#2: What is natural intelligence, and how does it work?

This post is part of a series on the similarities and differences between natural and artificial intelligence. You can find the first introductory post here, which includes a description of all the topics that I’ll be covering: https://ishaan-b.medium.com/the-nature-of-intelligence-in-man-and-machine-a-series-c9b6c8a5e2a6

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My previous post introduced and explained what artificial intelligence encompasses. In this post I turn my attention to natural intelligence and what we know about how it works.

We can define ‘intelligence’ as the ability to reason, in order to plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. Intelligence enables us to use information to make predictions about the world around us in ways that promote survival and reproduction. These reasoning abilities stem from higher order thinking, which we have developed through the course of evolution.

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Psychologists categorize ‘reasoning’ into two basic types:

1. Deductive: Reasoning from general premises, which are known or presumed to be known, to more specific, certain conclusions
2. Inductive: Reasoning from specific cases to more general, but uncertain, conclusions

Deductive reasoning begins from known facts and established axioms to arrive at logical conclusions. It relies upon accepted truths about the world.

Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, takes in sense-data. This sense-data is information about the world and our surroundings, generally as a collection of observations. The brain does something with that data, and produces predictions or new (i.e. as-yet-unknown) truths. Reasoning through induction does not follow a conscious, deliberate, train of thought. It is this unconscious process of inductive reasoning that gives way to spontaneous insight.

The history of science is littered with examples of such spontaneous insight. Gauss, the legendary German mathematician, had this to say when he successfully proved a theorem he had been struggling with for years: “Finally, two days ago, I succeeded, not on account of my painful efforts, but by the grace of God. Like a sudden flash of lightening, the riddle happened to be solved. I myself cannot say what was the conducting thread which connected what I previously knew with what made my success possible.”

This seems counter-intuitive at first glance. Aren’t science and mathematics supposed to be rooted in deliberate, logical thought? But once you start looking at such spontaneous insights occurring during creative tasks, it starts to seem more natural. Here is an excerpt from a letter written by the composer Mozart: “… thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me, I keep in my head and hum them. . .. . . Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself to the first one in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole…”.

Mozart and Gauss made these breakthroughs in the same way, through inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning takes observations about nature and leads to a general truth/hypothesis that explains it. To validate such a hypothesis, whether through empirical science or simple logical axioms, we require deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning allows us to manipulate truths that we know, while inductive reasoning helps us arrive at new truths. Together, they enable the act of human inquiry and constitute natural intelligence.

Conditioning and Evolution

When reasoning about the world, we recognize patterns from our sensory experiences. These patterns get stored in our memory. We see the connections and intuitively adapt to them. This is what leads to conditioning, in man and animal alike.

Classical conditioning occurs when we associate an involuntary response with a stimulus. Operant conditioning associates a voluntary behavior with a seemingly unrelated consequence. Both of these stem from reasoning, or the act of recognizing patterns to identify truths about the world.

The process of conditioning dictates how we interact with the world. Organisms must detect and assimilate information to ensure survival. This information comes from correlated stimuli in the external world. The neural basis for detecting this type of information was present in the earliest organisms, which used the information to modify their behavior. These organisms may not have possessed meta-awareness, but they were certainly intelligent based on the definition we’ve established.

We come to an important conclusion here. Intelligence is a critical enabler for evolution, and intelligence is also born out of evolution. Intelligence allows organisms to condition themselves to the environment, which enables survival and procreation.

Armed with this evolutionary perspective about intelligence, we can now think about what it means for AI. My next post will be aptly titled Natural intelligence vs AI: The act of reasoning.