Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby [56]
When I talked about intelligence and chi-sei with an American neuroscientist friend, Valerie Stone, she encouraged me to think in a new direction and to consider chi-sei in contrast to something like the operation of a thermostat. This device, which switches heat on when it gets too cold and off when it gets too hot, has sensors for detecting temperature and internal wiring to control its âbehaviorâ and âdecisions.â By a basic definition of intelligence, such as making appropriate decisions, a thermostat appears to display âintelligence,â she said. And as a thermostat appears to apprehend its immediate environment and act on that apprehension, it also appears to have a basic form of chi-sei, the capacity to know. But granting these faculties to this nonliving device rests on a fallacy. A thermostat can only interact with its environment because a human has programmed it. It has no real way of solving problems, such as âtoo hotâ or âtoo cold,â by itself. Behind a thermostatâs apparent âintelligenceâ or âcapacity to knowâ lies human intelligence and knowledge.
There is a further difference between what slime molds and bees do and what a thermostat does. Stone also pointed out that thermostats change behavior according to a very simple mechanism that never varies, whereas organisms act flexibly. The single-celled slime moldâs behavior is interesting, she said, because it can solve new problems, using a computational mechanism we donât understand yet. It uses much more computation than a thermostat and shows much more flexibility. And a butterflyâs visual system can solve the problem of color constancy even in new lighting conditions. Life forms have a capacity to know, which is creative, whereas a thermostat tends not to do anything new.
Chi-sei and the flexibility that goes with it require a capacity to process information. According to Toshiyuki Nakagaki, the scientist who showed that slime molds can solve mazes, and who introduced me to the concept of chi-sei: âThe brain is an interesting object in that it is an excellent computer, but we donât know how it functions. And we donât know how brainless microorganisms perform information processing. In fact, what we really donât know is the extent of the capacity of the microorganism to process information.â
Scientists have begun to study information processing in brainless multicellular organisms such as plants. Plant cells relay information to one another using signals such as charged calcium atoms. Our neurons do the same. Plant cells also have their own particular signals, which tend to be relatively large and complicated proteins and RNA transcripts. These molecules swim around the plant providing information from cell to cell. Individual plant cells also appear to have a capacity to know.
So do cockroaches. Research shows that these insects detect approaching predators by sensing minute air movements, and that they have neurons in their brains which fire at a rate that varies with the wind. Given that air movements change when a predator approaches, this sensing capacity allows cockroaches to surmise the direction of an attack and scurry away to avoid being eaten.
For a cockroach, the world is not pregiven, or defined in advance. A cockroach can perceive the world and take action in it, and its perception is inseparable from its sensorimotor capacities. It knows because it is informed by its body and brain about the approach of predators and embodies action by scurrying away. This is no simple or merely reflexive process. The cockroachâs nervous system decrypts the dynamics of minute air movements and sets in motion preventive action at the level of the whole organism. Just being a cockroach and coping with the world in order to stay alive requires chi-sei.
Simple organisms can compute. But there is more to knowledge than computation. Computers are better at computing, and even playing chess, than humans. But this does not mean