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

by dhw, Thursday, September 02, 2010, 20:36 (4977 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: My question is there a line between intelligent/non-intelligent or conscious/unconscious in a human being's development? If your answer is I don't know fair enough, for I don't either. But in that case could it extend to before conception? My answer of course is I don't know. But this line of reasoning extends to my professor's definition?-I don't see how an individual human being can exist, let alone be intelligent, before conception, unless you believe in reincarnation. Or are you suggesting that the egg (or the sperm) is already a human being prior to fertilization? I think I'd only extend my don't-know answer as far as the foetus. With regard to your professor's definition ("the ability of an entity to synthesize at least one response that is correlated with at least one stimulus"), as we have noted, it can be applied to entities that are non-organic and, as far as we know, have no conscious ability to think, learn, apply knowledge etc. I don't believe that in your heart of hearts you really attribute intelligence to your famous brick, even though we can't prove it, and so if I'm right, this will leave us almost agreeing on my definition, and completely agreeing that we don't know if or where there's a line between intelligent/non-intelligent etc. in a human being's development.
 
However, you have a caveat: you think I'm "replacing one imponderable (intelligence) with another (consciousness)." I'm not replacing one with another, since consciousness is only part of my definition, but in any case when challenged I also defined consciousness. If we combine my two definitions for the sake of clarity, we get: "the ability ... during a state in which one is awake, aware of oneself, and aware of what is going on around oneself ... to perceive, learn, understand and think about things, and to apply the knowledge thereby acquired." No room for bricks, but I see that as an advantage over your professor's definition!-On the subject of free will, if I've understood you correctly (I'm not a scientist, so please forgive me if I've got this wrong), you are suggesting that "the law of mass action" would at least theoretically enable accurate prediction of human behaviour, and since we are made of molecules, the implication is that there is no place for free will. This goes to the very heart of our discussions. We may feel that our thoughts, decisions, memories, imagination, will, self-awareness etc. are somehow independent of the body, and are at least partly controlled by an autonomous identity, but are they and the identity just molecules behaving predictably? If so, how can physical matter produce such apparently non-physical activities and faculties? I can't answer either question, and that's one reason why I remain agnostic.