Rational Philosophy

On the evolution of multiple intelligence facets.

Kay E. Holekamp’s impressive work studying the social intelligence of spotted hyenas tells us that animals living in relatively large social groups, reliant on complex, coherent hierarchies and cooperative social relationships to improve their survival, tend to have a larger frontal cortex — the region of the brain where much of the most sophisticated thought takes place. Holenkamp studied spotted hyenas, the most social of four hyena species, but then compared the spotteds to their less social cousins. Analyzing skull samples of these four species, she found that the spotted hyenas had the largest frontal cortex, and, further, that the size of the frontal cortex of each species varied in direct relation to its degree of social sophistication.

Despite the years she’s dedicated to studying this connection, Holenkamp shrewdly warns against simply equating social sophistication with intelligence — “There’s a tremendous support for the social brain hypothesis,” Holenkamp says, “but I think that in order to understand the origin of intelligence we have to think more broadly than that.”

Hear, hear.

Scientists studying the mechanical complexities of winged flight have discovered that some bats create a vortex by the particular way that they flap their wings. The vortex creates lift and keeps them aloft. This is similar to the mechanism used by other small, winged animals (and, most likely, insects) that can hover.

The study of animals tells us a great deal about the evolutionary paths that those animals have followed: Bats and other flying animals have given up a set of limbs to be able to fly. Hyenas have kept their four legs, allowing them to run down prey and flee predators. Human beings and other primates have exchanged forelegs for arms and opposable thumbs that allow them to grasp and easily manipulate objects. These evolutionary artifacts came about not randomly but because they proved advantageous for some reason.

In awarding a significant air defense contract to Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS, the Pentagon has riled Boeing and its supporters in Congress. The chief argument against the decision seems to be that it denies an American company a lucrative contract.

If the Pentagon followed the procedures for such contract awards, as they claim, what right does Boeing or anyone have to complain?

The excruciating study of bat flight and the arcanery of arguments over defense contracts make me wonder: Can we learn anything about the possible origins of human intelligence from its applications?

After all, evolution cares nothing about the origin of intelligence, per se. It cares only whether intelligence confers some advantage.

Of the species that exhibit intelligence, human beings seem to exhibit a remarkably broad and deep range of intelligences. For instance, the social intelligence required to negotiate the pros and cons of awarding defense contracts at home or abroad must navigate all kinds of abstract and inferred social contracts — contracts of loyalty, risk, employment, pride.

But what of the range and depth of intelligences that goes into designing and building the aircraft themselves — from aerodynamics, to aeronautics, metallurgy, propulsion technologies, and on, and on… Can these deeply creative and exacting mental disciplines be explained by the advanced development of social skills? It seems unlikely. The ability to focus on creative problem solving, the kind of focus rewarded by innovation and mastery of abstract insights, falls in a field that seems to have no bearing on social intelligence. Some of the most intelligent and creative people in history were socially awkward. Creative intelligence seems to be if not inversely proportional to social intelligence then at least seldom overlapping. This makes rational sense. Someone focused on social subtleties will be less likely to forgo social thinking for introverted mechanical or creative thinking.

Just as the connection between particularly social animals and a large frontal cortex tells us that when negotiating social hierarchies the smarter beast has an advantage, so, too, the development of deep mechanical intelligence tells us that for human beings the ability to manipulate mechanical concepts must have conferred an advantage.

If we were to elaborate, catalog, and categorize the kinds of intelligences exhibited by humans or other species, it would doubtless help us understand the origins of those intelligences. This would provide a good adjunct to the work of Holenkamp and others who are coming at this from the other direction.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

A Princeton Professor of Philosophy writes this week about a trend toward philosophical experimentation and away from a field of pure thought. He gives an example of the kind of experiment being performed. The philosopher devises two questions and puts them to a group of people, then tallies the results:

Question #1:

A company chairman has to decide whether to adopt a new program that would increase profits and help the environment too. “I don’t care at all about helping the environment,” the chairman says. “I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” Did the chairman intend to help the environment?

Question #2:

The chairman must decide on a new program, but the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn’t care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Did the chairman harm the environment intentionally?

(In one survey, 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment, 82 percent thought that the chairman in the second situation had intentionally harmed the environment.)

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, the author of the piece, supports the perspective that such studies can shed light on philosophical study, but points to the complex and subjective matter of interpreting the results, and the ultimate need for traditional armchair thinking to surface any new philosophical insight.

But, to me at least, this seems to be a matter of one of those divisions in a field where philosophy should fall back to give way to a new field of scientific study. This is not experimental philosophy, it is experimental psychology mixed up with the study of language.

This kind of study doesn’t ask people to analyze the situations objectively, which would give us some meager insight into common objective analysis, it merely asks them to give a subjective response. When Socrates posed questions to his fellow Greeks, he didn’t use their answers to tally up some new philosophical insights, he used them to show how most people didn’t have a clue how to objectively interpret the world around them. Philosophy is neither a matter of statistics nor subjective perspective.

And finally a long overdue and eminently cogent report on the illusory impact of race on intelligence. Richard Nisbett in the NY Times draws together a broad and well-informed knowledge of the various studies on racial differences, both those flawed and those not flawed, to show that the likes of James Watson, and Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (authors of The Bell Curve) are full of crap. That was the conclusion I would have drawn in the absence of such information, but it’s good to see it in print.

I’m puzzled though by why such a keen rebuttal took so long to appear. When Watson made his remarks earlier this year, the general consensus seemed to be that he was either bigoted or off his rocker or both. But people rebuked him with opinion rather than information, which seemed at the time and has seemed since almost a cover up for a concealed bigotry — as if people were thinking to themselves, it’s terrible that he said that, but what if he’s right?

Which makes me think that freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, because it allows people like Watson to say inflammatory things and for people like Richard Nisbett to set matters straight. It’s the advice we give our children in school — if you have something to say, speak up, because you can bet that there are several other kids thinking the same thing but saying nothing.