Is Intelligence an Algorithm?

The Dutch author of this penetrating book has a doctorate in chemistry and works as a patent examiner, a job that requires considerable analytical acumen, also demonstrated in this work, which builds on the work of Ben Goertzel. It begins with a fascinating presentation of what he calls nature's meta-system transition algorithm for intelligence consisting of the seven steps of being, polarity, relationship, emergence, recombination, distinction and sublimation. He shows how this operates in the evolutionary process tending as it does towards greater consciousness and complexity. He then applies this to human cognition and recognition, moving on to detailed discussions of reasoning and problem-solving, followed by a useful template for writing and organising thought. The next two chapters are devoted to the intelligence of emotions and the acquisition of emotional intelligence. He then moves on to artificial intelligence and the possibility of artificial consciousness as a form of self-monitoring, although I was not persuaded of its equivalence with what we ourselves experience as consciousness. He also proposes a sophisticated and technical architecture of a webmind. If the treatment up to this point has been largely sequential, the final chapter discusses intuition as a way of knowing, and it is here that he could have related to the work of Iain McGilchrist, who deals in detail with the relationship between complementary ways of knowing. Anyone interested in probing the deeper nature of intelligence will find much food for thought.