The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a guest lecture with Marta Halina, University of Cambridge, "Kinds of Intelligence".
Abstract: A common view of intelligent behaviour is that it is underpinned by sophisticated mechanisms like imagination, foresight, and causal reasoning, and that such behaviour is not a product of innate behavioural programs or associative learning. In this talk, I present this view and argue that we should reject it. Such a view oversimplifies what we know about innate priors and associative learning—namely, that they scaffold flexible behaviours in complex ways. Rather than attempt to categorise the natural world into organisms that are intelligent on the one hand and rely on rigid, mechanical processes on the other, we should focus on specific mechanisms and behaviours that take an organism’s evolutionary, developmental, and ecological context into account. The term “intelligence” should be recognised as an umbrella term that orients researchers towards a broad class of phenomena but is too general for detailed scientific work.
All interested are welcome to participate in this seminar.
