Is human intelligence overrated? | CBC radio
Ideas53:59Is human intelligence overrated?
Are we too smart for our own good?
Human intelligence has beaten back disease, enabled people around the world to communicate with each other and explore deep space and the ocean floor. That’s the good news.
But according to Justin Gregga senior researcher at the Dolphin Communication Project and the author of the book If Nietzsche were a narwhalour cerebrums are a big problem – not just for humans but for life on earth itself.
It was his work with dolphins that first got him thinking about how boasting about our intelligence as uniquely superior to that of other animals has often become an exercise in our own arrogance and hubris.
“People always asked me questions about dolphin intelligence because I always talk about animal and dolphin intelligence,” Gregg said. “And people often ask, are dolphins as smart as humans? Or maybe smarter than humans?”
His research led him to a shift in his view of our acclaimed intelligence.
“Maybe it’s a bad thing if dolphins were as smart as humans, because maybe human intelligence isn’t that great, then people could appreciate the intelligence of dolphins and other animals more by realizing that human intelligence might not be the thing that we should compare every day against the way of thinking of other animals,” Gregg said.
He adds that our intelligence is also responsible for species extinction, “thanks to human activity, at a rate we’ve never seen in history before a massive asteroid hitting Earth.”
“Humans are on track to be more destructive than an asteroid when it comes to biodiversity loss right now. And that’s only really thanks to our technological feats, our cultural ability to transfer information and create these amazing cities that we live in. It’s all thanks to our intelligence. So in that sense, our intelligence has been very bad for the planet and the animals that live on it.”
‘Intelligence is plastic and flexible’
Thomas Moynihan studies the history of ideas and is a research fellow at Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk. He says this idea that the human brain is the cause of the world’s ills has a long tradition.
“This goes back to Saint Augustine, the idea of original sin. The current form of human intelligence is potentially something terrible for the rest of the biosphere. And I would say it is.”
However, he says that people who fret about how terrible we are because of our intelligence may be just as wrong.
“Intelligence is free, intelligence is plastic and flexible, and so we can become intelligent in different ways,” Moynihan said.
“We can become intelligent in ways that can undo or repair some of the damage we’ve done to each other and to the rest of the world. And that may be naive, but I hope it’s possible.”
Our brain’s ability to reason is often seen as one of the tremendous benefits of being human. After all, it is our reasoning ability that has led to the creation of great works of art, as well as the scientific and technological advancements that have made our lives easier and more enjoyable than in centuries past.
But it is also precisely that power of reasoning that enables societies and their leaders to rationalize justifications for wars of destruction and genocide.
“Because of our ability to rationalize why we do things from an ethical perspective, we can justify our actions for sometimes killing millions of people, and that’s something animals can’t do either,” Gregg said.
“If they’re violent, it’s usually in response to an acute problem. But people may decide in the future to just wipe out a million people for some moral reason. And that really sets us apart from other animals, and not in a good way.” .”
Kristin Andrews is a professor of philosophy at York University in Toronto and holds the York Research Chair in Animal Minds.
“I think it’s really dangerous to romanticize other animals and think they’re just really nice and aren’t going to build gas chambers, or do horrible things to each other just because they don’t have the technology to do it right now,” he said. Andrews.
Animals can also be horrible to each other.– Philosopher Kristin Andrews
She points to the extreme violence that chimpanzees inflict on each other when they go to war with each other.
“[They] invade other groups’ territory to kill the babies, kidnap the females, castrate the males so they can’t have more babies, and then take over that territory. Why do they want the territory? So they can hunt more monkeys. This is quite a jerky thing to do, right?
“We can also talk about rape and other non-human animals. I’ve seen this before with dolphins… and orangutans. This is not sweet and gentle at all. Animals can also be cruel to each other.”
The effect of anthropomorphism
It is not surprising that philosophers have pondered the minds of animals for thousands of years, often projecting human moral qualities onto them.
Aristotle did it in his History of animals.
Animals also differ from each other in terms of character in the following respects. Some are good-tempered, slow, and little prone to cruelty, like the ox; others are quick-tempered, savage, and illegible, like the wild boar; some are intelligent and timid, like the stag and the hare; others are mean and treacherous, like the serpent; others are noble and courageous and highly educated, like the lion; others are thoroughbred and wild and treacherous, like the wolf: besides, an animal is highly bred if it comes from a noble tribe, and an animal is thoroughbred if it does not deviate from its breed characteristics. Further, some are crafty and mischievous, like the fox; some are feisty and affectionate and fawning, like the dog.
– excerpt from History of animals by Aristotle
And thinkers throughout the ages have long assumed that our superior intelligence makes us unique in the animal kingdom.
But that exceptionalism comes with a price.
In 1874, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche published Untimely meditations in which he wrote of the jealousy he felt in observing cattle, which seemed unencumbered by the fears that are part of the human mind.
Consider the grazing cattle as they pass you. They don’t know what is meant by yesterday or today. They jump about, eat, rest, digest, bound to the moment and are pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. This is a difficult place for man to see, because although he thinks he is better than the animals, because he is human, he cannot help but envy them, their happiness.
– extract from Untimely meditations by Friedrich Nietzche
Turns out the desire Nietzsche felt to live a natural and intellectually unencumbered life of an animal also has a long history.
“There’s a tradition that goes back the longest that animals are considered happier, more stable, and more natural. And humans are basically this sick animal that’s sick because it has the curse to be free. And it has to invent things to survive It is weak against nature.” said Moynihan.
“It goes back to ancient times. These people will discuss this idea that maybe animals are happier because they are more stable than they live in the world in a more thoughtless way.”
We should be suspicious of projecting our desires and wishes onto other animals.– Investigator Thomas Moynihan
David Robinsonthe author of The intelligence trap has taken a deep look at the intelligence of animals and he has some thoughts about being a non-human.
“Despite the kind of suffering that comes from our kind of existential dread, that also comes with so many beautiful things about being human and [that] come straight from our consciousness,” Robson said.
“And, you know, a cow sitting in a field isn’t going to look at the stars and feel that kind of awe and wonder and questioning… where did we come from, like what happened at The Big Bang? Where did we go “It’s a bittersweet experience. But it’s not something I’d want to sacrifice.”
‘Let the Narwhals Be’
Moynihan has some advice for people who dream about the life of another kind of animal.
“We should be suspicious of projecting our desires and wishes onto other animals,” he said.
“Because what we often do is we really just obsess about ourselves and think about ourselves, and project our own ideas about what we are, and don’t allow those animals to be themselves in their sheer independence and autonomy like this other brilliant ways of life and life forms.
“Being a narwhal is great. But let the narwhals be narwhals rather than barrels, for our own shame and strange complexes.”
Guests in this episode:
Justin Gregg is an adjunct professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where he is also a senior researcher at the Dolphin communication project. Gregg is the author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity.
Kristen Andrews is a professor of philosophy at York University and York Research Chair in Animal Minds.
Thomas Moynihan studies the history of ideas and is a research fellow at Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk.
Melanie Challenger is a bioethicist and a writer on environmental history and philosophy of biology. Her book is called How to be an animal.
Susana Monso is a assistant professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid.
David Robinson is a science writer and the author of The intelligence trap.
*This episode was produced by Howard Goldenthal.
