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The General Intellect - two limited versions

 

The concept of the 'general intellect' refers to the collective intelligence or social knowledge of a society at a given historical moment.  

 

However, viewed historically this promising concept has been fractured between determinist and idealist interpretations, insufficient for the challenges of the 21st century.

 

Marxist techno-economic version

 

Stemming from Karl Marx's thought experiment  - Fragment on Machines - this version describes the general intellect as social knowledge that becomes embedded in technology and machinery and thus can become shared anti-capitalist consciousness.  However, this determinist view, passively assumes technological progress will automatically lead to progressive outcomes, ignoring the role of human agency (e.g. regressive organic intellectuals of Capital) striving to ensure that technology is designed for sufficient private gain rather than focused on social good.  In other words, Marx's optimistic prediction has not been proved historically.

 

Liberal-rationalist version

 

Traced back to the Enlightenment, this model sees the general intellect as the philosophical, critical, and subject-based knowledge developed through education in universities and schools.  Its main limitation is its 'partial nature', insofar as it draws exclusively on general education, that has historically been elitist and divorced from the world of production and working life. A more detailed critique can be found in the 2016 document to the right. 

 

 

The Organic Intellect - a unified multi-dimensional framework

 

To move beyond these two limited models,  a third concept - the Organic Intellect - is proposed.  It is a multi-dimensional framework that unifies general and specialist thinking to form a holistic approach to knowledge production that can be related to both economic activity and wider society - thus its organicity.

 

The Organic Intellect is a concept closely allied with Gramsci's concept of 'organic intellectuals' who he saw as having both general and specialist roles.  Here the concept of the Organic Intellect is related specifically to the field of technological change and artificial intelligence.

 

General and specialist dimensions

The Organic Intellect results from a dialectical relationship between horizontal and vertical forms of thinking. See the 2020 document to the right for more detail.

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Connective Specialisation (Vertical)

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This comprises expert, technical knowledge of specialists in fields like AI/ML.  Unlike 'insular specialisation,' which creates silos, 'connective specialisation' involves the willingness of experts to collaborate across different disciplines and engage with broader societal issues and to combine both specialist and general societal knowledge. 

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General ethico-political consciousness (Horizontal)

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Building on Virno's societal interpretation, here the general intellect represents the broader societal awareness and general knowledge of the wider population, involving understanding the social, economic, and political contexts in which technology (or any other productive specialism) operates and being able to identify and challenge its regressive roles, such as the spread of fake news or attacks on democracy.

 

45-degree knowledge production

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The above diagram illustrates the dynamic between the horizontal and the vertical in the development of the organic intellect and 45° knowledge production, including the essential role of 45° mediation by organic intellectuals.  The combined effects of the horizontal, vertical on mediation is the outward expansion of new knowledge frontiers. Further details of the 45-degree dynamic can be found in the Powerpoint presentation to the right updated in 2023.

 

 

Hybridised and distributed intellects in the AI era

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The development of Generative Artificial Intelligence will require new forms of the Organic Intellect.  The human organic intellect creates a dialectical relationship of human intellects and artificial intellects, in which the human dimension provides the transformative purpose (e.g., equity, democracy, sustainability) for the technological operation that can assemble vast amounts of information and now language at incredible speeds.  This is more than the 'extended mind'; it promises to be new hybridised and distributed form of 'intellects' (better term than 'intelligences') and is explored further in my 2025 Socialised GenAI article (see home page).

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Re-shaping technology for 'socio-technical futures'

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The central argument is that the Organic Intellect is not about passively adapting to technological change but about actively 'reshaping and resocialising' technologies like the Fourth Industrial Revolution and AI.  The goal is to create a 'socio-technical future' where technological advancements are molded to address humanity's greatest challenges.

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