Is human intelligence overrated? | 24CA News
Ideas53:59Is Human Intelligence Overrated?
Are we too sensible for our personal good?
Human intelligence has crushed again illness, allowed folks around the globe to speak with one another, and to discover deep area and the ocean ground. That’s the nice news.
But in accordance with Justin Gregg, a senior researcher with the Dolphin Communication Project and the writer of the ebook If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, our huge brains current a giant drawback — not only for people however for all times on Earth itself.
It was his work with dolphins that first bought him pondering how vaunting our intelligence as being uniquely superior to that of different animals has usually develop into an train in our personal vanity and hubris.
“People were always asking me questions about dolphin intelligence, because I’m always talking about animal intelligence and dolphin intelligence,” stated Gregg. “And people are often asking: are dolphins as smart as humans? Or maybe smarter than humans?”
His analysis led him to a shift in his view on our much-vaunted intelligence.
“Maybe it’s a bad thing if dolphins were as smart as humans because maybe human intelligence isn’t all that great, then people might appreciate dolphin and other animal intelligence more by realizing that maybe human intelligence isn’t the thing we should be comparing every other animal’s way of thinking against,” Gregg stated.
He provides that our intelligence can also be chargeable for species changing into extinct, “thanks to human activities, at a rate that we’ve never seen in history other than an enormous asteroid hitting the Earth.”
“Humans are on track at the moment to be more destructive than an asteroid when it comes to loss of biodiversity. And that’s only really thanks to our technological feats, our cultural ability to transmit information and create these amazing cities that we live in. That’s all thanks to our intelligence. So in that sense, our intelligence has been really bad for the planet and the animals that live on it.”
‘Intelligence is plastic and versatile’
Thomas Moynihan research the historical past of concepts and is a researcher at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He says this concept of the human mind being the reason for the ills of the world has a protracted lineage.
“This goes back to Saint Augustine, the idea of original sin. The current form of human intelligence is potentially an awful thing for the rest of the biosphere. And I would say it actually, evidently is.”
However, he says people considering how horrible we’re due to our intelligence could also be simply as wrong-headed.
“Intelligence is free, intelligence is plastic and flexible, and so we can become intelligent in different ways,” stated Moynihan.
“We can become intelligent in ways that might reverse or repair or rectify some of that damage that we’ve caused upon each other and the rest of the world. And that might be naive, but it’s something that I hope is possible.”
The skill of our brains to cause is usually regarded as one of many enormous advantages of being human. After all, it is our reasoning college that led to the creation of nice artistic endeavors, in addition to the scientific and technological advances which have made our lives simpler and extra pleasing than in ages previous.
But it is also that very reasoning capability that permits societies and their leaders to rationalize justifications for wars of annihilation and genocide.
“Because of our ability to rationalize why we do things from an ethical perspective, we can justify our actions for sometimes murdering millions of people, and that is something that animals can’t do, either,” stated Gregg.
“If they’re violent, it’s usually in response to an immediate issue. But humans can decide in the future to just eradicate 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 is the York Research Chair in Animal Minds.
“I think it’s really dangerous to romanticize other animals and think that they’re just very nice and aren’t going to build gas chambers, or do horrible things to one another just because they don’t have the technology to do it right now,” Andrews stated.
Animals may be horrific to one another as nicely.– Philosopher Kristin Andrews
She factors to the acute violence that chimpanzees inflict on one another after they go to battle with one another.
“[They] encroach the territory of other groups to kill the infants, kidnap the females, castrate the males so they can’t have more infants and then take over that territory. Why do they want the territory? So they can hunt more monkeys. This is kind of a jerky thing to do, right?
“We can speak about rape and different non-human animals as nicely. I’ve seen this earlier than in dolphins… and orangutans. This shouldn’t be candy and delicate in any respect. Animals may be horrific to one another as nicely.”
The effect of anthropomorphism
It’s not surprising that philosophers have for thousands of years pondered the minds of animals, often projecting onto them human moral attributes.
Aristotle did it in his History of Animals.
Animals also differ from one another in regard to character in the following respects. Some are good-tempered, sluggish, and little prone to ferocity, as the ox; others are quick tempered, ferocious and unteachable, as the wild boar; some are intelligent and timid, as the stag and the hare; others are mean and treacherous, as the snake; others are noble and courageous and high-bred, as the lion; others are thorough-bred and wild and treacherous, as the wolf: for, by the way, an animal is highbred if it come from a noble stock, and an animal is thorough-bred if it does not deflect from its racial characteristics. Further, some are crafty and mischievous, as the fox; some are spirited and affectionate and fawning, as the dog.
– excerpt from History of Animals by Aristotle
And it has long been taken for granted by thinkers across the ages that our superior intelligence is what 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 about the envy he felt while observing cattle, who appeared unburdened by the anxieties that are part and parcel of human thought.
Consider the cattle grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today. They leap about, eat, rest, digest, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard site for man to see, for though he thinks himself better than the animals, because he is human, he cannot help envying them, their happiness.
– excerpt from Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzche
Turns out, the desire Nietzsche felt to live a natural and intellectually unburdened life of an animal has a long history as well.
“There’s been a convention going again the longest period of time that is regarded animals as happier, extra secure, extra pure. And people are literally this diseased animal that is diseased as a result of it has this curse of being free. And it has to invent issues to outlive. It’s weak within the face of nature.” said Moynihan.
“It goes again to the ancients. These folks will focus on this concept that perhaps animals are happier as a result of they’re extra secure than they dwell on the planet in a extra unreflecting approach.”
We ought to be suspicious once we’re projecting our needs and needs onto different animals.– Researcher Thomas Moynihan
David Robson, the author of The Intelligence Trap has taken a deep look at animal intelligence and he has some thoughts about being a non-human.
“Despite the form of struggling that comes from our form of existential angst, that is additionally accompanied by so many stunning issues about being human and [that] come instantly from our consciousness,” Robson said.
“And, you understand, a cow sitting in a discipline is not going to be wanting up on the stars and feeling that form of awe and marvel and questioning… the place we got here from, like what occurred at The Big Bang? Where are we going to? It is a bittersweet expertise. But it isn’t one thing that I might wish to sacrifice.”
‘Let the narwhals be’
Moynihan has some advice for humans who dream about living the life of another kind of animal.
“We ought to be suspicious once we’re projecting our needs and needs onto different animals, ” he said.
“Because what we’re usually doing is we’re truly simply being self-obsessed and desirous about ourselves, and projecting our personal concepts of what we’re, and never permitting these animals to be themselves of their pure independence and autonomy as these different sensible lifeways and types of life.
“Being a narwhal is great. But let the narwhals be narwhals rather than vessels, for our own shame and strange complexes.”
Guests on this episode:
Justin Gregg is an adjunct professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the place he is additionally senior researcher with the Dolphin Communication Project. Gregg is the writer 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 research the historical past of concepts and is a researcher at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
Melanie Challenger is a bioethicist and a author on environmental historical past and philosophy of biology. Her ebook is known as How to Be Animal.
Susana Monsó is an assistant professor within the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science on the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, in Madrid.
David Robson is a science author and the writer of The Intelligence Trap.
*This episode was produced by Howard Goldenthal.
