What Exactly IS Intelligence? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, September 03, 2010, 12:28 (4983 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: Philosophically speaking this [a human being's development] would go back to the formation carbon in stars and further back in a euphemistic creation.-[...] OK so at what point does a foetus begin and end? I'll keep questioning any boundary you choose.-[...] now do you believe that only CHON (primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and trace elements) entities can have intelligence?-I'm sorry, but I daren't start talking chemistry with you, and philosophically speaking, you are right. You can question any boundary, and so I shall henceforth refrain from such foolhardy statements!-I do believe, though, that only a live, conscious entity can have intelligence, but I haven't a clue where instinct (unconscious behaviour) ends and conscious intelligence begins, and even the borders between life and non-life are indistinct. Consequently, we more or less have to choose what level we're going to think on. In your previous post, you said that "in pragmatic everyday conversations" you would accept the conscious/unconscious distinction between intelligence and instinct, and you say that "intuitively" your answer regarding the brick would be much like mine, while my definition of intelligence is "far more pragmatic and useful in some ways" than your professor's. You balance this by saying that your professor's definition and your reason lead you to "suspect that intelligence may be a continuum rather than "no" ... "yes" followed by a scale", and you also "suspect it [my definition] is not an accurate representation of reality." I would expand your suspicions to most of what we think we know about "reality". On an overall philosophical level, it seems to me that virtually nothing is clear-cut, and because our knowledge is so limited (remember the Popper quote?), we CAN only operate on pragmatic levels. Science can investigate the material world, and philosophers can speculate about meaning, but nobody can draw definitive conclusions about "reality", and so we're left with beliefs plus suspicions that our beliefs may not be accurate. You and I are therefore probably in agreement on all levels, which may be as far as we can hope to go.