{"id":80335,"date":"2025-02-12T17:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T17:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com"},"modified":"2025-02-18T16:30:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T16:30:37","slug":"a-radical-new-proposal-for-how-mind-emerges-from-matter","status":"publish","type":"wpm-article","link":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/a-radical-new-proposal-for-how-mind-emerges-from-matter","title":{"rendered":"A Radical New Proposal For How Mind Emerges From Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From a snarl of roots that grip dry, shallow soil, the knobbly trunk of an ancient olive tree twisted into a surprisingly lush crown of dense, silvery-green leaves. Far above, the retrofuturistic pattern of a geodesic dome framed the blue sky outside. Dan Ryan considered the tree: \u201cIt\u2019s probably close to 1,800 years old.\u201d When it was still a shoot, the Roman Empire was at the height of its influence. Ptolemy was drawing epicycles in a doomed effort to model the paths of the planets and the sun as they revolved around the Earth. For nearly two millennia, this tree managed to evade death by drought or predation or pestilence, forging alliances with alien species in the soil below and the air above.<\/p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"noa-web-audio-player\" style=\"border: none\" src=\"https:\/\/embed-player.newsoveraudio.com\/v4?key=n0e13g&#038;id=https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/a-radical-new-proposal-for-how-mind-emerges-from-matter\/&#038;bgColor=F3F3F3&#038;color=6D6D6D&#038;playColor=F3F3F3&#038;progressBgColor=F7F7F7&#038;progressBorderColor=F3F3F3&#038;titleColor=383D3D&#038;timeColor=6D6D6D&#038;speedColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkHighlightColor=039BE5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\"><\/iframe><p>It was humans who almost did it in. When the tree stopped producing olives, the people who owned the land where it lived made brisk plans to demolish it. But in stepped the Eden Project, a nature preserve on the Cornish coast of the United Kingdom, offering the tree a kind of retirement home, as Eden does for many other plants. Here, people like Ryan make sure all its needs are attended to.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Ryan has deep knowledge of the plants in his care and a consequent respect for them. \u201cThe timescales of these plants puts any notion of intelligence into some pretty sharp focus,\u201d he said. \u201cIs that olive tree cleverer than us?\u201d Given its lifespan, I was willing to think: Maybe?<\/p><p>Nonhuman intelligence has been the subject of a long-running and contentious war in science whose sides have periodically skirmished over the past 150 years. It was Charles Darwin who first popularized in the West the abilities in plants that in any human we would be comfortable describing as a display of intelligence.&nbsp;<\/p><p>But we don\u2019t. Intelligence is still, for the most part, tightly defined as a human quality. The strict rules have relaxed somewhat in the past few decades, thanks to animal behavior scientists from primatologists to insectologists agitating to <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/nyu.edu\/nydeclaration\/declaration\">admit<\/a> the objects of their study into the smart club. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aaz7775\">Crows<\/a> can use tools, <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsos.202073\">dolphins<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/how-to-speak-honeybee\/\">bees<\/a> use language, <a href=\"https:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/digest\/bowhead-whale-communication-distance-study#:~:text=In%201971%2C%20scientists%20Roger%20Payne,of%20miles%20through%20the%20ocean.\">whales<\/a> appear to communicate across hundreds of miles, octopuses are extraordinary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/04\/14\/world\/asia\/inky-octopus-new-zealand-aquarium.html\">escape artists<\/a> \u2014&nbsp;the list is getting longer every year.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;It would seem from recent research that the term &#8216;intelligence&#8217; has too many shades and variations and synonyms, an undifferentiated sludge with little scientific utility.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"It would seem from recent research that the term 'intelligence' has too many shades and variations and synonyms, an undifferentiated sludge with little scientific utility.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Plants, however, are still excluded by most scientists. The idea that they could be intelligent threatens to stretch the definition of some concepts that are fundamental to humans\u2019 perception of themselves and the cosmos \u2014 cognition, understanding, reasoning, sentience \u2014 into meaninglessness. Plants, after all, don\u2019t speak or move or react in ways most people would recognize as the actions of thinking beings with independent agency. And yet \u2026&nbsp;<\/p><p>We seem to be entering a new era of cries du coeur<em> <\/em>to gather more life, including plants, under the umbrella of intelligence. Bookstores these days are heaving with volumes with titles like \u201cThe Revolutionary Genius of Plants,\u201d \u201cPlanta Sapiens\u201d<em> <\/em>and \u201cThe Light Eaters.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>Their authors are not even at the vanguard anymore. Some boldly go even further, finding behavior they label intelligent in fungi, bacteria, slime molds and paramecia. Even the cells that constitute our bodies are now standing at the velvet ropes, backed by frontier scientists waving evidence of behavior that might qualify as the hallmarks of intelligence if it were observed in an animal.&nbsp;<\/p><p>What on Earth is going on? Should we consider everything to be intelligent now?<\/p><p>There\u2019s some evidence that the question is exactly backward. A small but growing number of philosophers, physicists and developmental biologists say that, instead of continually admitting new creatures into the category of intelligence, the new findings are evidence that there is something catastrophically wrong with the way we understand intelligence itself. And they believe that if we can bring ourselves to dramatically reconsider what we think we know about it, we will end up with a much better concept of how to restabilize the balance between human and nonhuman life amid an ecological omnicrisis that threatens to permanently alter the trajectory of every living thing on Earth.<\/p><!-- Content Image Block Template -->\n<div class=\"\n  content-image\n  content-image--large_inset_alt  \">\n\n  <div class=\"content-image__container\">\n\n    <!-- Main Image -->\n    <div class=\"content-image__main-wrapper\">\n\n              <div class=\"aspect-ratio-wrapper\">\n              <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2500\" height=\"1667\" src=\"https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fm=pjpg&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;s=5158a2646c0c5110220a8e978a4f7bca\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=200&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=300&amp;wpsize=medium&amp;s=214421a78cf49a3c25a0c9ae0f22ff3e 300w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=crop&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=512&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1024&amp;wpsize=noema-social-twitter&amp;s=89f31dafc21c2efa5ba549a29fdbe47d 1024w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=512&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=768&amp;wpsize=medium_large&amp;s=d9272304f788347cbc7e7bb61d604757 768w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=crop&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=511&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=767&amp;wpsize=noema-listing-tile&amp;s=62ca4137422fd0cf49642ccf558b5659 767w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1200&amp;wpsize=post-thumbnail&amp;s=4d6a0fa835207cce57582c9f68f14fc7 1200w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=1024&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1536&amp;wpsize=1536x1536&amp;s=4521274c310e7d8820f527c53205255e 1536w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=1366&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=2048&amp;wpsize=2048x2048&amp;s=68bbd64872da8e6d350ef631641d61b5 2048w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=1320&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1980&amp;wpsize=twentytwenty-fullscreen&amp;s=e37687c4ebb86d80bfb4eb3e6de47754 1980w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=400&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=600&amp;wpsize=woocommerce_single&amp;s=3492d9742246b25073d9a3c82f39a870 600w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/olive-tree-1.jpg?fm=pjpg&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;s=5158a2646c0c5110220a8e978a4f7bca 2500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2500px) 100vw, 2500px\" \/>        <div class=\"content-image__overlay content-image__overlay-0\">\n        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n\n      <\/div>\n\n  <div class=\"content-image__captions\">\n        <div class=\"content-image__main-caption\">\n          \n      <figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\n        <div>The olive tree at the Eden Project.