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

by romansh , Monday, August 30, 2010, 02:04 (4979 days ago) @ dhw

If I define intelligence as "a conscious ability to perceive, learn, understand and think about things, and to apply the knowledge thereby acquired", you could ask for a definition of every single term, and a definition of every term in every definition. We would end up with a book. That's why I said that without some sort of consensus on language, communication becomes almost impossible. -As I said in my opening, intelligence is deeply entwined with life, consciousnes, free will - as it happens I'm not a strong proponent of these concepts. For example can we have intelligence without free will by your definition?
> Additionally, one is almost certain to get so bogged down in definitions of definitions that one digresses endlessly from the original subject ... hence our movement away from intelligence and onto consciousness and philosophy. There's also the all too obvious fact that the more you think, the less certain you become, which is a good thing in some fields, but paralyzing in others! Having said all that, I appreciate your spurring us on to examine the concept a little more closely. You have made me ... and continue to make me ... think about it and clarify my own ideas, which is part and parcel of our discussions. But having said THAT, I have now gallantly explained exactly what I consider intelligence to be, and when challenged have also explained exactly what I consider consciousness to be, and so I would dearly love to claim the $64,000 prize. No-one has yet said why I shouldn't.-;) I'm sorry dhw, giving a definition alone does not get you any prizes. But by your definition at which point in a person's development does that person metamorphose from non-intelligent to intelligent? I accept there are shades of grey here, but you do hold at some point in development that person is not intelligent?-> As regards your rhetorical question, I must confess I deliberately steered clear of "free will", and it does not figure in my attempt at a definition of intelligence. It has, however, come up indirectly in my discussion with Matt on robots, as I have argued that a robot has to be programmed (= it doesn't have free will), which of course raises all kinds of questions about our own "programming". David believes we do have free will. Perhaps we all believe we have it, since we are constantly and consciously taking decisions, but if we could step outside ourselves and see all the forces that have shaped us, we would not ... in my agnostic view ... know whether we had it or not.-Life appears to be in part preprogrammed. According to Steven Pinker in his The Blank State about 40% to 50% of our behavioural traits might be ascribed to genetics?
 
> I regard it as a colossal stroke of luck that we have a "resident" panentheist (David) -Quite so.