 4: The Evolution of Intelligence
Having opened up this qualitative gap between, the next problem is to show how a structure as radically new and different as intelligence could possibly have come into existence by entirely material, indeed entirely biological, processes. On the evolutionary level this is accomplished through changes in the two kinds of functioning that define organic life in general, namely adaptation and organisation.
Both adaptation and organisation can evolve in two general directions (so to speak): adaptation towards either fixed adaptedness or fluid adaptability, and organisation towards either rigid particularisation or more sensitive and plastic individuation. These terms are explained and some of their implications drawn out. However, their significance can be summarised by noting that, whereas extreme particularisation and adaptedness would lead to an ant-like fragmentation of structure and fixity of functioning, radical adaptability and individuation would create a potentially indefinitely large degree of flexibility and integration, which would in turn take the extremely adaptable organism to the very threshold of intelligence proper.
It is then argued that, although evolution will generally tend to compromise between these two (broadly correlated) pairs of tendencies, with most organisms exhibiting a mix of adaptedness and adaptability, particularisation and individuation, there are circumstances where one tendency will tend to prevail and adaptability and individuation come to the very climax on which the emergence of intelligence relies. Practical examples of this process are given, including the evolutionary implications of the different adaptive strategies required for animals and plants and the organisational implications of central nervous systems and sexual reproduction.
The chapter concludes by arguing that the logical limit of adaptability and individuation would indeed be a complete responsiveness to things and events, at least within the limits set by the sensory and motor structures at the organism’s disposal. However, this is by no means intelligence proper (for evolution as such is incapable of creating intelligence as such), although it is the end of its evolutionary preparation. On the other hand, evolution is the only possible creator of intelligence’s prerequisites, namely the sensorimotor reflexes.
Chapter 5: The Nature of Sensorimotor Reflexes
In this comparatively brief chapter, the structure and functioning of the sensorimotor reflexes with which infants of intelligent species are born are analysed in some detail. This begins with a summary of the reflexes’ main characteristic vis à vis other biological structures. This is the radical separation of their specific sensorimotor ‘technique’ (grasping, visual scanning, etc.) from any particular motive, drive or affective state. As a result of this divorce (which is only another way of describing the growth of adaptability and individuation), reflex activity is not initially driven by any particular functional need such as feeding, rather, it is carried out simply because the sensorimotor reflexes at the neonate’s disposal make it possible. For example, stroking a newborn baby’s hand with a small object will result in its being grasped, regardless of whether that kind of object has any functional or adaptive value for the infant. Conversely, although certain kinds of stimulus (such as face-like shapes and patterns) may be especially attractive to human neonates, once a reflexive visual scan is actually under way, it is carried out in exactly the same way as for any other kind of stimulus. This includes stimuli in which the infant has absolutely no distinctive functional interest (and certainly no corresponding drive), such as a passing cloud or the moon.
In short, the sensorimotor reflexes from which intelligence will eventually arise and on which its unprecedented scope, power and success are founded begin life not only with a radical yet isolated independence but also with a complete indifference to any kind of function. This gives them a curiously quasi-universal competence, flawed only by their radical inability (at the start) to do anything useful. However, it is only this unique combination of structural independence and functional vacuity of the reflexes that makes the subsequent emergence of intelligence proper possible.
As far as the actual formation of that intelligence is concerned, this initial indifference of the infant’s reflexes to its environment, bodily states and one another means that the newborn infant is not merely relatively but absolutely helpless. If intelligence implies the ability to act effectively in the world, the neonate of an intelligent species is as far from intelligence as it is possible to be. Even where it has the tools through which it might act or gain attention, it has absolutely no idea what to do with them. For example, even the human infant’s famous innate capacity for turn-taking (which is of course only a ‘social’ ability in the mind of the caretaker, and occasionally an overenthusiastic theorist) takes time to develop.
