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

by BBella , Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 18:55 (5197 days ago) @ dhw

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 >-As regards to free will, it seems to me, yes and no. We, humans/animals/robots, etc., have free will to choose within the choices given (gene/environment tendencies considered). Whether we choose a, b or z, could be considered free will, although we do not have free to choose what is not an available choice.-Like the baby in the play pen example I've given before; the baby can only choose from the choices given, no more, no less. By design or evolution, whichever, free will is limited to the ingredients of stardust (the play pen). The ingredients of stardust contained all that we are today as well as our available choices, no more, no less.-This does not mean that we know all of our choices or have grown to understand all of our choices. Just like the baby in the play pen, the baby will grow out of the play pen and grow to choose different choices it had no idea was available all the time. We as stardust grow and as we do our available choices grow with us. But never will we have a choice to choose more than we are capable of choosing or than we have available to us.