, ....... r
Liftability of IntelligenceThus we are left with two basic problems in the unraveling of thought
processes, as they take place in the brain. One is to explain how the
low-level traffic of neuron firings gives rise to the high-level traffic of
symbol activations. The other is to explain the high-level traffic of symbol
activation in its own terms-to make a theory which does not talk about the
low-level neural events. If this latter is possible-and it is a key assumption
at the basis of all present research into Artificial Intelligence-then intelli-
gence can be realized in other types of hardware than brains. Then intelli-
gence will have been shown to be a property that can be "lifted" right out of
the hardware in which it resides-or in other words, intelligence will be a
software property. This will mean that the phenomena of consciousness and
intelligence are indeed high-level in the same sense as most other complex
FIGURE 69. The construction of an arch by workers of the termite Macrotermes bel-
licosus. Each column is built up by the addition of pellets of soil and excrement. On the outer
part of the left column a worker is seen depositing a round fecal pellet. Other workers, having
carried pellets in their mandibles up the columns, are now placing them at the growing ends of
the columns. When a column reaches a certain height the termites, evidently guided by odor,
begin to extend it at an angle in the direction 0/ a neighboring column. A completed arch is
shown in the background. [Drawing by Turid Hiilldobler;!rom E. O. Wilson, The Insect Societies
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni:versity Press, 1971), p. 230.]