Eckensysteme

Spiegeltest

Rather than focusing on a unitary measure of intelligence, such as a standardized intelligence quotient (IQ), Chick emphasizes that different species may have different forms of intelligence. Dolphins, for example, may have a refined “auditory-musical” intelligence. One is reminded here of the anthropologist and physician team of Doris Jonas and David Jonas, who suggest in Other Senses, Other Worlds that alien intelligence dependent on sensory modalities unlike those of humans may have radically different ways of experiencing and conceptualizing their worlds. Similar ideas have been a staple of science fiction as well. Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman, for example, suggests that radially symmetrical intelligence—in this case brainy starfish—might possess a multimodal logic to match their morphologies, while bilaterally symmetrical species, such as humans, are more prone to view the world in terms of simple dichotomies. (…) Similarly, the intentional signals already sent from Earth to other civilizations as streams of ones and zeros may highlight the human capacity to think in terms of dualisms.