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

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, September 01, 2010, 22:45 (5199 days ago) @ David Turell


> > Okay, so we're in agreement: we're only talking about an epistemological boundary; All knowledge is based on modification or application of previous knowledge. 
> > 
> > You're extending an assertion that robot's won't be capable of creating a new concept. For example, robots would only ever be able to work in "normal" science, never in paradigmatic science? 
> > 
> > I don't see the connection here to Free Will. To me, what you guys are talking about is that robots can only make choices based on what choices they're allowed to make--which is no different than what we do. A human being cannot make a choice beyond that which he cannot conceive. Someone with an IQ of 85 is unlikely to create the "Theory of Everything." Humans have absolute freedom to make any choices within their box; so are robots. In this particular definition of Free Will--robots exercise this exactly, yet we would all agree that they don't actually have "free will" because we understand "free will" to be a property of sentience.
> 
> The connection to free will is the 'box' concept. Free Will is limited by our knowledge, as you appear to agree to above. Bella uses the word playpen. I think we can conclude that robots will always be boxed, and can only act within their box, but among humans, there are Einsteins who open up whole new areas of boxes and we all join in, if we choose. This is free will in intellectual study. I've been reading a new book on scholastic philosophy, using Thomism to show that God exists. I know its a throwback, but I'm not sure modern philosophy is correct. After all, Adler, in his book was proving things all over again, and then died a Catholic. Both he can St. Thomas used maintaining the system as a key point. My point is (I'm really not off topic) that by free will I'm opening up my knowledge.-I would be interested in mining you sometime for your thoughts on Modern philosophy; as someone who adheres to moral contextualism and radical skepticism the concept that ANYTHING can be universal seems... quaint at best. I've said it before, but the only irreducible truth I can find in regards to morals or "universal truth" is the fact that people can't exist without other people. It's the only basis for a constant ethical morality that I can think of. -In regards to Adler; many of his arguments (at least in the one book I've read) are easily countered--again it was his more Thomist or Aristotelian arguments. Weaker still is his assertion that we can be epistemically justified making a negative claim without positive evidence for it. He falls into the identical territory as atheists stating "God does not exist."

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"