<\/div>\n      <\/figcaption>\n\n        <\/div>\n    \n      <\/div>\n\n\n<\/div><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-potted-history-of-intelligent-plants\"><strong>A Potted History Of Intelligent Plants<\/strong><\/h2><p>It took a long time for anyone to notice what plants were getting up to. For millennia, Western intellectuals had dismissed plants as inert scenery at the bottom of what Aristotle called \u201cscala naturae,\u201d the \u201cladder of life\u201d or \u201cgreat chain of being.\u201d But after observing the animal-like hunting movements of Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants, Darwin began to doubt the dogma. He speculated that perhaps plants might be thought of as upside-down humans whose \u201cbrains\u201d in their roots controlled the motion and activity of the limbs up above. Quite unlike the plaudits and societal disruption that had attended \u201cOn the Origin of Species,\u201d however, the book in which he asserted this new idea was met mostly with embarrassed silence.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Sporadic reawakenings of scientific interest in the question were torpedoed in the 1970s, when the former CIA agent Cleve Backster published findings that he had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/news\/the-lives-they-lived\/2013\/12\/21\/cleve-backster\/\">hooked<\/a> a house plant up to a lie detector, thought pointedly about setting it on fire, and then took the squiggles on the machine to mean it had telepathically read his mind. This nonsense muffled many intriguing findings over the following 30 years.&nbsp;<\/p><p>By the turn of the 21st century, however, a renegade group of plant physiologists had had enough. They argued that it was past time to bring existing theories of plant behavior into line with the avalanche of new observations enabled by late 20th-century advances in molecular biology, genomics, ecology and neurophysiology. Perhaps they weren\u2019t reading anyone\u2019s mind, but it sure started to look like plants had (some version of) their own.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Among many findings that precipitated the revolt and have proliferated since: Plants can sense \u2014 and with a bigger <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0168945217303382\">sensory suite<\/a> than the one humans have. More importantly, they can integrate the information those senses carry and use it to make decisions. For example, the molecular biologist <a href=\"https:\/\/research.com\/u\/edward-e-farmer\">Edward Farmer<\/a> and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found in a <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/10810145\/\">2000 study<\/a> that Arabidopsis<em> <\/em>(the main model organism in plant physiology studies) markedly alters its hormone response depending on the size of a caterpillar munching on its leaves. When the attacker is small, the strategy is to keep them that way. \u201cIt\u2019s better to be eaten by something small than by something big,\u201d Farmer told me. And so, when attacked, \u201cthe leaf makes itself harder to eat\u201d by producing toxic chemicals and proteins that interfere with digestion. This strategy slows the caterpillar\u2019s growth and can delay pupation. One interpretation of this, according to Farmer, is that the plant can make a decision about how much energy to expend to repel pests based on the severity of the threat to its vital anatomy. Other plants have similar responses. Phaseolus lunatus (lima bean) mounts a particularly Machiavellian response: When a caterpillar starts snacking on it, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.0610266104\">emits<\/a> a chemical tailored to entice parasitic wasps, which swoop in like cavalry to pick off the predators. Ten years ago, researchers discovered that Boquila trifoliolata, a vine native to southern Chile, is somehow able to pass itself off as whichever species of plant is nearby, imitating its characteristic shape, color and pattern, possibly to entice pollinators or put off herbivores by assuming the guise of a less tasty snack. In one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC8903786\/\">experiment<\/a>, it even seemed to imitate a plastic houseplant.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Researchers also found that some plants show evidence of memory. A Venus flytrap <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/fulltext\/S0960-9822(15)01501-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982215015018%3Fshowall%3Dtrue\">counts<\/a> the number of times an insect has triggered its sensory hairs \u2014 two in a row, not one, are usually required for it to clamp down on an interloper. To avoid a false alarm, it then seems to count to three (the trapped insect\u2019s struggle?) before deploying costly digestive juices. Plants that track the sun seem to be able to retain their knowledge of when it will rise, even after a few days in the dark. Others appear to learn lessons from droughts, shrinking or completely closing the evaporation pores on their leaves, perhaps to prepare them to cope with continued dry conditions.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;In every way, a &#8216;human&#8217; seems to be a collaboration between many organisms that have cooperated to form a superintelligence.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"In every way, a 'human' seems to be a collaboration between many organisms that have cooperated to form a superintelligence.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>It\u2019s not just plants. Fungi, the objects of numerous investigations over the past several decades, exhibit goal-directed behavior \u2014 even, in the case of some parasitic species, manipulating the <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/27131331\/\">goals<\/a> of their hosts. Like plants, they seem to sense: Their microscopic thread-like tendrils (hyphae) feel their way around the world, and they use sensory input to inform their next moves, such as whether to grow toward, around or away from whatever stimulus they touch. Writing in the magazine <a href=\"https:\/\/psyche.co\/ideas\/the-fungal-mind-on-the-evidence-for-mushroom-intelligence\">Psyche<\/a>, the fungal biologist Nicholas Money saw in these behaviors the hallmarks of \u201cspatial recognition, memory and intelligence.\u201d In 2022, another researcher, Andrew Adamatzky, found evidence that enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi may incorporate environmental information into stable internal <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsos.211926\">concepts<\/a>, like a human in a forest processing their surroundings into the words tree, rock and squirrel. The fungi may even recognize shapes.<\/p><p>And then came the slime molds \u2014 one group, Physarum polycephalum, in particular. Long misclassified as fungi, they have a gelatinous aspect due to the fact that they are constituted only of a single cell: a really, really big one. If two or more hungry molds meet, instead of clustering into a group of discrete individuals, they merge into a single genetically undifferentiated ooze. (In this way, one variant colloquially known as the tapioca slime mold attained the weight of a small child.) Investigators have been cataloging their surprising abilities for years now. The molds have a remarkably efficient ability to maximize reward for effort. In experiments where snacks were hidden in mazes, they identified not only the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/35035159\">shortest routes<\/a> to food but also <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsos.180396\">solved<\/a> complex mathematical problems like the famous <a href=\"https:\/\/mathworld.wolfram.com\/TravelingSalesmanProblem.html\">Traveling Salesman Problem<\/a>, which involved determining the quickest way to reach multiple destinations only once before returning to the starting point. They make judgments: Confronted by harmful or noxious stimuli, they accurately balance safety with efficiency, sometimes in offbeat ways <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0022283615003873?via%3Dihub\">reminiscent<\/a> of our own human irrationalities and preferences. There is even evidence of memory and pattern recognition in their apparent ability to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/451385a\">anticipate<\/a> the administration of regular electric shocks. One observing researcher could only <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/15539357\/\">conclude<\/a> that he was observing an \u201cintelligent system.