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

by dhw, Thursday, August 19, 2010, 23:08 (5208 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: By some definitions we can't be intelligent unless we have consciousness. Is this an assumption or is it simply part of a definition?-I had deliberately built consciousness into my definition, and since you had yourself concluded that "intelligence is deeply entwined with the concepts of consciousness" etc., I had assumed you would agree. And I also assumed you would agree that bricks were not intelligent. Clearly I should not make such assumptions. For you, intelligence is comparative:
"I suppose I'm angling for a position where everything has an intelligence, but some things have a much better quality of intelligence, at least by our lights."-As we don't have any other lights to guide us, we can probably agree that you and I are more intelligent than bricks. The view of the world you're presenting is not very far removed from that of BBella and of Frank (a process theologian), and so I will happily withdraw the word "silly" since we are moving onto a philosophical level beyond that of mere common sense. (In my own stubborn private world, though, I'm afraid I still like my definition and don't recognize the brick as being intelligent, but we needn't let that come between us.) We now have to determine WHY we consider a human to be more intelligent than a brick. I'd say that the distinction between the brick's intelligence and mine is that I have "a conscious ability to perceive, learn, understand and think about things, and to apply the knowledge thereby acquired". SO FAR AS I KNOW, the brick has none of these attributes. For you, intelligence is "the ability to synthesize at least one response that is correlated with at least one stimulus". I have that in addition to all my other attributes, but AS FAR AS I KNOW, that one is all the brick can offer. I had, perhaps unkindly, given the brick a zero rating for intelligence, but am happy to adjust this to 1 on a scale of 0 to 10 in order to allow for the position you are angling for. However, you have not responded to the question of how you distinguish between instinct and intelligence, and although of course we can't KNOW how conscious other forms are, we must have a reason for having invented these different terms. My definition of intelligence (and obviously David's too) insists on consciousness, but if yours doesn't, it makes very little difference to your comparative scale. We can simply argue that the degree of consciousness will result in a "better quality", rather than saying that no consciousness equals no intelligence. That allows for instinct (a sort of unconscious ability to adapt), which puts the amoeba one step ahead of the brick (apologies to the brick if I'm wrong), but still well below me (unconscious plus conscious). I'm afraid that won't bring us any closer to a definition we can both accept, but perhaps it might lead to a better understanding. -If you don't have time to reply before you leave, have a good break, and thanks again for joining us.