On the other hand, its reflexes are naturally related to their various neighbours by a mass of (initially unorganised) overlaps within both the central nervous system (e.g., common body maps) and the body (e.g., shared muscle groups). They also respond to overlapping ranges of stimuli, as when auditory location centres the ears on a noise, which automatically causes the eyes (passively moved by the same action) to see and start to track its source. None of these links are developed or active at birth, but taken together with an elementary capacity for mutual assimilation and accommodation (talents shared to some degree by all organic structures and functions), they will be enough to explain the development of intelligence proper.
Chapter 6: The Road to Reason
Although Chapter 5 explains something about the sensorimotor reflexes nature and potential, it says nothing about how this potential is turned into real intelligence. This is the topic of Chapter 6, which argues that, once the relationships and overlaps outlined in the previous chapter are activated, their inherent mobility and inherent independence of any particular function enable them to unite the initial reflexes into a single, unified structure that controls all forms of activity, yet is committed to none in particular. As such, that structure is entitled to be called a subject. Subsequently, the same developmental process brings yet higher structures into existence, embodying specific, equally independent syntheses of this global activity (which is to say, objects), and then a unified totality composed of this subject, its objects and the connections between them – which is to say, a world.
So the infant’s sensorimotor development begins with nothing resembling intelligence, yet concludes with all the essential structures of intelligence in place. What is more, this comes about not because it is programmed for this task, but precisely it is not programmed to do anything. It is the very vacuity and disinterestedness of the reflexes – the corollary of their initial lack of functional or structural commitment – that account for the emergence of intelligence, rather than any inherent biological specificity or richness. Indeed, built-in direction or propensity would undermine the freedom and openness on which any intelligence must rely.
Chapter 7: The Shape of Evolution
Although there is a qualitative difference between intelligence and any preceding form of matter, that difference does not come about in a single leap. So, if Chapter 6 explains the origins of intelligence, Chapter 7 attempts to place human intelligence among a whole range of apparently intelligent or near-intelligent species such as dolphins, chimpanzees and others. As the previous chapters argued, the process is one of progressive steps, each of which is entirely understandable in terms of its predecessors, yet each of which contributes to the creation of a qualitatively new successor. How should one visualise this progression from the strictly biological, through the sensorimotor to the strictly intelligent? The idiom suggested here is an S-curve.
At the foot of this curve lies the strictly organic realm of creatures showing no signs of intelligence whatsoever, while at its head stands intelligence itself. But on the slope between the two are to be found organisms whose activity reveals a kind of proto- or quasi-intelligence that resembles intelligence proper without actually meeting all its requirements. This is the realm where a sensorimotor level of activity increasingly predominates, which is to say, a realm of increasing but incomplete adaptability, of growing but imperfect individuation. The evidence suggests that this realm is inhabited by a wide range of mammal and bird species, among which versatility and flexibility are increasingly the norm, but which continue to be constrained by biologically imposed limitations of perspective, interest, inclination, capacity, and so on.
Chapter 8: The Natural History of Technology
If intelligence is qualitatively different from life in general, one might well expect very few continuities between the two levels. Yet it is clear that there are many, so why do these continuities not refute the claim that intelligence represents a qualitative break from biology? The answer is that not all continuities are equal. In particular, because a natural intelligence is necessarily an intelligent organism, it will inevitably face the same problems that face organic life as a whole – the need for shelter, food, and so on. However, the fact that life in general and intelligence in particular share a common problem tells us practically nothing about the kind of solution intelligent and non-intelligent organisms apply.
