Abstract
Although the term intelligence is now used in a wide variety of fields to explain the emergence of complex causalities, intelligence is understood here primarily as the ability of neural systems to solve problems in cognitive decision-making processes. Cognition and intelligent behavior are therefore primary objects, but not subjects, of chance-driven biological evolution. Recent work in neurobiology and comparative genomics has now shown how, starting from simple neural systems, forms capable of solving comparably complex problems in cognitive processes have evolved in all major groups of the animal kingdom. Although this cognition is based on the same basic cellular elements (neurons), it is realized in central nervous structures (brains), some of which have developed quite differently in animal evolution. By comparing the nervous systems of animals capable of higher intelligent sensory performance, the first common properties and principles are now becoming apparent, which are prerequisites for the emergence of higher intelligent systems (e.g., the density, but not number, of neuronal elements). Such common rules are probably also constraints in the development of artificial intelligent systems.
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Notes
- 1.
Children were presented with one marshmallow and given a choice—eat it immediately or wait to get two later. The experiment also became known as the Marshmallow Test (Walter Mischel 2014, Settlers, ISBN 9783827500434).
- 2.
Amniotes are terrestrial vertebrates that can reproduce independently of water through embryonic shells, whereas amphibians depend on it for embryonic development and produce tadpoles as larval stages postembryonically.
- 3.
Allometry relates organ size to body size; the brain follows a power function with an exponent of 0.6–0.8, meaning that as body size increases, brains become larger in absolute terms but smaller in relative terms (Roth, G., and U. Dicke. 2005. Evolution of the brain and intelligence. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9:250–257, Roth, G., and U. Dicke. 2012. Evolution of the brain and intelligence in primates. Prog Brain Res. 195:413–430).
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Rainer M. Holm-Hadulla, who gave the impulse for this work and enabled me to look beyond the “edge of my nose” of our research on the nervous system of the Cnidaria.
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Holstein, T.W. (2022). Intelligence: Evolutionary Biological Foundations and Perspectives. In: Holm-Hadulla, R.M., Funke, J., Wink, M. (eds) Intelligence - Theories and Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04198-3_5
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