Abstract
Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive vices (i.e., shortcomings, limitations, constraints and biases) are seen to play a positive functional role in yielding collective forms of cognitive success. The present paper introduces the concept of mandevillian intelligence and reviews a number of strands of empirical research that help to shed light on the phenomenon. The paper also attempts to highlight the value of the concept of mandevillian intelligence from a philosophical, scientific and engineering perspective. Inasmuch as we accept the notion of mandevillian intelligence, then it seems that the cognitive and epistemic value of a specific social or technological intervention will vary according to whether our attention is focused at the individual or collective level of analysis. This has a number of important implications for how we think about the design and evaluation of collective cognitive systems. For example, the notion of mandevillian intelligence forces us to take seriously the idea that the exploitation (or even the accentuation) of individual cognitive shortcomings could, in some situations, provide a productive route to collective forms of cognitive and epistemic success.
Highlights
Issues of collective cognition1 and collective intelligence have recently emerged as a common focus of interest across a broad array of disciplines
The aim of the present paper is to review a number of strands of cognitive scientific research that provide a degree of evidential support for the notion of mandevillian intelligence
We have explored a number of lines of empirical research that provide support for the notion of mandevillian intelligence, i.e., the claim that individual cognitive vices can, on occasion, work to the collective cognitive and epistemic good of an agent community
Summary
Issues of collective cognition and collective intelligence have recently emerged as a common focus of interest across a broad array of disciplines. The cognitive properties of social groups and socio-technical systems have, been a focus of long-standing interest for disciplines such as cognitive science (Hutchins 1995), social psychology (Hinsz et al 1997; Kerr and Tindale 2004), human factors (Cooke et al 2007), the philosophy of mind (Theiner 2014; Theiner et al 2010) and social/collective epistemology (Goldman and Whitcomb 2011; Lackey 2014; Brady and Fricker 2016). There is, in other words, a common interest in the factors that support the emergence of intelligent behavior at the collective or social level of analysis
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