\u201d<\/p><p>Sophisticated and seemingly intelligent actions can be found in the behavior of other single-celled organisms. Amoebas like Dictyostelium discoideum can <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/28211207\/\">perceive<\/a> and act on positive stimuli like light, food and mates, and they can steer well clear of toxins and predators. They can even <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/26079718\/\">hunt<\/a> in packs. So do some bacteria, which make complex decisions about when to fly solo and when to team up with others to form societies that reach billions of individuals, thereby becoming a biofilm, a good hedge against danger and starvation and even humans\u2019 most sophisticated antibiotics. These societies may even be capable of a kind of associative learning, a Pavlovian response akin to dogs drooling at the sound of a dinner bell. E. coli<em> <\/em>colonies were found to be able to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1154456\">associate<\/a> higher temperatures with a lack of oxygen, consequently altering their metabolism as temperatures dropped, apparently predicting an associated drop in oxygen levels.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Individuals in such a biofilm can also choose to cleave off from it, Albert Siryaporn told me. Siryaporn\u2019s group at the University of California, Irvine, studies the physics of bacterial interactions. When threatened by viruses called bacteriophages spreading through their biofilm, bacteria can engage in strategic \u201csocial distancing,\u201d as Siryaporn put it. When the researchers infected one part of the population, the uninfected part <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.asm.org\/doi\/10.1128\/jb.00383-19\">figured out<\/a> how to avoid contact.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The developmental biologist Michael Levin, among others, is going deeper still, arguing that even the individual cells that comprise our bodies are capable of making decisions similar to bacteria. Levin has shown how they coordinate action during development to cleave off into organs and tissues. The same cells can also decide individually to stop cooperating with their collectives \u2014 if they turn cancerous, for example \u2014 prioritizing their own growth and food over the needs of their team. Such work is not even the radical departure it may appear to be: In her acceptance speech for the 1983 Nobel Prize, the plant biologist and cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mcclintock-lecture.pdf\">mused<\/a> about the thoughtful action of cells. In fact, these ideas have been around for well over a hundred years. They are now popping up again everywhere you look, from work on Pavlovian <a href=\"https:\/\/elifesciences.org\/articles\/61907\">learning<\/a> in single cells to a 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-024-53922-x\">study<\/a> in which New York University researchers found evidence that one of \u201cthe canonical features of memory\u201d \u2014 the fact that periodic repetition leads to better information retention than cramming does \u2014 is enlisted by kidney cells. The hits just keep coming.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-objection-your-honor\"><strong>Objection, Your Honor<\/strong><\/h2><p>Under this cascade of research suggesting that some of the smallest components of larger systems display intelligence, some scientists are growing weary. Lincoln Taiz, an emeritus plant physiology researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of one of the foundational <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/plant-physiology-and-development-9780197614204\">textbooks<\/a> of the field, has been on the diss track beat for at least a decade. Years ago, he told<em> <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2013\/12\/23\/the-intelligent-plant\">The New Yorker<\/a> that plant neurobiology researchers suffered from \u201cbrain envy.\u201d In the same story, Yale University microbiologist Clifford Slayman went further, deriding \u201cplant intelligence\u201d as \u201ca foolish distraction\u201d that was only establishing the line between \u201cthe scientific community and the nuthouse.\u201d<\/p><p>In 2023, enlisted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/down-to-earth\/2022\/11\/30\/23473062\/plant-mimicry-boquila-trifoliolata\">Vox<\/a> to comment on yet another apparently intelligent plant, Taiz reiterated that \u201cthe vast majority of mainstream plant scientists do not give the work of \u2018plant neurobiologists\u2019 much credence.\u201d A year later, he and five co-authors categorically <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S1754504823001034\">rejected<\/a> the idea that fungus might have language as \u201ctoo vague to be evaluated scientifically.\u201d The \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.embopress.org\/doi\/full\/10.1038\/s44319-024-00127-4\">sentient cell<\/a>\u201d idea fared no better under his withering gaze: It was, he and other dissenters argued, \u201cbased on an elaborate series of speculations for which empirical evidence is lacking.\u201d Instead, they wrote, the observed behavior was \u201cevolutionarily genetically hardwired and has nothing to do with learning by individual organisms and cannot be taken as evidence for conscious or even cognitive behavior.\u201d<\/p><p>The behaviors that seem so intelligent are in fact \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1002\/jez.1400040106\">tropisms<\/a>,\u201d more conservative scientists argue. Popularized by the German-American physiologist Jacques Loeb, the term describes the opposite of cognition or agency: an automatic, mechanical reaction to external or internal physical or chemical factors. Mechanists like Loeb declared that tropisms govern all plant behaviors, such as turning to grow in the direction of sunlight, and perhaps even some animal behaviors, such as a moth\u2019s compulsion to fly toward light. A tropism precludes any internal will or individual agency. It is the opposite of intelligence and cognition.<\/p><p>For today\u2019s critics, perception, communication, learning and memory in seemingly simple organisms are actually just innate, reflective responses performed by automata genetically programmed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. If this happens to look intelligent to an outsider, that does not mean it<em> is<\/em> intelligent.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;If we can\u2019t settle on a discrete and meaningful definition of cognition, what is a new prefix going to do? What good is the &#8216;minimal&#8217; version of an undefined concept?&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"If we can\u2019t settle on a discrete and meaningful definition of cognition, what is a new prefix going to do? What good is the 'minimal' version of an undefined concept?\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Taiz offers a simple heuristic for the easily confused: True intelligence, not tropist imitations of it, requires a brain. This is a widely held view. \u201cIntelligence requires mental representations of the external world that can be manipulated and that can be used to predict, explain and control the world, and I\u2019m pretty sure those representations would not exist in a non-neural organism,\u201d said Michael Anderson, who studies intelligence and cognition at the University of Cambridge. So: no brain, no mental representation, no intelligence.<\/p><p>But the argument creates a certain circularity. Later in his life, Loeb in fact thought that <em>all <\/em>animal behavior could be chalked up to tropisms \u2014 and if the controlling physical or chemical forces could be identified, he even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24621351\">envisioned<\/a> a \u201cmathematical theory of human conduct.\u201d More than a century later, some researchers have argued that organisms with brains may engage in behavior that is simultaneously intelligent <em>and<\/em> a tropism. As Enrico Sandro Colizzi, a theoretical biologist who studies multicellularity at Cambridge, put it: \u201cThe process of mutation of genetic material actually works very well as a kind of machine learning tool. Evolution can learn.