DIVERSE INTELLIGENCES CURRICULUM
Exploring the origins, nature, and future of intelligence.
Our world is teeming with intelligence.
From simple organisms to the human brain, from ant colonies to modern artificial neural networks, we are compelled to ask:
What is intelligence?
What are agency, awareness, and mind?
What are the origins and future of intelligence?
Recent advances in science and technology have made such questions more relevant and urgent than ever.
Insights from various fields of study including neurobiology, ethology (animal behavior), linguistics, and artificial intelligence are being unified into coherent theories for understanding intelligence.
The practical implications of these advances raise profound questions about the place and purpose of humanity and the role of our emerging technologies.
What are the distinctive characteristics of the human species?
What are the various kinds of intelligence: rational, emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual?
What are the ultimate ends of intelligence? Is there a trajectory of ascent and, if so, where is it all going?
Amidst increasingly capable AI systems, what is the future of human intelligence?
What is the DI Curriculum?
The Diverse Intelligence Curriculum provides an introductory overview of the emerging study of intelligence through a historical, scientific, and philosophical framing.
Course Goals
Gain knowledge and appreciation for the diversity of capacities across various forms of intelligence
Gain perspective on the history of ideas about human, animal, and moral/spiritual intelligence, and how they have framed our self-understanding
Help to understand our distinctive and diverse human intelligences in light of recent scientific advances
Explore the evolutionary origins of diverse intelligences, their complex and multi-faceted complementarity, and questions of teleology and ultimate ends
