Babbage located Intelligence in the Mind not the attentive crafting body

Introduction:
Following Vaucanson's creation of the defecating duck, a wide assortment of mechanical devices and contraptions were developed over the next century, designed as substitutes for human labour and time. These machines tried to mimic the behaviour of humans, and could usually perform only one specific task. However, the Analytical Engine planned by Charles Babbage was different. Though only a small part of it was completed, Babbage designed it so that it could perform tasks which were then considered intellectual in nature.

Mechanisation of Intelligence:
The calculating devices designed by Babbage and others were called 'computers', a term originally used to refer to those human workers whose job it was to peform tedious numerical calculations. This anthropomorphism of equating machines to humans is evidence that Babbage and others were subscribers to the prevalent mechanistic worldview at the time. Indeed, in his campaigns for the mechanisation of intelligence, terms used by Babbage to describe the operation of his Analytical Engine hinted that it possessed intelligence of some kind. Babbage claimed that his machine was capable of 'memory' and 'foresight' and that the mechanical means he used to employ these operations bore analogy to the actual workings of our mind. It is no surprise then that Babbage, along with other notable natural philosophers of his time, located intelligence in the mind and not in the body. As Simon Schaffer aptly puts it, 'To make machines look intelligent it was necessary that the sources of their power, the labour force which surrounded and ran them, be rendered invisible'. The machinery of the factory and the calculating engines precisely embodied the intelligence of theory and abolished individual intelligence of the worker.
Further, Babbage believed that he had unconditional rights over his creations and their subsequent production. Quoting Babbage,
'My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind'.

Such declarations demonstrated his control over the engine and 'camouflaged the work force' on which it depended.

Hierarchy of intelligence:
Babbage intended to use machines as a check for and to discipline human labour. In his own words, 'One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents'. However the worker of the machine was not guaranteed any extra lesiure time as a benefit of the machine , in accordance with the economic principles which Babbage followed where the price of a good was directly dependent on the amount of human labour gone into it. Thus, machines in no way helped those at the lowest rung of the new hierarchy on intelligence. On the contrary, in this new system of classification, the body was a mere slave of the machine while the mind reigned supreme.

Conclusion:
In my opinion, Babbage's take on intelligence reflects his primarily mechanistic worldview. Today, we know that intelligence exists in several forms, both analytic, synthetic and perhaps even emotional. Though it may reside in the mind, such a form of intelligence is severely limited unless expressed by the body or some automaton capable of capturing it. At this stage in our development of AI, we still have a long way to go before we can claim that our machines truly embody a genuine form of intelligence.