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Social Intelligence

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The Evolution of Intelligent Systems

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Abstract

There is another evolutionary bridge to intelligent systems that I have barely mentioned yet. This is the strategy of forming social groups or communities. Of course, it is a phenomenon that has reached great complexity in humans, and we still aren’t sure why. It is still commonly supposed that humans started to socialise and become more cooperative as a result of their bigger brains and the more complex cognitive systems they'd already evolved: the result, that is, of an intelligent agreement to just get along together. Such an account is now considered to be too simple. The reason for that is the question of what it was that led to such fortuitous pre-adaptations — that is, big brains, complex intelligent systems — in the first place. We really need to know that if we are to understand the system at any level. The alternative — and, now, more acceptable view — is that social cooperation first emerged in other species as an occasional behaviour pattern; it’s advantages became manifest; and so, in certain circumstances, it became subject to natural selection. The more complex cognition that social cooperation demanded evolved with it. In this chapter I explore this possibility.

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  1. Ken Richardson
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© 2010 Ken Richardson

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Richardson, K. (2010). Social Intelligence. In: The Evolution of Intelligent Systems. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299245_9

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