Evolution in Intelligence
Evolution strives for the betterment of a species. Evolution by natural selection is realized by favorable choices for their wellbeing, adopted by the multitudes of generations of living beings during their lifetime. Evolution tends toward bettering the attributes of the living being that is used extensively and the features that are not used. Some such leftovers that are not used by human body are appendix, tailbone, muscle fibers the produce goose bumps etc.
Life, at its fundamental level, a cell, or at a more complex level, a living being, tends not to perish. This tendency in a living being is carried out secondarily (primary being satisfying its basic needs) by adjusting effectively to the environment or its changes. In the process of developing instincts, based on the ecosystems they are part of, each species come up with better methods to survive, e.g. in fighting with predators, finding preys, protecting their offspring and so on. These mechanisms, if found effective, get imprinted onto the genotype (the evolutionary memory) of each living being, and to be refined by future generations.
For us human beings, the highest in the intellectual hierarchy, the story is the same. Our early ancestors had to tolerate nature’s fury, even though they had mastered basic survival skills, e.g. ways to protect themselves from wilderness, like warding predators off with fire. Quests to conquer nature has been our ultimate ambition. Walking down new alleys to explore, expanding our boundaries, setting out on voyages to experience and learn — our curiosity has kept us growing. At a physiological level, these new walkways trace out new neural circuits in the Brain. Since natural selection enhances survival capabilities, future generations acquire capabilities of these mechanisms embossed on their fibers, in addition to those that their ancestors carried.
Remember Nobody urging Beauregard to make his name in the history books? Well Nature Nobody is urging us to make our names in the genotypic books.
Higher capabilities in human brain are complimentary to its survival instincts. Human beings definitely reached far from their ancestors in terms of protecting themselves from weather, draught and diseases by inventing protective clothing, building shelters, rainy-day water reservoirs (looks like a pun or doesn’t it not?) and facilitating advanced medical treatments for various ailments. This argument does not consider intelligence as something entirely different compared to other living organs — instead, suggests that human brains’ capacities as mere function of its organ.
The theological argument assumes intelligence as something in a different dimension beyond explanation. This perspective tries to see things through a metaphysical lens calling it personal experience, higher self or soul, life after death, being part of a Whole that is the universe.
Well, there sure is an impasse and the impasse meet us sometime. The matter-mind portal, or the seat of consciousness. Anyway, for the time, we shall focus on utilizing our understanding about intelligence to build an adaptively intelligent machine.
Illuminations from Neuroscience
In our previous article we went through different parts of the human Brain and its biological neural network that stores and process information. Let us see some instances of Neuroscience experiments that gives some insights about brain functions.
Like Brain functions, brain activities during the Sleep also can be categorized into two. One is to perform biological daily routine functions and other is to recycle memories. Living beings sleep. Nature of brain activity in animals is very similar to human beings. Studies conducted in animals during sleep shows that neurons that were activated during their “conscious” or non-sleep state are activated again at a different rate during sleep. This indicates that animals’ memory is also being refreshed and necessary information is extracted and stored to assist their future actions. This is again in-line with the philosophy of evolution — to better equip self for survival based on past experiences.
Imagination is another intelligent function in human brain. It is the capability to visualize something that has not yet happened. We imagine things in our mind and work towards realizing them. Setting goals and achieving them can be identified as intelligent functions. If we consider imagination as a smaller scale, it is also about mentally predicting the trajectory of a ball and making muscle movements to catch it or avoiding a running cat on the road by steering our vehicle in a different direction. Animals also plan ahead to catch their preys by hiding near their habits, birds build nest to lay eggs, beavers build dam — thus other living beings also “imagine” or set their short terms goals and adjust their actions to achieve them. Anacondas lay in wait for as long as a week to pounce upon their prey.
Designing or modelling a complex system is also considered to be an intelligent function. Some examples like building a bridge or a huge Cathedral needs a lot of planning and design and aligning individual workers to perform respective tasks. For this typically, one architect designs the entire system, and a builder arranges the workers and make sure that workers build the components as per the design. Have you seen any ant colony or a honeybee hive? One termite colony looks very similar to a Church designed by Gaudi. This wonderful structure in Barcelona is proclaimed as an intelligent design of all times. If such a marvelous design can be built by a group of termites without having any clue of the result, can we undoubtedly say that human beings have “great” intelligence than animals?
Coda
Survival is one of the main objectives of all living species. Evolution supports the process by enhancing frequently used cells, tissues, and capabilities in the body. If intelligence is a by-product of those enhancements, then it is purely physical in nature — not mystical. We hope that by analyzing and dissecting the details of a human body and brain, at some point mystery of intelligence will be revealed by science. This will speed up the imitation and mapping of brain functions in technology and realizing what we need — a thinking machine. Till then, as nature designed, the human brain is supposed to explore all possibilities to achieve what it wants.
Previous week: Human Brain — The Warehouse of Universal Wisdom
First Week: Can Machines Think?
References
Royal Institute articles
