Intelligence (biology)

In biology, 'intelligence', in the broadest sense of the term, refers to the ability of an organism to adapt to its environment through learning and through shaping the environment, the organism employing its cognitive abilities to do so. 'Intelligence', in that sense, translates as the ability of an organism to exhibit such adaptive plastic behavior (Stanovich 2009).

In humans, ourselves, we recognize that such intelligent behavior, such adaptative ability, includes judicious decision-making and creative thinking, and wisdom. It also includes the skill of shaping the environment when it otherwise requires adaptation, and knowing when and how to escape from the environment requiring adaptation (Matthews et al. 2004). Adaptation in respect of human intelligence targets the realization of one's personal goals, not specifically the realization of the inherited biological goal of reproductive success.

Thus, we may conceptualize intelligence in the broad sense in terms of one's aptitude for success in adapting to circumstances that threaten achievement of one's personal goals. It may seem a contradiction to credit intelligence to the success in achieving personal goals that predictably often lead to mental or physical dysfunction, but when cognitive science reveals those personal goals arise largely from non-conscious mentation, the contradiction resolves by crediting intelligence to the non-conscious mind.

In a narrower sense, intelligence in humans refers to the combination of cognitive abilities that determine one's score in standard tests that measure Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Traditional intelligence tests do not assess intelligence in the broad sense of the term (Stanovich 2009).

Nevertheless:

Diverse notions of intelligence generally converge on the fundamental purposes of intelligence--adaptation to the environment and learnng from experience (Cianciolo and Sternberg 2004).

The universality of intelligence among living systems

All living systems exhibit some form of intelligent behavior, in that evolutionary forces generate organisms adapted to their environment, adapted for success in meeting their universal biological imperatives for survival and reproduction, requiring varieties of skills/functionalities differing among species and environments and capacities for learning and memory. A terrestrial green plant, for example, exhibits intelligent behavior when it bends its stalk in keeping with the movement of the sun, maximizing exposure of its leaves for capture of solar photon energy. A motile, free-swimming bacterium exhibits intelligent behavior when it actuates a unique swimming strategy that greatly facilitates its search for food. A vervet monkey exhibits intelligent behavior when it generates for itself and its conspecifcs a unique vocal warning signal for each type of predator it sees in the vicinity, allowing itself and its family to adopt the best defensive strategy for each type of predator.

Those kinds of intelligent behavior reflect the forces of organic evolution in service of the biological imperatives of survival and reproductive success, and within species such intelligence exhibits variations in degree among individuals in a given generation, variations upon which natural selecton operates.

In humans in particular, evolutionary forces operate in the service of sociocultural as well as biological imperatives, expressed by some biologists as imperatives for replication respectively of memes and genes.

Introduction

Measuring the intelligence of an individual organism requires performing some kind of intelligence testing, in which case what the intelligence test measures defines 'intelligence' in that circumstance. In that regard, intelligence is what intelligence tests measure.

To say that intelligence is what intelligence tests measure is an incomplete statement but it is not vacuous. The content of a battery of test items is defined by what is common to the set of items which were used to construct it. These items are not chosen haphazardly but selected to convey, as far as our crude notion will allow, what we mean by the word 'intelligence'. In a real sense, this set of items is a way of saying what we mean by 'intelligence'.

The crucial question is: what does this test battery measure? The answer to this question is our provisional definition of intelligence. Intelligence, we repeat, is a collective property of the set of items. If the individual items have meaning, so does the aggregate (Bartholomew 2004).

Commonly administered intelligence tests such as those that measure so-called Intelligence Quotient (IQ) or Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) fail to measure an important component of cognitive function, namely that relating to the ability for rational thought and decision making, thinking and decision making that work to serve the achievement of one's goals and to formulate goals in one's best interest biologically and socioculturally (Stanovich 2009).

Prerequisites

An organism exhibits intelligent behavior when it successfully adapts to the stimuli impacting upon it, however limited the informational content of the stimuli. The stimuli might result from events occurring internally, such as dehydration leading to a search for water, or recall of stored memories leading to self-interested social interactions. Or the stimuli might result from events occurring externally, such as odors leading to a search for food, or changes in market conditions leading reevaluation of investment strategies. Successful adaption implies behavioral responses that serve the short and long term biological and/or sociocultural interests of the organism, and the balance of short and long term interests.

 · The role of sensory receptive ability

The ability of an organism to exhibit intelligent behavior depends in part on the width of its sensory input spectrum — the number of sensory input types — and in part on the character and breadth of the sensory input channels. The greater the number and types of sensory input channels, and the greater their informational density, the better chance the organism has to adapt to real-time changes in its surroundings (Agutter and Wheatley 2007).

 · The role of behavioral response ability

The more different and effective ways an organism can respond behaviorally, the more flexibility it will have to adapt to changes in its surroundings.

 · The role of input-to-output connectivity

The more dense and varied the neuronal connections between sensory input and behavioral output, including connections to memory, the more flexibility an organism will have to adapt to changes in its surroundings.

 · The role of brain size

Larger brain size can permit greater capacity for processing the information needed to adjust behavioral output to input.

References

• Agutter PS, Wheatley DN. (2007) About Life: Concepts in Modern Biology. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-5417-4.

• Bartholomew DJ. (2004) Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521544785. | Google Books preview. | Excerpt: The great intelligence debate: science or ideology?.

• Cianciolo AT, Sternberg RJ. (2004) Intelligence: A Brief History. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1405108231.

• Matthews G, Zeidner M, Roberts RD. (2004) Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262632969. | Google Books preview.

• Stanovich KE. (2009) What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300123852. | Reviews, Google Books Preview, Contents, Chapter 1 PDF: Publisher Website.