Information Complication (General)

by dhw, Thursday, November 19, 2015, 20:26 (3074 days ago) @ BBella

dhw: However, although clearly ALL THAT IS brings intelligence, information and everything else together in a great oneness...
BBELLA: The way you state it above, dhw, "ALL THAT IS brings... make it sound as though ALL THAT IS is what brings and so is separate from intelligence, information and everything else, so ATI brings those 3 into a great oneness. [...]-Badly phrased by me. I meant what you meant: the concept of ALL THAT IS combines intelligence, information etc. I did not mean the ATI is separate from these.-dhw...and although I agree that intelligence is nothing without information, I don't think this observation works the other way round. For me, intelligence has to have some degree of awareness...
BBELLA: I do not see how intelligence has to have a degree of awareness, in the sense of self awareness.... -I see self awareness as the most advanced form of awareness, but a degree of awareness is integral to my concept of intelligence. (I'm not talking here about artificial intelligence.) I think ants are aware of their environment and can take decisions and devise strategies, but I do not believe they ask themselves how or why they came to be here on Earth.-BBELLA: I have been trying to come up with another word that more embodies how I imagine intelligence...-I have similar problems, but so long as we explain what we mean, we can reach an understanding.
 
Dhw: ....but you and I have agreed that neither the stone nor the water is conscious.
BBELLA: Yes, I agree neither has a degree of consciousness that I am aware of, although I can see how both the stone and the water is intelligence - at work, being what they are.-That is where we differ. I do not see existence as “being” intelligence - it is only being, precisely because (as far as we can tell) the stone has no awareness even of its surroundings.-Dhw: Hence my dalliance with various concepts of panpsychism and multiple intelligences that use information to further their evolution. 
BBELLA: Im not sure what you mean by "multiple intelligences"? I just see intelligence. -I mean the ALL THAT IS contains zillions of separate, individual units, only some of which are intelligent. You and I are two separate intelligences, but I do not think the sun is aware of its environment, takes decisions etc. And we are not all one because although you and I depend on the sun, it does not depend on us.
 
Dhw: What runs life is a mechanism that processes information, and we don't know what that mechanism is, either in running life itself or in engendering intelligence.-BBELLA: ...as I see it, the mechanism that processes information and runs life is intelligence. Although I do not see intelligence engendering intelligence. Can intelligence create intelligence? I can't see how.-David believes intelligence in the form of his God has created intelligence in the form of living organisms which include ourselves, but that is not what I meant. In my terms, intelligence entails awareness as described earlier, and the mechanism for it and for life has to be within each living organism, but I do not believe it is within a stone or within the sun...We haven't identified this mechanism, and how it originated elicits nothing but vague, speculative answers: David's single, intelligent God; your universal, sourceless intelligence integral to ALL THAT IS (a form of panpsychism); the materialist's chance combination of non-intelligent materials which has somehow engendered both life and intelligence. What we're really asking is how did ALL THAT IS arise out of ALL THAT WAS? But we don't know ALL THAT WAS, and we don't even know ALL THAT IS.-DHW: My point is that not only the distinction between matter and information but also that between what is processed (information) and what does the processing (intelligence of whatever sort) is “absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution”.
BBELLA: I agree there is three distinct: matter, information and intelligence. But as I see it, no three can be without the other.-I think you mean no one can be without the others, but that depends on our definition of intelligence. I would not like to discount panpsychism (the theory that all materials have some kind of mental aspect), but if we go back to the stone, I find it easy to imagine a barren, lifeless lump of rock floating around in space, epitomizing my concept of non-intelligence. It naturally contains information (composition, history, geography, movement etc.) but intelligence would be required to extract that, and if it collided with another rock, I would not for one moment imagine it had a purpose, had processed information, had taken a decision. It exists and acts without intelligence. Multiply this example a zillion times, and you have a universe doing the same. Matter in my view can therefore exist without intelligence. In the context of billions of existing solar systems and a possible eternity and an infinite number of no longer existing solar systems, the orderliness of our own life-giving solar system might just as well be the product of mindless chance as of a sourceless intelligence, either “divine” or integral to energy and matter.