CONCEPT
Existential Intelligence
The candidate ninth intelligence Gardner proposed but never fully admitted — the capacity to grapple with ultimate questions about life, death, meaning, and purpose.
Existential intelligence is Gardner's proposed but never formally admitted ninth intelligence — the capacity to grapple with ultimate questions about life, death, meaning, and purpose. Gardner has described it as '8.5': a candidate that meets most of the criteria for autonomous intelligence but about which he remains uncertain. Its exemplary end-states are the philosopher, the spiritual teacher, the theologian, the poet whose work opens onto questions of ultimate concern. In the context of this book, existential intelligence provides the gravity that makes the twelve-year-old's question — What am I for? — more than a request for career advice. It is the cognitive capacity that feels the weight of mortality and responds by asking what a finite life should contain.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Gardner's hesitation about formally adding existential intelligence has been explicit and recurrent. The capacity meets several of his criteria: it has distinctive developmental features (children ask existential questions with a seriousness that adults often lose), it operates in identifiable cultural roles, it can be