What is intelligence? The concept crosses and blurs the boundaries between natural and artificial, bridging the human brain and the cybernetic world of AI. In this book, the acclaimed philosopher Catherine Malabou ventures a new approach that emphasizes the intertwined, networked relationships among the biological, the technological, and the symbolic.
Malabou traces the modern metamorphoses of intelligence, seeking to understand how neurobiological and neurotechnological advances have transformed our view. She considers three crucial developments: the notion of intelligence as an empirical, genetically based quality measurable by standardized tests; the shift to the epigenetic paradigm, with its emphasis on neural plasticity; and the dawn of artificial intelligence, with its potential to simulate, replicate, and ultimately surpass the workings of the brain. Malabou concludes that a dialogue between human and cybernetic intelligence offers the best if not the only means to build a democratic future. A strikingly original exploration of our changing notions of intelligence and the human and their far-reaching philosophical and political implications, Morphing Intelligence is an essential analysis of the porous border between symbolic and biological life at a time when once-clear distinctions between mind and machine have become uncertain.
What is intelligence? The concept crosses and blurs the boundaries between natural and artificial, bridging the human brain and the cybernetic world of AI. In this book, the acclaimed philosopher Catherine Malabou ventures a new approach that emphasizes the intertwined, networked relationships among the biological, the technological, and the symbolic.
Malabou traces the modern metamorphoses of intelligence, seeking to understand how neurobiological and neurotechnological advances have transformed our view. She considers three crucial developments: the notion of intelligence as an empirical, genetically based quality measurable by standardized tests; the shift to the epigenetic paradigm, with its emphasis on neural plasticity; and the dawn of artificial intelligence, with its potential to simulate, replicate, and ultimately surpass the workings of the brain. Malabou concludes that a dialogue between human and cybernetic intelligence offers the best if not the only means to build a democratic future. A strikingly original exploration of our changing notions of intelligence and the human and their far-reaching philosophical and political implications, Morphing Intelligence is an essential analysis of the porous border between symbolic and biological life at a time when once-clear distinctions between mind and machine have become uncertain.
Translator’s Foreword: Why I Translate So Intelligently:
Translation Mètis in the Era of Google Translate
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. g: Intelligence and Genetic Fate
2. The “Blue Brain”
3. Like a Pollock Painting
Conclusion
Postscript to the English Translation. Artificial Intelligence: The
Fourth Blow to Our Narcissism
Notes
Index
Catherine Malabou is professor of philosophy at the Centre for
Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University,
London, and of comparative literature at the University of
California, Irvine. Her many books include What Should We Do with
Our Brain? (2008); Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic,
Destruction, Deconstruction (Columbia, 2009); and Before Tomorrow:
Epigenesis and Rationality (2016).
Carolyn Shread is lecturer in French at Mount Holyoke College and
teaches translation studies at Smith College. Her translations
include several works by Catherine Malabou.
In this remarkable book Catherine Malabou focuses on the
transformations of “intelligence” as it moves from genetics to
epigenetics to automatism. Historically grounded, philosophically
astute, and engagingly written, this book is highly recommended for
anyone interested in intelligence—artificial and natural—and in
contemporary configurations of what counts as human.
*N. Katherine Hayles, author of Unthought: The Power of the
Cognitive Nonconscious*
Catherine Malabou is one of the rare philosophers who seriously
engages contemporary biological research in her explorations of
human experience. In this book, she turns her attention to the core
question of intelligence, and with spectacular results. At stake is
the very future of human thought, and Malabou is led to reflect on
machine intelligence for the first time, generating singular
insights. As ever, Malabou’s prose is precise and elegant, deftly
expressed in Carolyn Shread’s fluid translation.
*David Bates, coeditor of Plasticity and Pathology: On the
Formation of the Neural Subject*
Morphing Intelligence contains significant new developments in
Malabou’s ongoing work at the intersections of philosophy and the
sciences. She moves from her groundbreaking theoretical reflections
on neuroplasticity and epigenetics to a philosophical confrontation
with the various challenges posed by today’s emerging forms of
artificial intelligence. Malabou, with her characteristic clarity
and insight, radically redraws the lines between humans and
machines, brains and computers. Morphing Intelligence is a major
achievement and not to be missed.
*Adrian Johnston, author of A New German Idealism Hegel, Žižek,
and Dialectical Materialism*
However, the emergence of radically new forms of intelligence
cannot be denied anymore. Morphing Intelligence thus makes us
repeat with a sense of urgency Malabou’s original question: what
should we do with our brain?
*The Wire*
[Malabou's] prose is precise, her research carefully articulated,
and her conclusions realistic yet hopeful.
*Critical Inquiry*
In Morphing Intelligence, we see Catherine Malabou’s unique ability
to mend empirical studies and neuroscience with biopolitics,
Hegelian dialectics, and Kantian transcendentalism, weaving an
elaborate . . . arachnean matrix.
*Chiasma*
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