Evolution of Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 27, 2013, 13:18 (4048 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: The problem I see with this idea of 'chunking' is uniformity. If there were multiple intelligence each doing their own thing, we would expect to see much more chaos and much less organization. Instead, what we see is beautifully orchestrated, exceedingly complex unity, harmony, and balance. Intelligence implies an ego of sorts. Perhaps not in the way we normally think of the term, but in the sense that each intelligence would have its own agenda to work towards. The chaos that is humanity has proven that true in a most obvious fashion. When everyone works towards their own individual goals, there can be no harmony. There had to be a single unifying purpose in order for the harmony and unity that we OBSERVE to have happened.-That is the Darwinian concept of competition, which overlooks the Margulis one of cooperation. You and I clearly observe different worlds! As I see it, the universe, life and evolution are an ongoing mixture of chaos and organization, of harmony and discord, of creation and destruction. Stars come and go, just as species have come and gone; humans and their fellow animals work together in communities, or fight and kill one another (humans more so than other animals!); cells join together in a symbiotic relationship, or they reject one another to cause disease. "When everyone works towards their own individual goals, there can be no harmony" presupposes that individual goals can't coincide with harmony. Supposing Jack has cash and John has brains, together they can create a successful business. That, I suggest to you, is the cooperative principle that has enabled multiple intelligences to join together and create harmony. Meanwhile, Bob and Bill either ignore each other or fight, in which case multiple intelligences will lead to nothing happening, mutual destruction, or the survival of the fittest ... which is another way in which unity can be established! There is no need at all for a single unified purpose, if by that you mean a universal intelligence binding everything together. Individual intelligences can bind themselves together, and create their own order. Indeed, the fact that the world is a mixture of order and disorder could even be taken as evidence against the concept of a single unifying purpose.