Intelligence and Spirit. Between Understanding and Transformation

Abstract

Usually we think about artificial intelligence in terms of its similarity with human’s one. Reza Negarestani suggests an alternative – basically hegelian – way of conceptualization which presents the history of intelligence as an independent computational process that can be described functionally, but not essentially; a process that can be realized on different substrates. Human realization of intelligence is only a particular case, but not a privileged one.  This fragment argues that the mind is constantly and purposefully developing construction (it is its definition) and can define its own limits autonomically. The ability to define these limits is conditioned by the ability to create concepts and operate with language – the highest form of which are formal languages and based on them science – and sociality presented as a form of interaction which can be described in terms of game of giving and asking for reasons. Having this base, the concrete realization of mind – human mind – can construct a general concept (or even the Concept) of intelligence to measure with it his own actual status and build a program of self-transformation. And this Concept is formalized in terms of correlation between intelligence and its space of ineligibilities.

The translation is based on the edition: Negarestani R. Intelligence and Spirit. NY: Urbanomic, 2019. Pp. 56–85. Reza Negarestani's book "Intelligence and Spirit" is being prepared for publication in Russian in the imprint "Ice" (AST).