intelligence as a virtue and measure of worthiness
so I've discussed "intelligence" in previous posts here (such as this one) but imo it's always going to be worth digging further into it.
my work commute is a 10km-round-trip-walk (so I have a lot of time to think) and my work is ecotoxicology, aka I'm looking at the effects of agriculture pollution on river animals, aka I'm having to watch wee beasties die of poisoning on the regular. it feels like shit.
here's one of the wee beasties in question, Gammarus pulex (photo by Nicola Simoncini). they are not particularly intelligent creatures... I've seen them trying to mate with the larvae(!) of a different species(!). It is devastating to watch them die.
note I very specifically did not say "despite this, it is devastating..." or "but, it is devastating..." or similar, which reflexively would be what someone typically writes.
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the rhetoric and baggage around "intelligence" (as a concept) drives me up the wall.
First off: what is intelligence, anyways? Measurements like IQ are bullshit, measuring only a person's aptitude for a narrow range of skills. IQ tests and their ilk were developed for ends such as 'finding the people smart enough to responsibly use a gun, but not too smart to be a shame to lose on the battlefield'1, and their creators were eugenicists. Outside of IQ, what is "smart" is highly variable. Someone could be smart if they're good at math, if they're able to draw connections between facts/topics, if they make responsible life decisions, if they're a quick reader, if they know multiple languages... these things are not all linked, and it's fairly often that someone is simultaneously smart and stupid, since both words refer to so many different things. In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie's IQ-tripling brain surgery makes him a mathematical genius, apt at rearranging a factory more efficiently, eloquent, and capable of mastering countless languages. Algernon the mouse, who had the same surgery, becomes a master of puzzles and mazes. These are a whole lot of different skills!
It is entirely possible to have certain forms of intelligence and not others, or to have them in different capacities. This is true across all living beings. this is where we get into the second point: different intelligences serve different needs.
let's talk about cats.
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I'm starting with cats here because I've lived with them most of my life, so I know them fairly well, and also because the internet loves cats. Cats are small, social predators that evolved in a fairly open, arid environment (their heritage can be traced back to SW Asia2).
This environment would've made certain brain-functions more or less important. It would be super important for them to be good at judging distances so they can pounce to catch prey. Being social would give them safety in numbers (especially when pregnant, nursing, sick, or injured), but also means they would need to differentiate and recognise individuals (to tell friend from foe, and to know who their siblings are to avoid inbreeding). They would also need to be able to communicate their emotional state, and understand the communications that others are doing.
Conversely, they wouldn't need to be good at maintaining a mental map of a complex landscape (like a cave network or a thick jungle) since they didn't live in one. They would also not need to develop the impulse control to stop themselves from knocking objects off of shelves, since they wouldn't be stashing fragile things high above the ground.
you get what I'm going for here, I hope? Intelligences are comparable for the ability of birds to fly. It's energetically very costly to maintain a big brain or flight muscles, so if an organism can get away with not doing it, they will. Birds tend to become flightless if they're on an island without a substantial threat from ground-based predators. Organisms don't maintain a form of intelligence that isn't useful to them. The creatures without the energy burden of unnecessary abilities do better, and the organ shrinks over time. Being unintelligent is a very successful thing for some organisms, and has absolutely no bearing on whether they are more or less 'worthy' than another being to live their lives. Some beings aren't smart for the same reasons humans don't have leathery, armored skin: it's more trouble than it's worth.
(the ancestor-birds of kiwis (Apteryx) did perfectly fine without flying, and so they lost the ability to fly.)
Intelligences are also boosted by certain physical factors. Evolutionary outcomes like a high body temperature and myelin make brains more efficient, so creatures with these features would be able to maintain more neurological abilities without the costs outweighing the benefits. This doesn't mean that organisms with no myelin, low body temperatures, or even ones that use systems without neurons (plants3?) cannot have forms of intelligence. It's just that it is more energetically costly for them, so it needs to provide a bigger benefit to offset that.
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it is against this background (of the brain being just another organ, and of intelligence referring to a highly variable set of tools that may or may not help an organism survive) that the predominant (Western) understanding of intelligence feels ridiculous. Intelligences are coalesced into a single thing ("intelligence", "IQ", ...) which is also assigned a moral value. This thinking has roots in some nasty Western and colonial thought.
think of the Great Chain of Being:
the above image is of the Great Chain of Being, which is a hierarchy. God is at the top, angels below, and more relevant here: humans above animals, animals above plants. Within this frame of mind, how is the hierarchy constructed? Some spiritual concepts, but importantly: intelligence. Humanity is separated from, and situated above, other animals due to our (perceived) superior intellect. Animals are above plants for the same reason. To be less intelligent is to be less human, and therefore lower on the hierarchy, and therefore less important — worth less or even worthless.
within the human layer of the hierarchy, intelligence is weaponised in the same way. Scientific racism and eugenics prop up white men as the Superior Human due to (according to them) Superior Intelligence. Men are positioned above women, again due to men being "smarter" (as claimed by misogynists). An organism's value as a living thing is contingent upon its cognitive abilities, leading to devaluing of the non-human, dehumanising of the human.
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the thing that really Gets Me Going is that this outlook is implicit in the most-common ways we discuss non-human intelligence. When making heartstrings-tugging claims about the suffering of animals, it is often highlighted that the animal in question is intelligent. Or when figuring out whether we need to treat another living thing humanely, we refer to the Official List of Sentient Creatures which are Treated Better.
So what about the living things that simply don't have a use for expensive brain functions? If we require proof of intelligence to respect something, we either stop caring about most living things, or we lie and act as if something has cognitive capacities it does not (meaning that we will probably fundamentally misunderstand the way that thing will navigate the world).
I think this is wrong, to have criteria as to what we treat well and what we do not treat well. Why not simply respect things because they exist? (& from there, welfare can be managed with a specific understanding of what that organism needs)
When I say that my G. pulex are unintelligent, I'm not doing so to insult the critters. They're just not that intelligent. Their niche is eating leaves that fall into rivers, and reproducing enough that when a bunch get eaten by a fish it's not going to be a problem for the species as a whole. they probably don't recognise other individuals (...they mate with the larvae of the wrong species...), or establish strong social bonds. And that is fine for them...!
That doesn't diminish their value in my eyes ... they're living things, sharing a world with me! what a wonderful thing to exist.
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- Harris, Malcom. Palo Alto: a History of California, Capitalism, and the World.
- Driscoll et al., 2007. The near Eastern origin of cat domestication.
- Calvo, Paco. Planta Sapiens.
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thanks for reading!🪱🦀
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