Abstract

Lack of coherence in concepts of intelligence has implications for artificial intelligence. ‘Intelligence’ is an abstraction grounded in human experience while supposedly freed from the embodiment that is the basis of that experience. In addition to physical instantiation, embodiment is a condition of dependency, of an autopoietic system upon an environment, which thus matters to the system itself. The autonomy and general capability sought in artificial general intelligence implies artificially re-creating the organism’s natural condition of embodiment. That may not be feasible; and, if feasible, it may not be controllable or advantageous.