\u201d<\/p><p>Adamatzky, who does not<em> <\/em>consider the behavior of the non-neural organisms he studies to be tropisms, nonetheless still said he was \u201cagainst using phrases such as \u2018slime mold intelligence\u2019 or \u2018fungal intelligence.\u2019\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>His quarrel was with the word itself: \u201cWe do not have a good definition of intelligence,\u201d he said.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-definition-of-intelligence\"><strong>The Definition Of Intelligence<\/strong><\/h2><p>In a 2007 <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/0706.3639\">paper<\/a>, Shane Legg, who later went on to co-found DeepMind, cataloged at least 70 definitions of the word <em>intelligence<\/em>. It would seem from such research that the term has too many shades and variations and synonyms, an undifferentiated sludge with little scientific utility. This has been an open secret in psychology and cognitive sciences for well over a century.<\/p><p>Controversy has long attended the scoring system Western countries use to measure intelligence. The IQ test assesses an individual\u2019s ability to use memory and reason to manipulate mathematical and linguistic symbols in their head. The ability to do so has been correlated with good life outcomes. The resulting score \u2014 said to assess general intelligence, or <em>g<\/em> \u2014 is how we \u201cdetermine\u201d the \u201cintelligence\u201d of any individual.&nbsp;<\/p><p>No plant, fungus or bacterium can sit an IQ test. But to be honest, neither could you if the test was administered in a culture radically different from your own. \u201cI would probably soundly fail an intelligence test devised by an 18th-century Sioux,\u201d the social scientist <a href=\"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/psych\/people\/emeriti-faculty\/nisbett.html\">Richard Nisbett<\/a> once told me. IQ tests are culturally bound, meaning that they test the ability to represent the particular world an individual inhabits and manipulate that representation in a way that maximizes the ability to thrive in it.<\/p><p>What would we find if we could design a test appropriate for the culture plants inhabit? \u201cOver half their biomass is underground in the soil, and we miss 100% of what they do there,\u201d Paco Calvo, who directs the Minimal Intelligence Lab at the University of Murcia, in Spain, told me. \u201cTheir roots need to grow away from danger while scanning for pockets of nutrients and water \u2014 and they have to execute these goals all while solving the particular problems imposed on them by the totally different timescales they live in.\u201d In other words, the test that measures a human\u2019s ability to thrive in a specific environment is irrelevant to the question of whether plants or other organisms are intelligent in theirs.<\/p><p>Some have even started to question the utility of the IQ test as a measure of the entirety of the human mind. In an attempt to broaden the scope of the test in the late 1970s and early 80s, the cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner described a theory of what he called multiple intelligences. His original formulation included novel constructs like musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic and spatial intelligence, and inter- and intrapersonal intelligence. Over the years, he added more, including existential intelligence. This quickly became a new schism. You either believed in general intelligence or you believed in multiple intelligences.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Later, evidence of intelligence in non-mammalian animals like ants led to the study of so-called \u201cswarm intelligence\u201d to explain how many distributed organisms acting on tropisms could collectively transcend the brain power of any constituent individuals. \u201cCollective intelligence\u201d also began to appear in the literature to make the same point.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Intelligence, according to some, is a biological function that evolved not with humans or brains but way back in some form to the earliest organisms, a fundamental biological function like respiration.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Intelligence, according to some, is a biological function that evolved not with humans or brains but way back in some form to the earliest organisms, a fundamental biological function like respiration.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>For fungi and cells, scientists tried to propose new appendages like \u201cminimal cognition,\u201d \u201cbasal cognition\u201d and, most recently, \u201cproto-cognition.\u201d These terms would account for instances of cognition in creatures that didn\u2019t meet the most basic requirements of \u201cintelligence\u201d \u2014 a central nervous system, more than one constituent cell \u2014 while acknowledging that some of their behavior looked awfully smart.<\/p><p>Pamela Lyon has had enough of this. Rather than offering any illumination, she told me, slapping a bunch of modifiers and subcategories on the definitions of intelligence and cognition has only added more ingredients to a semantic word salad. None have shed any light on the core meaning of the word they all purport to modify. After all, she pointed out, if we can\u2019t settle on a discrete and meaningful definition of cognition, what is a new prefix going to do? What good is the \u201cminimal\u201d version of an undefined concept?<\/p><p>Lyon, a researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia, argued that these increasing complications are the equivalent of Ptolemy frantically refining epicycles in his hopeless bid to explain away the increasingly evident fact that the Earth was not at the center of the cosmos. Another paradigm shift, she said, is just around the corner. The very foundations of our ideas of intelligence are rotten, constructed with the same set of priors that placed Earth at the center of creation. The idea that intelligence revolves around the human has no scientific grounding.<\/p><p>Lyon told me that cognitivism \u2014 the current theoretical lens through which we seek to understand the mind \u2014 is nearing time for an exit interview. In Aeon,<em> <\/em>she <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/the-study-of-the-mind-needs-a-copernican-shift-in-perspective\">enumerated<\/a> the reasons why. \u201cWe still don\u2019t have a good grip on the fundamentals of cognition: how the senses work together to construct a world; how and where memories are stored long term, whether and how they remain stable, and how retrieval changes them; how decisions are made, and bodily action marshaled; and how valence is assessed,\u201d she wrote.<strong> <\/strong>These are just some of the problems that have been left on the table by Noam Chomsky, John B. Watson, Sigmund Freud, Ren\u00e9 Descartes and the many other thinkers who, over the years, fronted the philosophical inquiries into how mind emerges from matter.&nbsp;<\/p><p>So if cognitivism is out, what\u2019s going to replace it? Lyon is petitioning for a return to Darwin: Intelligence, she has <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/full\/10.1098\/rstb.2019.0750\">argued<\/a>, is a biological function that evolved not with humans or brains but way back in some form to the earliest organisms, a fundamental biological function like respiration.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-biological-cognition\"><strong>Biological Cognition<\/strong><\/h2><p>As Lyon sees it, cognition is like being pregnant. Nothing can be \u201cminimally pregnant.\u201d Creatures reproduce; reproduction is a function shared by all creatures and carried out at appropriate scales to each. But its purpose is unchanged across phyla \u2014 everything seeks to make more of itself. Different species\u2019 approaches to reproduction are all, still, <em>reproduction<\/em>. And so it is, Lyon said, with cognition. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to think biologically about the way systems evolve rather than thinking in terms of our own categories,\u201d she told me. In other words, as <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsociety.org\/people\/anthony-trewavas-12436\/\">Anthony Trewavas<\/a>, a botanist and molecular biologist who has also worked to shift the Overton window around how we evaluate intelligence across kingdoms, told me recently, our narrow, \u201cscholastic\u201d variety of intelligence needs to be seen as a specific manifestation of a much broader biological intelligence.<\/p><p>Studying cognition across all the species that enlist it could help us answer some of the questions previous approaches could not. Among the most interesting, for Lyon, is: What is a mind <em>for<\/em>?