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

by romansh , Friday, September 03, 2010, 23:13 (4977 days ago) @ dhw

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. 
I again agree that we can chase the boundaries life and non life. Conscious and entities that are incapable of consciousness. In fact these borders are simply a matter of human defintion. We observe animals, plants and bricks behave differently at least a birds eye view. And we ultimately put them into 'appropriate' boxes. But the human mind is a consumate classifier.-> Consequently, we more or less have to choose what level we're going to think on. .... 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.-I would agree nothing can be perceived ultimately accurate (or more accurately I cannot ascertain a mechanism for attaining such truths). But that does not mean one definition is better not at explaining what intelligence is than another, in a reality sense. Now if we are discussing a proposed creator of the universe (which I'm loathed to do - I have the same aversion to such beings as you do of chemistry ;) ) Your definition may be useful; but I suspect my professor's defintion might be more useful when discussing a more deterministic universe?-Regarding perceiving reality - I agree I don't know how to be sure what I'm perceiving is accurate; but based on the evidence some methods to appear to better predictors of reality than others.