Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 18, 2013, 20:06 (4052 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: If I might interject here, you two are dickering over a language barrier that needn't exist.-aware(ness) - having perception of the state of something external to the self. 
self-aware - having perception of the state internal to the self.
conscious - the state of being able to reason about the states, internal or external in a solid, concrete manner. (i.e. A dog can identify a smell(external), is cognizant that it is hungry, and can follow the smell to food) This type of cognition requires no abstract or progressive reasoning ability.
Self-Conscious - the state of being aware of your own awareness, including the ability to reason in an abstract manner, form purposeful intentions that are driven by pre-planning, and the conceptual understanding of time in terms of past, present, and future.
I am open to modifications.-DAVID: thank you. Your 'self-conscious' is what I define as consciousness. Of course, if one has consciousness one is also conscious.-Why consciousness should be the same as self-conscious I don't know. It's along the same mysterious lines as "ants do not have consciousness but they are conscious". However, this is a very gallant piece of refereeing, Tony, which is much appreciated!
 
TONY: It is a step-wise progression. Each subsequent step must contain all of the functionality of the previous step and add something that the previous step did not possess.-The step-wise progression is important, especially since as humans we do not have any means of judging the extent of our fellow creatures' consciousness or even self-consciousness. For instance, I would argue that "the ability to form purposeful intentions that are driven by pre-planning" is apparent in the behaviour of many organisms, but is not necessarily a sign of self-awareness. You only need think of the way many animals, birds and insects prepare for the change of seasons, build defences, store food, enter into symbiotic relationships, strategically hunt their prey...-However, the problem of definition is actually a diversion from the real issue between David and myself. I am suggesting that evolution may be driven by "the intelligent cell" (I've stressed repeatedly that I prefer to use "intelligent" rather than conscious, precisely because David does not distinguish between conscious and self-conscious). Cells are able to absorb, process, and exchange information, communicate with one another, cooperate, take decisions, and solve problems. With these abilities, and allowing for billions of cells cooperating over billions of years, I argue that their combined intelligences may have enabled them progressively to invent the many organs that exist today. That intelligence may or may not have been given to them by a god. David, however, insists that cells are automatons, and so whatever innovations they have come up with can only have been preprogrammed by his god. Our difference is therefore not really one of definition at all. It is David's insistence that cells are automatons, and that divine preprogramming is the only explanation for innovations.