Hence Chapter 8, which analyses the extent and reality of the seeming continuities and discontinuities between organic and intelligent forms of tool. This is accomplished by dividing the development of technology into three great phases. In the first, corresponding to the foot of the S-curve of evolution, tools are merely extensions of instincts, incorporating non-bodily components into ordinary organic activity. In that respect, the otherwise almost surreal instinct of the Melia tesselata crab to wave stinging anemones at its enemies is no more mysterious than nest-building in birds. In the second phase, on the rising phase of the S-curve, external artefacts are created and used with increasing versatility and flexibility, but still strictly within the directly perceptible and manipulable limits of sensorimotor activity. For example, a chimpanzee may use a twig to fish for termites, and even refine a particular twig by trimming it of all extraneous leaves, and so on; however, these modifications are all limited to direct behavioural changes to directly perceptible elements. There are no principles or rules involved, no insight into abstract structures underpinning empirical relationships.
As for the third, strictly intelligent phase of tool making, this is when intelligence’s capacity for a higher-order grasp of reality come into play. This is the era not so much of tools as of technology, which is to say, of the subordination of particular tools to the very abstract principles and rules that were lacking in the sensorimotor era and completely irrelevant to the instinctive phase. In addition, technology encompass not only the direct use of instruments to achieve practical effects but also the organisation of subjects (eg, work groups and teams) and even the world as a whole (eg, factories, offices, communications systems, and so on). It is a very far cry even from the most sophisticated of sensorimotor tool-making and tool-use.
In summary, rather than the natural history of technology refuting the view of intelligence as qualitatively different from biological life in general, Chapter 8 shows how it exemplifies this interpretation. Indeed, intelligent technology, far from being the natural extension of organic tools, is its antithesis.
Chapter 9: Intelligence Proper
Although sensorimotor development establishes the basic structures of intelligence, they are still far from fully developed. This is just as well, given that this alleged qualitative difference between a sophisticated but still non-intelligent organism and a small child is anything but self-evident. Only with the further development of intelligence proper in both individuals and societies does intelligence reveal its true potential, and so fully justify the claim that it is as fundamentally different and original a form of matter as life itself. Although too large a topic for the present book, this chapter summarises some of the ways in which the further development of intelligence reveals its qualitatively originality.
This analysis has a number of dimensions. Firstly, intelligence develops through a sequence of developmental stages that form a sequence of increasingly broad, comprehensive and profound structures, each advancing intelligence a further step away from any possible biology. Secondly, an intelligent being is also a person, capable not only of interpersonal relationships of a kind that are quite absent from the organic plane, but also of participating as a member of social systems and structures that quite transcend the individual person, let alone any possible organism. And finally, intelligence is characterised by unique forms of history and consciousness, which express in complementary ways intelligence’s subjectivity, objectivity and worldliness.
Chapter 10: The Strategic Direction Of Intelligence
Although the product of non-intelligent processes to which it would be quite illogical to impute a direction, and although the newly created intelligence is equally lacking in a sense of direction, one of intelligence’s most telling features is precisely its ability to set itself goals, not only in the trivial practical sense but also in the more profound sense of deciding to remake itself. Some aspects of this unprecedented capacity are reviewed in Chapter 10.
The first aspect is rationality, which is to say, the ability to regulate activity through reasons (in the most general sense). Intelligence is capable of rationality by virtue of its ability to objectify and reflect on its own activity, and so to recognise the structure of that activity and the relationship between this structure and the value, success and effectiveness of its actions. Once its activity is subject to reason (a level of control of which intelligence becomes capable only after some considerable post-sensorimotor development), intelligence becomes capable not only of recognising why and how it acts but also of applying the principles it recognises to other forms of activity. In this way it is able to rationalise its activity even in areas where it has never had the practical experience that would otherwise be necessary to identify the underlying reasons for action.
But rationality would be of little use if it simply made intelligence more aware of its own nature and activity. The universe would still be infinitely larger than itself and just as deaf to reason as it had always been, so increasing intelligence’s awareness of its position would probably induce the most abject sense of futility. But over and above these very limited forms of rational self-development and self-awareness, the basic relationship between intelligence and the universe is quite different to that between the organism and its environment. For whereas the organism adapts to its surroundings, intelligence produces them. That is, intelligence actively constructs the conditions of its activity and existence – which is after all the logical corollary of its construction of objects as permanent, independent structures in their own right. But insofar as this entails the progressive introduction of rational structures into non-intelligent matter, the production of the world is also the rationalisation of reality as a whole and of reality as such.
