Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, February 28, 2013, 12:35 (4284 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't think you should ascribe 'consciousness' to lower animals than humans. They are conscious, but it is not a self-aware conscious state. -I'd hesitate to say an elephant grieving for its dead calf, or a fox running away from hunters, isn't aware that it's sad or frightened. However, this isn't important for my hypothesis.-dhw: If energy as the "first cause" has "intelligence" of the non-conscious variety, some of the matter it forms may be imbued with this same "intelligence", i.e. the ability to perceive, understand, adjust, and even invent. As an added bonus, we can even suppose that once the matter disintegrates, as all matter does, the energy might be released back into the infinite pool, having by then absorbed a great deal more information than it started with [...]-DAVID: [...] Your attempt above fits my thinking that there is a universal consciousness to which our brain's consciousness is connected. Our brain is a form of radio receiver and sender in this relationship. Our 'soul' is your 'intelligence' returning to the UI after physical death of the body.-In the context of my hypothesis, your UI is too closely associated with a supreme, self-aware being. I'm suggesting that our own self-awareness follows a long history of unselfconscious, low-level "intelligent" energy producing "intelligent" matter that evolved into ever greater degrees of intelligence. If there is a soul that lives on, it may commune with other souls or maybe with other levels (the pet dog?), but there's no "universal consciousness" for it to return to, other than the unselfconscious infinity of energy from which everything has sprung.-dhw: David often claims that his UI has no attributes, but he endows it with self-awareness, purposefulness, the ability to plan, whereas the form of intelligence I am proposing really is devoid of any such qualities.-DAVID: This is a misconception of my position. I ascribe no attributes to the 'personality' of the UI. By that I mean the human traits that distinguish each of us from the other. Love, hate [etc...] God is a person like no other person [...] But we can say that God does plan and that plan looks as if it is purposeful...-Planning and purpose, with self-awareness, are what I objected to, although you may be right. My alternative hypothesis is that there's no such thing as God, let alone a god who is ANY kind of person. There is intelligence ... not self-aware ... within the separate strands of matter (chemicals that make life, cells that make organs) which have arisen from first cause, unselfconscious energy, and it's this intelligence within matter that drives material life and evolution. -dhw: The liver was not the result of chance mutations but of inventive cooperation between "intelligent" cells. Similarly, life and the mechanisms for evolution were not the result of chance combinations, but of inventive cooperation between "intelligent" chemicals. Research has already shown that cells communicate. Perhaps chemicals also communicate.-DAVID: Chemicals react to each other or are forced to by enzymes according to certain principles [...] So the chemicals appear to act intelligently, but in fact are under tight controls [...] The cell is the result of a plan that uses these tight controls. That plan is 'information' not intelligence. [...] Cells are automatons, and do not show freedom of action. Cells work in concert for the overall good of the total organism.
 
Cells are automatons once their role has been established, but you believe a god deliberately manipulated/programmed them to form every new organ. Chemicals are under tight controls, but you believe a god deliberately manipulated/programmed them to create life. Regardless of automatic behaviour AFTER each innovation (life itself, liver, heart, brain), something happened BEFOREHAND to combine the necessary elements. If the innovation could be worked from without (God), why could it not be worked from within (intelligence)? Once the patterns were formed, the pieces would then establish their own controls (at least till the next innovation). The river makes its route, and then it stays within the boundaries it's set itself. We know that cells communicate, adapt and innovate ... otherwise there'd be no evolution - but we don't know how. "God did it" is your answer, from chemical combinations to cell combinations. Chance is one alternative. An inventive, unselfconscious intelligence is another.
 
DAVID: Your struggle to find the right term is misdirected. There is an information plan in every living organism, which is the key to why it is alive. Life is vastly different from non-living matter. The gap is so vast 60 years of intensive research has no answer to how life appeared. And has not shown any new avenues of research to find the answer.-I agree. And our ignorance allows me to speculate on alternatives to materialistic chance and to theistic belief in an eternal super-intelligence. I'm proposing a lesser form of intelligence (energy) which through an infinite number of material combinations has evolved ever greater degrees of intelligence, in the same way as unselfconscious cells have evolved ever greater degrees of complexity. If you can believe in a readymade superintelligence, why can't you believe in an evolving lesser intelligence?