&nbsp;<\/p><p>Instead of arguing endlessly about how to use contested words to interpret various creatures\u2019 behaviors, studying intelligence as a biological property is a radical new proposal that opens up a world of commonalities across species, phyla and, potentially, planets. According to Lyon and others on this frontier, such research could break us out of a centuries-old conceptual impasse and lead us to new insights about fundamental characteristics shared by all life.<\/p><p>Electrophysiological readings, for example, have for a long time revealed striking similarities in the activity of humans, plants, fungi, bacteria and other organisms. It\u2019s uncontroversially accepted that electrical signals coordinate the physical and mental activities of brain cells. We have operationalized this knowledge. When we want to peer into the mental states produced by a human brain\u2019s 86 billion or so neurons, we eavesdrop on their cell-to-cell electrical communication (called action potentials). We have been measuring electrical activity in the brain since the electroencephalogram was invented in 1924. Analyzing the synchronized waves produced by billions of electrical firings has allowed us to deduce whether a person is asleep, dreaming or, when awake, concentrating or unfocused.&nbsp;\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n            \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Read Noema in print.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        <\/p><p>Motor and sensory information is also encoded in the coordinated firing of specific groups of neurons. The match between specific sets of neurons firing and the effect \u2014 a leg kicking or an emotion triggered \u2014 is known as the neural code.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Humans&#8217; narrow variety of intelligence needs to be seen as a specific manifestation of a much broader biological form of intelligence.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Humans' narrow variety of intelligence needs to be seen as a specific manifestation of a much broader biological form of intelligence.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>In the past few decades, it has become increasingly clear that similar electric signals mediate the actions and senses of all kinds of creatures without nervous systems. \u201cNon-neural cells can be wired up too,\u201d said Alison Hanson, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa. \u201cThey\u2019re found in bacteria, they\u2019re found in plants, they\u2019re found in fungi, they\u2019re found anywhere. You put epithelial cells together, you get an electric network, just on a slower timescale. They\u2019re not unique to human brains. They\u2019re everywhere.\u201d<\/p><p>Take plants. They may not have nervous systems but they do process and transmit information using methods that range, like ours, from hormonal to chemical \u2014 and electrical. A leaf has on the order of 30 million cells, each of which is studded with thousands of tiny electrical conduits called ion channels. This turns every plant cell into an electrical conductor. To instantiate their defenses, plants may employ fast electric signals whose rhythms look a lot like human action potentials. For example, tomato plants <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/sustainable-food-systems\/articles\/10.3389\/fsufs.2021.657401\/full\">send<\/a> them when their fruits are being eaten and release an antimicrobial chemical, possibly to guard against infection. But plants also make use of other types of electric signal \u2014 the <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC4883923\/\">variation potential<\/a>, which may tell it about non-biotic attacks like fire, and the slower, more localized \u201csystem potential,\u201d whose meaning is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0176161721000572\">contested<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Fungi may also use electric signals to process the valence of stimuli from their environment. Researchers have measured oscillations in the electrical voltage of their constituent hyphae when they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-024-66223-6\">colonize<\/a> their food. The function of these oscillations has not yet been as extensively probed or characterized as a plant\u2019s. However, as Adamatzky told me, \u201cFungi respond to different stimuli with consistently different patterns of electrical spiking.\u201d His recordings of electrical activity in four species of fungi suggested that these differences could be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.04.03.486900v1.full\">encoding<\/a> representations of their external world. The \u201clanguage\u201d he had identified was not like our social chatter; it was akin to how analog electrical signals encode our own brains\u2019 experience of the world around us \u2014 a kind of neural code. For example, the electrical signals may be a signal from a scouting tendril that alerts the rest of the body to the discovery of a good source of nutrition. Other <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC11227530\/#CR18\">studies<\/a> of wood-decaying fungi, including oyster and honey mushrooms, have also found action potential-like responses to light, fire, salt and alcohol, among other stimuli. And some mushroom caps change their electrical activity after rainfall, possibly propagating their \u201cknowledge\u201d down to underground hyphae.<\/p><p>Slime molds, whose \u201cbodies\u201d are single cells without central command structures, still manage to pass electrical signals. Environmental stimuli cause synchronized rhythmic oscillations that appear to encode a memory of the original stimulus. Researchers theorize this is important to their ability to learn.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Scientists are divided on the implications of all this \u2014 some, like Siryaporn, think that the electrical signals in these creatures are just stimulus-response tropisms. Others believe they might be a reflection of the sensory information the creatures are picking up, potentially analogous to some kind of \u201cconcept\u201d they are able to form of the world around them. Which brings us to the most striking idea \u2014 that some types of electrical oscillations could mediate an experience of self.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-all-intelligence-is-collective\"><strong>All Intelligence Is Collective<\/strong><\/h2><p>Arthur Prindle, a researcher at Northwestern University, has spent years unpicking the electrical signals of bacteria to understand how one becomes many. His favorite species is a friendly bacteria called Bacillus subtilis. Like slime molds, in times of stress \u2014 say it got stuck somewhere or a noxious chemical is nearby \u2014 Bacillus subtilis forms a biofilm. It\u2019s protective, but it\u2019s also a bit of a Ponzi scheme.<\/p><p>As the initial progenitors populate the society, they stay at the center of a slowly expanding mass. This provides insulation from outside dangers, which is one reason why, like all biofilms, it can resist a course of antibiotics (or other attacks); the medicine may kill many layers, but if it doesn\u2019t reach all the way to the center, that inner circle will start producing more colonists to replace the dead.&nbsp;<\/p><p>There\u2019s a downside to the cushy, protected life of a center-dweller. They may be far from danger, but they\u2019re also far from food. The outer circle, normally preoccupied with the task of continually creating a new frontline barrier between themselves and danger, can be convinced to occasionally stop and divert their energies to pumping nutrients inward.&nbsp;<\/p><p>For a while, no one was able to understand how they coordinated these strange metabolic rest stops. But when Prindle and his colleagues examined the electrical patterns that accompanied them, they found rhythmic oscillations that looked similar to human brain waves. These preceded the work stoppage every time. It was as though the oscillations were a representation of the concept of \u201chungry.\u201d Prindle told me he thinks disrupting the electric signals is a promising route to getting around antibiotic resistance. When he used a blocking drug to switch them off, the entire system broke down and an administered antibiotic was able to wipe out the whole colony.