BEHAVIORAL AND BEAIN SCIENCES (1990) 13, 63-108 Printed in the United States of America Jonathan Schyil Department of Psychology, Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041 Electronic mail: ischull@hvrford.hitnet Abstracts Plant and animal species are information-processing entities of such complexity, integration, and adaptive competence that it may be scientifically fruitful to consider them intelligent. The possibility arises from the analogy between learning (in organisms) and evolution (in species), and from recent developments in evolutionary science, psychology and cognitive science. Species are now described as spatiotemporally localized individuals in an expanded hierarchy of biological entities. Intentional and cognitive abilities are now ascribed to animal, human, and artificial intelligence systems that process information adaptively, and that manifest problem-solving abilities. The structural and functional similarities between such systems and species are extensive, although they "are usually obscured by population-genetic metaphors that have nonetheless contributed much to our understanding of evolution. In this target article, I use Sewall Wright's notion of the "adaptive landscape" to compare the performances of evolving species to those of intelligent organisms. With regard to their adaptive achievements and the kinds of processes by which they are achieved, biological species compare very favorably to intelligent animals by virtue of interactions between populations and their environ- ments, between ontogeny and phylogeny, and between natural, interdemic, organic, and species selection. Addressing the question of whether species are intelligent could help to refine our ideas about species, evolution, and intelligence, and could open new lines of empirical and theoretical inquiry in many disciplines. Keywords: animal behavior; artificial intelligence; cognitive science; evolution; insight; intelligence; interdemic selection; learning; natural selection; organic selection; parallel distributed processing; punctuated equilibrium; species; species selection 1. introduction In this target article I argue that plant and animal species are information-processing entities of such complexity, integration, and adaptive competence that it may be scientifically fruitful to consider them intelligent. Al- though I do not mean to suggest that species are sentient, or conscious, even the idea that they might be intelligent is admittedly unorthodox. Nonetheless, I hope to show that the possibility follows from recent developments in biology, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, and that workers in these and other disciplines will have to address a variety of novel issues before the idea can be evaluated properly. I also hope to show that the effort would be worthwhile,forit could lead to the clarification and elaboration of our ideas of intelligence, species, and evolution, and it could open new lines of empirical and theoretical inquiry. The analogy between learning (in individuals) and evolution (of species) is at least as old as the idea of evolution (e.g., Lamarck 1809). There are also deep similarities underlying contemporary theories of learning and of evolution,forat the heart of most such theories is a variation on Darwin's theory of random variation and natural selection. Indeed, it has been argued that learn- ing, intelligence, and the acquisition of new knowledge can only arise from selected variation, and that any theory of elaborated intelligence or higher cognition will have to acknowledge the operation of multiple, nested levels of variation and selection (see, e.g., Campbell 1974; Csanyi 1989; Dennett 1975). [See also Skinner: "Selection By Consequences" BBS 7(4) 1984.] My thesis is that plant and animal species process information via multiple nested levels of variation and selection in a manner that is surprisingly similar to what must go on in intelligent animals. As biological entities, and as processors of information, plant and animal species are no less complicated than, say, monkeys. Their adap- tive achievements (the brilliant design and exquisite production of biological organisms) are no less impres- sive, and certainlyrivalthose of the animal and electronic systems to which the term "intelligence 5 ' is routinely (and perhaps validly) applied today. So perhaps we should recognize them as intelligent systems of considerable scope and study them for the light they can throw on the nature of both evolution and intelligence. Regardless of how we ultimately answer the question, "Are species intelligent?" the attempt to answer it could make it easier to perceive and investigate patterns of populational change and adaptation, and could throw new light on interactions of ontogeny and phylogeny, evolu- tion and intelligence, natural, organic, interdemic, and species selection, and artificial and natural intelligence. Thus, I have two major goals: first, to construct a con- ceptual "macroscope" for viewing aspects of biological evolution that are usually obscured; and second, to pro- voke a reappraisal of the concept of intelligence and of the entities to which we apply it. To these ends, I develop the concept of species as meta-organisms, and compare their behavioral competence in evolutionary time to the com- petencies of intelligent animals behaving in "real" time. © 1990 Cambridge University Press 0140-525X190 $5.00+.00 63 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00077542 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Eastman School of Music, on 17 Apr 2019 at 20:07:37, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.