Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Saturday, March 02, 2013, 19:17 (4282 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Dhw: Generally, we use "intelligence" to mean the ability to perceive, learn, understand, reason, think about things, make decisions etc. And we associate it with consciousness, which in turn we associate with self-awareness. This is the element I would like to eliminate from the concept I'm trying to develop.
 -TONY: This is about as far I was able to get before my brain rebelled. :P The problem is not self-awareness, it is the ability to reason.-Welcome back, Tony. It will be very helpful to have another perspective on this, as David and I may have reached a stalemate. However, I'm sorry your brain rebelled so soon, as you have commented on the introduction and not the concept itself. I've summarized this in my latest post to David: "that evolution is driven by an unselfconscious but inventive form of "intelligence" within living cells, and that life itself may have come about through a similar "intelligence" inherent in the chemicals that combined to create it." There is no English word for what I'm trying to convey, which is why I'm using "intelligence" in inverted commas, and what you quoted is my attempt to explain it. You will note that "reason" (highlighted) is included in my list, but self-awareness is what I'd like to exclude from the definition, because I'm proposing an alternative origin for life and evolution to the standard ones of 1) a self-aware creator god and 2) chance. I actually agree with almost everything in your post, but before we get onto your major questions, let me respond to what you say about cells:-TONY: A cell would have to be self-aware, and to a certain extent self-analytical in order to be able to function. That is, it would have to be aware of its current internal state, its nominal internal state, and the current state of its environment in some limited form.-I'm happy to accept "to a certain extent" and "in some limited form", especially as you go on to talk about animals. You stopped before my next paragraph, which began: "Our fellow animals display varying degrees of intelligence, but I think most of us would agree that their self-awareness levels are considerably below our own." On this thread, I'm trying to differentiate between lesser intelligence and the highest form we know, which I've linked to self-awareness. I do not believe, for instance, that a cell is capable of saying to itself, "I'm a liver cell. What is my purpose? Do I really want to be a liver cell? How did I become a liver cell? Why am I a liver cell and not a lung cell?" But I do believe that at some time cells determined the need for a mechanism to aid metabolism, storage, secretion etc., and in due course a new organ came into being.
 
TONY: We take for granted our instincts and those of animals. How did those programs originate?-"Originate" is the crucial word. Instinct sets in once the new organ or activity has established itself. David says that cells are automatons. I'm saying that they become automatons once they've invented the new and successful organ. That is why I'm talking of "unselfconscious but inventive" cells: as you say, they're aware of their own state and of the environment, and I suggest that they also take the decisions which result in innovations. As regards your other example, to what extent migrating birds pass on information or act on instinct I don't know, but there must have been a first time, and that was the "intelligent" innovation.
 
TONY: If science says these animals are not able to reason, then what reasoning consciousness DID come up with the program?-First of all, I disagree with the claim that our fellow animals can't reason. Large numbers of scientific experiments (David has told us about some) and observations have shown that they can ... but obviously not to anything like the degree that we can. This is central to my hypothesis, but it extends even further than animal and cellular reasoning. I'm suggesting that "intelligence" of varying levels is present in all living things, and may well be present in inorganic matter too. Again I'll try to sum up the argument to save you wading through past posts. I agree with David that there has to be a first cause, and we've both taken that to be energy. Energy transmutes itself into matter. Just as the material cell is clearly possessed of "intelligence" as I've tried to explain the term, the energy that gave rise to it and that is contained within it will also be "intelligent". And just as cells combine to create more and more complex organisms, so the energy within them may increase the complexity of its "intelligence", culminating in our own self-awareness. In other words, first-cause energy is not a self-aware, readymade inventor who has been around forever and whose superintelligence is simply and inexplicably there, but it is possessed of low-level, unselfconscious "intelligence" which has evolved through the matter it creates, just as the low-level unselfconscious "intelligence" of single cells has evolved through material combinations to the high-level, self-aware "intelligence" we claim for ourselves.-Sorry if this is a slightly messy post, but it's difficult to condense the complete thread, especially when there is no proper term for the concept I'm trying to develop!