<\/p><p>In 2021, Hanson <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rstb.2019.0763\">found<\/a> that similar electrical activity \u2014 spontaneous low-frequency oscillations \u2014 is evident across many different organisms, from E. coli to humans. She concluded that across a diverse range of creatures, the oscillations may have a shared function: constructing a single organismal whole from many parts. In humans, such a pattern of oscillations is associated with what\u2019s known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-024-01868-0\">default mode network<\/a>. This \u201cat-rest brain state,\u201d whose function is still under heavy debate, is linked to a person\u2019s subjective mental awareness. It\u2019s active whenever your mind isn\u2019t engaged in some specific task \u2014 when you&#8217;re daydreaming, recalling an autobiographical memory or just resting quietly. Previously, most research had focused on the electrical activity that was elicited by sensory, perceptual and cognitive activity. But even without stimulus or planned motion or any other input, there is a \u201cbackground\u201d signal that some consider the <a href=\"https:\/\/ntc.columbia.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Spontaneous-Neural-Activity-and-the-Self-A-Neuroscience-Perspective-full-version.pdf\">signature<\/a> of a baseline awareness of <em>being a self<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p><p>When Hanson looked through the literature on electrical activity in non-neural organisms, she found similarities in oscillatory electrical patterns across many multicellular collectives and organisms: not just bacterial colonies but honey fungus, oyster mushrooms, and some protists and plants. Hanson concluded that electrical signaling was allowing many parts to integrate information from the outside environment into the whole \u2014 a function she dubbed an \u201celectrical organism organizer\u201d \u2014 and that it was also a way to draw the group\u2019s boundary between collective \u201cself\u201d and \u201cnot self.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Cognition is a relational property in between the organism and its environment. It&#8217;s not something that is sitting in your head or in your heart. It doesn&#8217;t reside within the organism.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n          <footer class=\"quote__author\">\u2014 Paco Calvo<\/footer>\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Cognition is a relational property in between the organism and its environment. It's not something that is sitting in your head or in your heart. It doesn't reside within the organism.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Prindle was skeptical of the notion that his bacteria had self-awareness, but he had an unbridled enthusiasm for the idea that synchronized electrical oscillations can function as an organism organizer. \u201cI totally buy that. I love that,\u201d he said. He has seen for himself that a biofilm responds as a whole when an antibiotic arrives, rather than as discrete individuals reacting as themselves.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Other researchers have noted similarities between the complex behavior emerging from, say, the networked connections between billions of neurons in a human brain and the synchronized behavior of swarms. Swarms of animals can encode information within the collective that is not necessarily legible or actionable to the individuals within it: Large groups of fish, for example, are able to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ab.mpg.de\/383726\/collective-sensing\">detect<\/a> light gradients across an area that no individual fish could perceive. Though a fish might prefer dark areas where it can better hide from predators, it often can\u2019t locate the dark regions by itself. In groups, however, this ability \u2014 an emergent behavior \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1225883\">increases<\/a> with size, and the group hightails it to the dark. Something similar seems to be at work in the formation and retrieval of memories by groups of neurons firing in synchrony, none of which would individually activate such patterns of action potentials themselves.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cThe reality is that all intelligence is collective intelligence,\u201d Levin told me. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of scale.\u201d Human intelligence, animal swarms, bacterial biofilms \u2014 even the cells that work in concert to compose the human anatomy. \u201cEach of us consists of a huge number of cells working together to generate a coherent cognitive being with goals, preferences and memories that belong to the whole and not to its parts.\u201d<\/p><p>He and Lyon both see cognition baked into the biological foundations of life. The \u201ccognitive glue\u201d that connects individual neurons into a brain or binds a bunch of cells into a coordinated human body, Levin said, is the same bioelectric pattern that allows plant cells to organize a joint defense against caterpillar attack. The plant\u2019s activity is simply not cognition troubled by the philosophical baggage humans have attached to the term.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Electrical signaling may also help dissimilar organisms link up into a larger superorganism. The research is evolving, but there is compelling evidence that underground mycorrhizal connections link most plant roots into their symbiotic clench with fungi. Electrical currents appear to play a part in the <a href=\"https:\/\/nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/j.1469-8137.1995.tb04314.x\">formation<\/a> of these interactions. And after they form, a hurt plant, for example, can <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC4497361\/\">transmit<\/a> information related to its experience to a neighbor (whether of its own species or not) via their common underground fungal network or even aboveground by <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC9338808\/\">leaf-to-leaf touch<\/a>.<\/p><p>Other intriguing experiments suggest that when two larger societies of bacterial biofilms encounter each other in the wild, their electrical oscillations begin to synchronize to alternate their feeding times. Cooperating in this way can be more beneficial for the biofilms than competing. As the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/books\/microcosmos\/paper\">wrote<\/a>, life \u201cdid not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.&#8221; Networks themselves may be crucial to intelligence in ways we are just beginning to realize.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-maximal-cognition\"><strong>Maximal Cognition<\/strong><\/h2><p>The discovery of markers of intelligence in creatures without nervous systems is not the only thing shaking the foundations of the conviction that the brain is the seat of intelligence. Other findings from biology have also troubled the previously clean divide between human intelligence and the world from which it purports to stand discrete. Take the fact that humans are not made of only human cells. \u201cWe are not even individuals at all,\u201d wrote the technologist and artist James Bridle in \u201cWays of Being,\u201d a 2022 study of multiple intelligences. \u201cRather we are walking assemblages, riotous communities, multi-species multi-bodied beings inside and outside of our very cells.\u201d<\/p><p>Bridle was referring to (among other things) the literal pounds of every human body that consists not of human cells but bacteria and fungi and other organisms, all of which play a profound <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s12276-023-01146-2\">role<\/a> in shaping our so-called \u201chuman\u201d intelligence. \u201cThe health or otherwise of our microbiome affects both brain development and our ability to cope with stress and trauma,\u201d Bridle wrote. This influential microbiome was thought to populate mainly our gut, but new findings show that even areas previously thought sterile teem with nonhuman others: The brain microbiome is <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/37283269\/\">implicated<\/a> in Alzheimer&#8217;s and Parkinson\u2019s diseases, and there are now hunches that these diseases may represent the dysregulation of an otherwise commensal population. In every way, a \u201chuman\u201d seems to be a collaboration between many organisms that have cooperated to form a superintelligence.<\/p><p>If we can let go of the idea that the only locus of intelligence is the human brain, then we can start to conceive of ways intelligence manifests elsewhere in biology.<strong> <\/strong>Call it biological cognition or biological intelligence \u2014 it seems to manifest in the relationships between individuals more than in individuals themselves. \u201cCognition is a relational property in between the organism and its environment,\u201d Calvo told me. \u201cIt&#8217;s not something that is sitting in your head or in your heart. It doesn&#8217;t reside within the organism. Organisms don\u2019t exist in a void \u2014 they are always in an environment and acting with each other.