July Asides
Intelligence
“All intelligence is collective Intelligence.”
Michael Levin
Michael Levin is a biologist who seeks to find intelligence in unconventional places and on unusual scales. He studies intelligent systems; lives that do remarkable things together, like cell bodies that communicate to reproduce a head on a tiny creature that has been cut off, memories retained in those bodies without heads and then intelligently acted upon when the heads regrow. He has come to the conclusion, above, with a new notion of intelligence and this work is seriously meaningful – especially for us, in the ISSC.
Michael Levin thinks like an engineer. Indeed, he prefers engineering language in order to think about biological processes. He studies emergence – which he thinks is really just levels of human surprise at what we don’t expect. I haven’t fully bought into this notion of emergence because, perhaps, I love the idea that more than one can produce something unanticipated – but this could be about me. However, in Levin, as much as I adore what I am learning, I see someone, once again, developing new ways to manipulate other organisms, bending them to human wills. Maybe I am just afraid that he will miss the freedom part of relational practices that make valuable lives worth living.
Yet, I am not without amazement and awe at all he is discovering. I find this work and the idea of collective intelligence supports what I have been saying, teaching, and working toward in Relational Intelligence classes and the ISSC. And, our goals, Levin and mine, may be profoundly different. I am looking to unleash human care, intelligence, communication and freedom. He is looking to do something similar, but perhaps through those well-worn models and modes based in western capitalist economic ethics which are derived from the exhausting historic belief in human exceptionalism – the idea that humans are unique in their intelligence. These beliefs organize to control non-human systems to the advantage of the human without care, parity and respect for the life lived. Maybe I am being harsh. I am still studying his work.
What I understand is that Levin is interested in anatomical control – getting small lives to do what he wants - to gain new capabilities. It's a kind of new medicine on fascinating scales. I like the new capabilities part, but I worry about the scale and implications of control. At what scale does this control stop? I ask, how relationally intelligent can we be? I am interested in wilding, rewilding, and seeing what can come of more than one Being
(n.) engaging in ecological relationships with other Beings. Indeed, this kind of collaborative meeting is what made the varieties of creatures and Beings on earth, as Levin points out (not in those words, actually). The irony is that getting to the stuff of understanding how we reWild our relationships requires that dancers have certain capabilities and controls (see the Highlights section). Haha! I find myself within a similar technological need… so, could this be an engineering issue? Or, is this an end-goal issue – which perhaps is also an ethical issue? A human/more-than-human issue?
Part of my shared interest is in the exploration of intelligence and what it is, how it happens, the scales on which it happens … and on Beingness, and what gets called an intelligent “Being.” A lot of this inquiry is provoked by the emergence of AI. Intelligence to Levin (following William James) has to do with adaptation and the ability to find new methods to attain existing goals. Beingness, means being located as a bearer of consciousness, which, for him implies some level of awareness.
Beingness for James Bridle is different. Objects, as mere things, don’t exist. Everything is Subject and everything is a Being. “Things” have agency. He quotes Marshall McLuhan (after Winston Churchill) in saying, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” These differences between Levin and Bridle may seem like apples and oranges but they aren’t. These ideas are what is driving our next notion of what is “real.” And what it is about this world we live in. My concern, as is Bridle’s, is found in the answer to the question that asks “Where is our response-ability (Barad) to this more-than-human-world (Abram)?
Bridle, in his text, Ways of Being, is interesting because he is also looking at intelligence, but he wants to reimagine what it is. He wants to work against the assumptions of human exceptionalism. In contrast to Levin, he defines intelligence as an “active process not just a mental capacity.” It is therefore in motion. Motion is our business… we improv dancers, relational dancers, are the holders of singularly important and insightful keys to understanding intelligence… but more on that later. Being fair, it should be noted that Levin works to discover the vastness of intelligence beyond the human scale as well as does Bridle. Yet, Bridle doesn’t use a historic idea of intelligence but rather wishes to rethink it. “By rethinking intelligence and the forms in which it appears in other beings we
will begin to break down the barriers and false hierarchies that separate us from other species in the world. In doing so we will be in a position to forge new relationships based on mutual recognition and respect.”
Although, Bridle, seems able to imagine a future in which AI is an intelligent being. Hmmmm – am I ready for that? I am still reading so maybe there is a twist.
I see this immense divide appearing in how we might understand our relationship to other intelligent beings. Improv dancers need to be in on this conversation, because we engage in the experiential as the relational. Thinking, without experiencing, is disembodied and at this moment, perhaps even dangerous for our future. What do you think?
*(Jump in on this conversation – what are you thinking? We would love to hear from you and if we get enough responses, we will add another section to the newsletter – it will be thoughts from all of you on any of these subjects. What are you reading, experiencing, caring about? Let’s get engaged on multiple levels with one another!)
