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88 In the meantime, some researchers are modifying monkey brains by adding human neural stem cells. The resultant brains may have some human characteristics. An ethics committee of scientists, recognizing that a nonhuman primate research subject might attain such human mental capacities as language and rationality, claimed that such changes are a potential benefit to the animal. To the extent that the primate acquires those capacities, that creature must be held in correspondingly high moral standing. These scientists dealt with the ethical question by maximizing the interspecies distance, proposing that grafting into the brains of our most distant monkey relations is less likely to raise concerns about significant cognitive effects. The committee dismissed ethical objections based on crossing species boundaries, arguing that fixed boundaries are not well supported by scientific findings.™ Intelligence, it seems, is very much a matter of definition. There is no sharp dividing line between intelligent and nonintelligent life. The position of a particular species may be determined not by any particular quality or number, but by its locations on several different continua of abilities. Intelligent extraterrestrials might have different combinations of those abilities—and perhaps others that are unknown to us. If intelligence has emerged in other biospheres, it may be quite unlike ours. Environmental pressures, the structures of nervous systems, the inheritance of instincts, and cultural influences will cause perceptions, associations, and memories to vary, leading to different ideas about self, species, and the surrounding world. Doris and David Jonas showed how different sensory equipment would shape not only perception, but also brains, motivations, cultures, and social structure.* Bottom Line, Intelligence: Unresolved. This situation could change overnight. Just one confirmed detection of an alien technology, and the sentience Copernicans win. Probabilities: Intelligence