Symbolic Intelligence

Symbolic intelligence is the human capacity to find meaning in pattern and symbol — the faculty that lets a planet’s position, a tarot card, a recurring number, or a figure in a dream become a mirror for something you’re trying to understand.

It isn’t a spiritual specialty; you use it whenever a wedding ring, a flag, a logo, or a poem means something to you. Astrology, tarot, numerology, and dream interpretation are simply refined symbolic systems for exercising it on the hardest-to-name questions. (Note: this is a different idea from “symbolic AI” in computer science, which refers to machines reasoning through logical rules.)

For the full treatment — the everyday examples, the cognitive science behind it, and what it means for a machine to speak this language — see the complete guide to Symbolic Intelligence.