\u201d<\/p><p>Thinkers like Bridle and Michael Muthukrishna, a professor at the London School of Economics, would agree. In humans, Muthukrishna wrote in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lse.ac.uk\/lsereviewofbooks\/2024\/01\/29\/book-review-a-theory-of-everyone-who-we-are-how-we-got-here-and-where-were-going-michael-muthukrishna\/\">A Theory of Everyone<\/a>,\u201d the complexity of the ideas any individual can have is a function of the ideas they are connected to and the larger cultural \u201csoftware\u201d imprinted into that network.<\/p><p>As an example, he explained how mean IQ scores rose steadily through the 20th century: As more people entered more standardized classrooms, they became acculturated to the symbol-manipulation ability that was taught in those schools, which was captured by the IQ evaluations. \u201cIQ tests are useful as a measure of cultural competence,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/eprints.lse.ac.uk\/65118\/9\/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Muthukrishna,%20S%20M_Innovation%20in%20collective%20brain_Muthukrishna_Innovation%20in%20collective%20brain_2016.pdf\">he wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe broad structures of the collective brain affect the smarts of its constituent cultural brains.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;What is the reason a group of individuals can exponentially multiply their abilities into something beyond what would be expected from the linear addition of their strengths? In some ways, it\u2019s the most critical question of our time.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"What is the reason a group of individuals can exponentially multiply their abilities into something beyond what would be expected from the linear addition of their strengths? In some ways, it\u2019s the most critical question of our time.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>In some circumstances, a particular group becomes so much smarter than the sum of its parts \u2014 more effective at achieving complex goals that no individual could reach \u2014 that only mathematics can explain it. This phenomenon is called \u201csynergy\u201d and the networked informational flows that underpin collective intelligence are its focus: ant colonies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-022-22515-3\">schools of fish<\/a>, bacteria. Groups of humans can experience it, but we seem to be especially bad at harnessing cooperation except by accident or in very specific contexts, such as team sports.<\/p><p>The individual members of a team behave in some fundamental ways like a swarm, and the mathematical principles underlying the relationships can be identified in the study of complex systems. \u201cHow do teammates coordinate their movement to increase the likelihood that a behind-the-back pass is caught by a teammate rather than stolen?\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/what-complexity-science-says-about-what-makes-a-winning-team\">wrote<\/a> Jessica Flack, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. What is the reason a group of individuals can exponentially multiply their abilities into something beyond what would be expected from the linear addition of their strengths? In some ways, it\u2019s the most critical question of our time.<\/p><p>Everywhere across nature, the message is the same: Species are smarter when they team up.<\/p><p>The next question is: How far can this scale? Is it possible to form a collective macro-organism with other kinds of intelligence? This is part of the vision Levin has begun to articulate in his work. \u201cGiven the ability of human subunits to merge into even larger (social) structures, how do we construct higher-order Selves that promote flourishing for all?\u201d he wrote in the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/systems-neuroscience\/articles\/10.3389\/fnsys.2022.768201\/full\">Frontiers<\/a>. \u201cThe goal of this research program beyond biology is the search for optimal binding policies &#8230; [to enable] a scaled-up Self at the level of groups and entire societies.\u201d<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-planetary\"><strong>The Planetary<\/strong><\/h2><p>One aspect of human intelligence \u2014 all intelligence, actually \u2014 is its fluidity, its plasticity. As Muthukrishna has noted, the collective brain can <a href=\"https:\/\/eprints.lse.ac.uk\/65118\/9\/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Muthukrishna,%20S%20M_Innovation%20in%20collective%20brain_Muthukrishna_Innovation%20in%20collective%20brain_2016.pdf\">marshall<\/a> a lot of information to change the way individuals in that collective do things.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Expanding our understanding of intelligence beyond our self-referential framework would awaken us to ways of having relationships with other minds. The benefits of doing so are a lot more practical than they may appear.&nbsp;<\/p><p>For example, it could give us a surprising way to improve agriculture. Mildew is a major reason we dump so much toxic pesticide on our crops \u2014 by the time human eyes sense the first signs of infestation, the crop is already lost. The only solution is frequent prophylactic spraying, which is bad for the soil and the water the toxins leach into.&nbsp;<\/p><p>For the past few years, a Swiss company called Vivent has been working on a different strategy: find <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20230816-the-farmers-boosting-crops-with-electricity\">patterns<\/a> in plants\u2019 variation, action and system potentials that reveal how mildew infestation manifests in their internal state. Just as we use EEG on human brains to diagnose health and states of mind, Vivent\u2019s electrodes can detect signals that reveal that the plants are feeling cold, say, or irritated by a pathogen. Nigel Wallbridge, the company\u2019s chief scientist, said the plants\u2019 electrical patterns convey clear signatures of mildew infestation far earlier than other detection methods. Identifying the problem so early opens the door to new treatments that eschew toxic sprays. Several big agriculture companies are now trialing the sensors, including Bayer.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>Fungi that infest humans may also be amenable to electrical manipulation. \u201cI believe we can understand fungal minds better by decoding their electrical activity,\u201d Adamatzky said. He suspects the distribution of electromagnetic fields on the skin influences whether and where fungal colonies form. Wearable devices that alter those electrical relationships could lead to better ways to prevent pathogenic fungi from getting an unpleasant foothold on human biology.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Everywhere across nature, the message is the same: Species are smarter when they team up.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/80335\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Everywhere across nature, the message is the same: Species are smarter when they team up.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>A similar managerial role may be relevant for bacterial control: the skin-dwelling opportunistic bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidis \u2014 a culprit in many common infections \u2014 changes its electrical excitability as it makes itself at home on healthy skin. Using mild <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2666998624005428#mmc2\">electrical stimulation<\/a>, researchers were recently able to manipulate the bacteria\u2019s electric signaling apparatus, which suppressed the cells\u2019 ability to grow and form a collective biofilm.<\/p><p>Machine learning and large language models \u2014 another form of intelligence \u2014 are critical to identifying relevant patterns in the din of biological electrical signals and the quest to bridge human and nonhuman intelligences. The development of AI could also help cause a conceptual awakening of humans to different manifestations of \u201cmore than human\u201d intelligences, from plants to protists. Interestingly, much of the heated rhetoric around AI is echoed in the discourse around plant and other nonhuman intelligences.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cThe boundaries between humans and nature and humans and machines are at the very least in suspense,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/planetary-politics-from-inside-the-prison-house-of-language\/\">wrote<\/a> the philosopher Tobias Rees. Moving away from human exceptionalism, he argued, would help \u201cto transform politics from something that is only concerned with human affairs to something that is truly planetary,\u201d ushering in a shift from the age of the human to \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/planetary-politics-from-inside-the-prison-house-of-language\/\">the age of planetary reason<\/a>.