“Superintelligence” as Caricature: A Bioconservative Critique of “Intelligence” Enhancement Derived from the Theistic Ethics of Robert Merrihew Adams

In Nick Bostrom’s formulation of the “orthogonality thesis” in Superintelligence, he restricts the scope of “intelligence” to “something like skill at prediction, planning, and means-end reasoning in general.” I argue that Bostrom’s claims about “intelligence” are much better understood as claims about deinotēs, or “cleverness,” a trait which Aristotle identified as a capacity “to be able to do the actions that tend to promote whatever goal is assumed and to attain them.” Using the theistic ethical framework outlined by Robert Merrihew Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods, I argue that cleverness is an “impure excellence” (i.e. an excellence bound up with a deficiency) which cannot be properly attributed to God. Therefore, efforts to enhance human cleverness (whether by digital or biological means) result in human beings becoming “caricatures” of God, distorting the imago Dei by exaggerating certain features of God at the expense of others.