Biological Intelligence

I react to an article appearing in Scientific American composed by Rafael

Yuste. He is a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University and
director of its Neurotechnology Center. It is co-authored by Michael Levin
who is a biology professor and director of the Allen Discovery Center at
Tufts University. I provide a psychosocial paradigm.

The original authors ponder the genesis of biological IQ. Later, I will
discuss the view of epigenetic factors that I believe to be more potent. And
I am unsure that the construct of IQ can be reliably measured. Humans are
much more complex than just natural selection.

They offer this: “How can a biological system ever generate coherent and
goal-oriented behavior from the bottom up when there is no external
designer”. Or is there?

IQ exists to varying degrees in all organic species. “There are not just
intelligent people, mammals, birds and cephalopods. Intelligent, purposeful
problem-solving behavior can be found in parts of all living things: single
cells and tissues, individual neurons and networks of neurons, viruses,
ribosomes and RNA fragments, down to motor proteins and molecular
networks”. “In this piece, we argue that progress in developmental biology
and neuroscience is now providing a promising path to show how the
architecture of modular systems underlies evolutionary and organismal
intelligence”.

‘Biologists are trained to focus on the mechanisms of living systems and

not on their purpose. As biologists, we are supposed to work out the “how”
rather than the “why,” pursuing causality rather than goals”.

“Modern biology faces a fundamental knowledge gap when trying to explain

meaningful, intelligent behavior. How can a system composed of cells and
electrical signals generate a well-adapted body with behavior and mental
states”?
“The second step in the argument is that modules can be assembled in a
hierarchy: lower-level modules combine to form increasingly sophisticated
higher-levels modules, which then become new building blocks for even
higher-level modules”.

“In recent years, researchers find evidence for pattern completion in both
neural circuits and developmental biology’. And it is referred to as
“hierarchical modularity”.

Now I offer a psychosocial view of IQ. We use psychometric instrument

with known reliability and validity to measure this construct.

Spearman’s general intelligence theory offers a view that g is defined and

measured by performance on differing cognitive abilities. Howard Gardner
and others highlight that there exist multiple subtypes of IQ. Based on my
five decades of clinical experience I believe this to be the case. And not
everyone demonstrates all of them. The two or three we do, I refer to these
as signature strengths.

Sternberg offers the subtypes as analytical, creative and practical. And we

are aware of the normative distribution of IQ. About 95% exhibit IQ
between 70 and 130. And about 2% reveal IQ’s below 70 and above 130.

As a clinician, I believe that psychosocial factors are more pertinent. For

example, young children experience profound psychosocial deprivation will
be disadvantaged as opposed to those who are raised in enriched and
functional biopsychosocial environments (BPSE).
The remarkable Boston Public School research reveals the potency of such
environments. They follow a number of high school valedictorians over a
period of five years and contrast them to a control group graduating from
private schools. The above-mentioned environments are robust predictors
of academic and professional opportunities wherein the private group are
regarded as being more “successful and satisfied with their lives”. The
index group reveals that lack of biopsychosocial affordances limited the
performance of the public graduates when intervening factors are taken
into account.

Richard G Kensinger, MSW