On October 28, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club hosted a session that challenged the very foundation of the current tech boom: the idea that we are actually building “intelligence.” Brian Skelly, a philosopher with over three decades of experience, stepped before a group of students and community members to argue that the “Artificial Intelligence” movement is built on a fundamental misconception of what it means to be intelligent.
The discussion, held both in-person at Auerbach 320 and virtually, didn’t just critique software; it critiqued a historical trend of viewing intelligence as a measurable, neurological commodity. The session focused on the illusory depictions of intelligence that drive the push toward so-called super-intelligence.
The Trap of the Single Spectrum
The core of the argument presented by Skelly is that society has long mistaken intelligence for a neurological trait—something a person or a machine simply has more or less of. This perspective suggests that if we can just build larger data centers and feed them more data, we can reverse-engineer a system that is “smarter” than a human being.
Skelly argues this is a category error. By placing humans, dogs, and lizards on a single, comparable spectrum of intelligence, we ignore the qualitative difference between types of awareness. He posits that while a dog possesses a “canine organismic awareness” that humans cannot match, and humans possess a “human organismic awareness,” these are not matters of degree. They are either-or traits.
The real divide, Skelly suggests, is between organismic awareness—which is survival-oriented—and rational awareness. He defines rational awareness as a truth-oriented trait unique to humans. Because this rational awareness is an “either-or” trait, it cannot be increased by adding more processing power or data; it can only be developed through social interaction and time.
“We mistake in seeing things this way, a way which permits us also to say that we are smarter than dogs, but dogs are smarter than lizards, as if all intelligence were on a single comparable spectrum.”
The Democratic Veneer of Search Engines
It is easy to see why the public is convinced that computers are becoming “smarter.” Modern search engines have become remarkably democratic, offering equitable representation across various languages and cultures. They provide clean answers, stripped of the commercial distractions and tangents.
But this efficiency is not the same as intelligence. The ability of a machine to synthesize a clean answer from a massive dataset is a triumph of engineering and data retrieval, not a leap into rational awareness. The danger, Skelly warns, is that by confusing these two things, we risk erring in the paths we take into the future, basing our societal evolution on a gross misconception of what we have actually achieved.
This distinction matters because the “super-intelligence” narrative often mirrors a darker history. Skelly notes that the idea of intelligence as a variable neurological trait—where some possess more than others—is a framework that has been used in the past to justify racist ideologies. By applying this same logic to AI, we continue to treat intelligence as a hierarchy of “more” or “less” rather than a specific capacity for rational thought.
A Legacy of Philosophical Inquiry
The University of Hartford Philosophy Club has maintained this tradition of open, peer-based inquiry since 2001. It functions as a democratic space where the hierarchy of professor and student is flattened, and the community is invited to take over the club.
Skelly brings a diverse academic pedigree to these discussions. With a background in Anthropology from Michigan State University and doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, his work spans the intersection of logic, religion, and science. His recent publications, including Logic Between the Lines (2026) and Introduction to Philosophy (2022), reflect a career dedicated to clarifying the boundaries of human reason.
The debate over AI often centers on the ability of a machine to mimic human conversation. However, the perspective shared at the University of Hartford suggests that mimicry is the ultimate illusion. If rational awareness is a social development rather than a neurological calculation, then no amount of silicon and electricity can ever bridge the gap between a sophisticated search engine and a thinking being.
The question remains: if we continue to build our future on the belief that intelligence is merely a matter of scale, what essential human capacities are we prepared to overlook?