Hence the final component of the strategic direction of intelligence: the fact that it has a logical (if not necessarily actual) conclusion. For if reality is rationalised in the sense that it is restructured in rational terms, then the more intelligence develops, the more the conditions of its existence are both directly intelligible to it and directly what it would be rational for them to be (whatever that rather imprecise phrase may mean). But that is only to say that, the more intelligence develops, the freer its actions are and the truer the nature of its experience. Insofar as this process can be brought to a conclusion, the development of intelligence can only conclude with complete truth and freedom. At that point, it would be hard to imagine a relationship less like that between organic life and its environment.
Chapter 11: After Biology
The divorce between biology and intelligence is still not complete, however. However tenuous the link may now seem, there are still at least two elements of life that surely place strictly biological constraints on any intelligence. These are evolution and death. Hence Chapter 11, whose purpose it to refute this view, and so to liberate intelligence from any biological limitation whatsoever.
The increasing irrelevance of evolution for intelligence and the ultimate elimination of random variation and natural selection altogether as factors in its development follow directly from the fundamental changes in the organisation of activity embodied in intelligence. For while, for the non-intelligent organism, there is no way of defining in advance the purpose or goal of its actions or of judging their success or failure by that standard, for intelligence this is completely routine. In the terms introduced in this chapter, the functioning of non-intelligent organisms (ie, what they do) is always more or less divorced from its functionality (ie, what they do it for), whereas in intelligence they are resolved into a single routine relationship. That is, to act intelligently is to know what one is trying to accomplish, to know what one is actually doing, and to be able to judge how successful one has been.
Furthermore, because intelligence is capable of an objective grasp of the forces to which it is subjected – including, thanks to scientific biology, natural selection itself – it is also capable of identifying and managing what would normally be evolutionary pressures and threats. What is more, the more effectively it rationalises its world, the less it is likely to be threatened by unexpected changes in environment, competition, disease, and so on. But even more radically, since, for the reasons given in previous chapters, the structure of intelligence is always and everywhere the same, be it in human beings or chimpanzees or dolphins or computers or Little Green Men, human intelligence cannot be forced into another shape by any evolutionary force. Just as quantum mechanics prevents the emergence of a non-standard atomic structure, so the process of abstraction out of which intelligence emerges culminates in a completely singular structure that is uniform for all possible intelligences. So evolution is incapable of threatening intelligence in principle, and rendered increasingly harmless in practice.
As for death, dreadful though it may often seem, to the extent that intelligence is capable of resolving the relationship between the functioning of an activity and its functionality, it must be regarded as inherently purposeful (as opposed to organic life’s ‘purposiveness without purpose’), and so inherently significant and meaningful. What is more, intelligence’s increasingly objective grasp of its own actions and their consequences has the effect that, even when existence is subjectively over, its objective meaningfulness of rational activity persists, and cannot be refuted even by death. Finally, given that intelligent activity is bent on a progressive goal such as production and has a true social dimension that transcends any individual’s uniquely subjective perspective, the scope and depth of that meaning is in principle infinite, even though a given subject cannot always know precisely what that meaning is. In the circumstances, it is hard to see why either the fact or the prospect of death should affect intelligence.
In short, intelligence truly is after biology in the fullest possible sense.
Although its main purpose is to detail of credible theory of the origins of intelligence, this book also provides some clues to the larger nature of intelligence proper. But these are only clues, which give only a very inadequate sense of the real power not only of the concept of intelligence but of intelligence itself – the thing with which this book and this world were created. The Conclusions seek to correct this by summarising the larger implications of the idea of intelligence.
Science
Etc.
Work in progress