Natural intelligence and anthropic reasoning

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of natural intelligence as a universal biological process, extending beyond humans to all organisms, and compares it with neural intelligence through interdisciplinary perspectives and novel concepts.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework linking biological cognition with anthropic reasoning and proposes new concepts like biocivilisations and cognitive multiverse.

Findings

Cognition is a universal biological process.

Organisms from bacteria to animals are cognitive agents.

Natural intelligence extends beyond neural-based intelligence.

Abstract

This paper aims to justify the concept of natural intelligence, the type of intelligence wider than human intelligence and its derivative, AI. I will argue that the process of life is a cognitive process and that organisms, from bacteria to animals, are cognitive agents. To justify these arguments, the neural intelligence represented by the form of reasoning known as anthropic reasoning will be compared and contrasted with types of intelligence explicated by four disciplines of biology, relational biology, evolutionary epistemology, biosemiotics and the systems view of life, not biased towards neural intelligence. The comparison will be achieved by asking several questions that probe the concepts of observers and true observers. To answer the questions I will rely on a range of established concepts including SETI, Fermi's paradox, bacterial cognition, versions of the panspermia theory, and some newly introduced concepts including biocivilisations, cognitive universes, and the cognitive multiverse. The key point emerging from the answers is that the process of cognition, the essence of natural intelligence, is a biological universal.