Animal Magic: Why Intelligence Isn’t Just for Humans

  • Leader
    August 25, 2023 5:18 PM PDT
    An exercise of the mind.

    [url=https://getpocket.com/explore/item/animal-magic-why-intelligence-isn-t-just-for-humans?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us]https://getpocket.com/explore/item/animal-magic-why-intelligence-isn-t-just-for-humans?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us


    The challenge, then, becomes finding a way of thinking about animal minds that doesn’t simply view them as like the human mind with the dials turned down: less intelligent, less conscious, more or less distant from the pinnacle of mentation we represent. We must recognise that mind is not a single thing that beings have more or less of. There are many dimensions of mind: the “space of possible minds” (a concept first proposed in 1984 by computer scientist Aaron Sloman) has multiple
    coordinates, and we exist in some part of it, a cluster of data points that reflects our neurodiversity. We are no more at the centre of this mind-space than we are at the centre of the cosmos. So what else is out there?