\u2019\u201d<\/p><p>Interviewing Levin on his podcast, the computer scientist Lex Fridman mused: \u201cWe really don\u2019t want to see human civilization or Earth itself as one living organism; that\u2019s very uncomfortable to us.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cWe have to grow up past that,\u201d Levin replied.<\/p><!-- Content Image Block Template -->\n<div class=\"\n  content-image\n  content-image--large_inset  \">\n\n  <div class=\"content-image__container\">\n\n    <!-- Main Image -->\n    <div class=\"content-image__main-wrapper\">\n\n              <div class=\"aspect-ratio-wrapper\">\n              <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2500\" height=\"1405\" src=\"https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fm=pjpg&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;s=5af2ff865d73f4ca250a5d249be15aa3\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Domed biomes at the Eden Project in Cornwall, U.K.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=169&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=300&amp;wpsize=medium&amp;s=2ff77035cd03ae3ab0fcf1fe319b8be7 300w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=crop&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=512&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1024&amp;wpsize=noema-social-twitter&amp;s=fc6c5463c12c82c82ab73212bb95076f 1024w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=432&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=768&amp;wpsize=medium_large&amp;s=9f3bdf67e90a22a5b0e07326d5c4b4bb 768w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=crop&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=511&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=767&amp;wpsize=noema-listing-tile&amp;s=c6192ee24b342ec276d90a190e7bcf34 767w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=674&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1200&amp;wpsize=post-thumbnail&amp;s=5b4a6538f0135a5030eed68f1b48af07 1200w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=863&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1536&amp;wpsize=1536x1536&amp;s=1fc3b52fdaf4c45bc9bac7a85f07a296 1536w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=1151&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=2048&amp;wpsize=2048x2048&amp;s=d2c5f323c7f63bc83aaaf6b7c1fcf4ec 2048w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=1113&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=1980&amp;wpsize=twentytwenty-fullscreen&amp;s=4f424426b69a58c5319be5af2c95f47a 1980w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fit=scale&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;h=337&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;w=600&amp;wpsize=woocommerce_single&amp;s=4558e7099a4ea6f6f5db4803f1f07bd2 600w, https:\/\/noemamag.imgix.net\/2025\/02\/akXVR3rl-The-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpg?fm=pjpg&amp;ixlib=php-3.3.1&amp;s=5af2ff865d73f4ca250a5d249be15aa3 2500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2500px) 100vw, 2500px\" \/>        <div class=\"content-image__overlay content-image__overlay-0\">\n        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n\n      <\/div>\n\n  <div class=\"content-image__captions\">\n        <div class=\"content-image__main-caption\">\n          \n      <figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\n        <div>The Eden Project in Cornwall.<\/div>\n      <\/figcaption>\n\n        <\/div>\n    \n      <\/div>\n\n\n<\/div><p>During the time the olive tree at the Eden Project has been alive, two fundamental scientific paradigms were laid to waste \u2014 Ptolemy\u2019s Earth-centric view of the universe was swept aside by the revelation that our planet orbits the sun, and human exceptionalism among other animals was devastated by Darwin\u2019s discovery of the mechanism of natural selection that would eventually link us back to the first bacteria.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Exiting the olive tree\u2019s dome, Ryan and I were joined by the botanist Jo Elworthy and Tim Pettitt, a plant pathologist and microbiologist. Both have been with Eden from the start. In 1998, this lush green bowl was a bleak, lunar landscape, ecologically devastated over years as a china clay pit. Nothing grew because there was no soil to grow in. Elworthy described standing at the bottom of the pit with the man who had just purchased what seemed likely to be an eternal wasteland. \u201cHe told me, \u2018I\u2019m going to turn this into a global garden. I am going to change this from a scarred landscape.\u2019 We wanted to create this circular system of people working with nature and looking at all the different interconnected parts to demonstrate that you can leave the world better than you found it.\u201d<\/p><p>Nearly three decades on, every inch of the valley is covered in a riot of greenery. Under the vast protective domes, two gardens flourish: a wet rainforest and a dry Mediterranean biome. Pettitt told me about the soil mixture he invented to nurture the plants that flourish here, a homebrew that contains, among more standard ingredients, a blend of fungi, wormery leachate, bacteria and protists. Once, when the protists got out of hand and began to assume a parasitic stance, instead of turning to pesticides, Pettitt treated the plants to a drench of lactobacillus, which gobbled them up until the system came back into balance.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Late last year, the Eden Project got funding to expand to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.gov.uk\/news\/2024\/oct\/2-5m-released-for-delivery-of-eden-project-morecambe\">second site<\/a>, a former British fairground that became a lifeless concrete block when the glory of Victorian seaside resorts faded into memory with cheap flights to Spain. Here, project staff will work with the coastal ecology to restore the site. Step by small step, the goal is to put back into balance what\u2019s been lost.<\/p><p>The goal is also to show in concrete terms that, even at this late hour, it is still possible to pull ourselves back from the brink of ecological crisis. The argument about what does and does not have intelligence isn\u2019t a detached, academic debate between philosophers concerned with defining abstract concepts. Ecological restoration is, in many ways, an exercise in building symbiotic interdependence between species, which is non-negotiable for human survival over the long term. Just as intelligence seems to exist in relationships between cognitive selves, survival is impossible if humans think they can do it alone.<\/p><p>Elworthy told us that she likes to ask the people who come to visit where they\u2019re from. They\u2019ll usually answer with their neighborhood in London or foreign country of origin, to which she responds: <em>\u201cNo<\/em>. You live on this ball \u2014 this <em>spaceship <\/em>\u2014 that\u2019s hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. It gives you all your air and food and cleans your water.\u201d The point she was trying to make was that we can be more cooperative, more embedded in the biogeochemical systems that sustain all living things \u2014 to act like crew, not passengers, on Spaceship Earth.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cAnd somebody said to me, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s such a good metaphor!\u2019\u201d Elworthy said. \u201cFor god\u2019s sake!\u201d She smacked her palm to her face. \u201cIt\u2019s not a metaphor!\u201d<\/p>\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n          \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Enjoy the read? Subscribe to get the best of Noema.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":6582,"featured_media":80342,"template":"","wpm-article-type":[4],"wpm-article-topic":[22,20],"wpm-article-tag":[],"class_list":["post-80335","wpm-article","type-wpm-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wpm-article-type-feature","wpm-article-topic-climate-crisis","wpm-article-topic-technology-and-the-human"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.0 (Yoast SEO v25.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Defining Intelligent Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If we could stop bickering about which creatures do or don\u2019t deserve to be called smart, an emerging movement of scientists and philosophers argue that we might discover fundamental elements of intelligence that are common to all life.\" 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