The many kinds of intelligence: animal, human, plant, extraterrestrial, machine, planetary, emotional
October 20-25, 2024
Oratorio di Barottoli
What is intelligence? What is its relationship to consciousness? Current discussions on the nature of intelligence have broad scope, including new aspects of intelligence that may elicit skepticism from more conventional approaches. We will gather a group of different experts from different fields of science but also from philosophy, religion, and indigenous cultures to reframe the conversation on intelligence to reflect its many facets.
PARTICIPANTS
-
Yuria Celidwen is a scholar of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent from the highlands of Chiapas (Mexico). She works on the intersection of Indigenous and religious studies, cultural psychology, and contemplative studies through transdisciplinary approaches to how the experience of self-transcendence is embodied and enhances prosocial behavior (ethics, compassion, kindness, reverence, and a sense of awe, sacredness, and love) across Indigenous contemplative traditions of the world. Her work integrates contemplative practice with community-oriented ethics and social and environmental justice, emphasizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the revitalization and transmission of Indigenous wisdom, and the rights of Nature.
-
Adam Frank is an American physicist, astronomer, and writer. His scientific research has focused on computational astrophysics with an emphasis on star formation and late stages of stellar evolution. His work includes studies of exoplanet atmospheres and astrobiology. The latter include studies of the generic response of planets to the evolution of energy-intensive civilizations (exo-civilizations).
-
Monica Gagliano is an ecologist known for her research on plant intelligence. Gagliano is a Research Associate Professor in the field of evolutionary ecology at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, where she directs the Biological Intelligence lab. She is a former fellow of the Australian Research Council. Through her research with plants, she “has extended the concept of cognition (including perception, learning processes, memory) in plants.” She has worked to expand how the public view plants, and all of nature, in respect of their subjectivity and sentience. Gagliano grew up in northern Italy.
-
Meghan O’Gieblyn is an essayist, feature writer, and critic whose work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, n+1, The Point, The Baffler, Wired, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The New York Times, and other publications. She is a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and the 2023 Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays have been featured in The Best American Essays and The Contemporary American Essay anthologies. Her first book, Interior States, won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction, and her second book, God, Human, Animal, Machine, was published by Doubleday in 2021.
-
Evan Thompson is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, specializing in cognitive science, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and cross-cultural philosophy, particularly Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
-
Peter Ulric Tse is an American cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College. He directs the NSF EPSCoR Attention Consortium. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014.
RELATED CONTENT
The Disencapsulated Mind: A Premotor Theory of Human Imagination
Peter Ulric Tse
The Evolution of Intelligence (keynote)
Peter Ulric Tse, 2024
Kin relationality and ecological belonging: a cultural psychology of Indigenous transcendence
Yuria Celidwen and Dacher Keltner
Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice
Yuria Celidwen, Ph.D., Nicole Redvers, N.D., M.PH., Cicilia Githaiga M.A., Janeth Calambás, Miguel Evanjuanoy Chindoy, Juan Nelson Rojas, Delores Mondragón M.A., Yuniur Vázquez Rosalío, Angelina Sacbajá
The case for expanding the definition of intelligence
Marcelo Gleiser, Big Think, 2025
Welcome to The Island of Knowledge
To the Best of Our Knowledge, April, 2025
Why the human imagination is both our greatest gift and weapon [audio]
Peter Tse, 2025
Just how smart is a robot dog? [audio]
Yuria Celidwen, Marcelo Gleiser, 2025
How Galileo helped create the modern world [audio]
Marcelo Gleiser, 2025
The new science of 'planetary intelligence' [audio]
Adam Frank, 2025
Meet the Host
Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, a world-renowned theoretical physicist and public intellectual. He’s authored hundreds of technical and nontechnical papers and essays, and seven books in English translated to 18 languages. His writings explore the historical, religious, and philosophical roots of science, past and modern. Gleiser is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, and founder and past director of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth. He co-founded National Public Radio’s 13.7 Science and Culture blog, and currently writes weekly for BigThink.com. He is the 2019 Templeton Prize laureate, an honor he shares with Mother Tereza, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and scientists Freeman Dyson, Jane Goodall, Sir Martin Rees, and Frank Wilczek.
Project Co-Leader
William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named to several best of 2023 lists, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His latest book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was published in January 2024.
