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

by romansh , Friday, September 03, 2010, 03:22 (5194 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Friday, September 03, 2010, 04:02

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 did not quite say that; I was referring a human being's development 
Philosophically speaking this would go back to the formation carbon in stars and further back in a euphemistic creation.-> I think I'd only extend my don't-know answer as far as the foetus. 
OK so at what point does a foetus begin and end?
I'll keep questioning any boundary you choose. 
> 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. 
Quite - now do you believe that only CHON ( primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and trace elements) entities can have intelligence?->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.
Perhaps - I would agree my intuitive answer would be much like yours. But to steal and modify a concept from Carl Sagan, I try not to reason with my heart of hearts.-But my good professor's definition and my reason lead me suspect that intelligence may be a continuum rather than "no" - "yes" followed by a scale.
 
> 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!
Again I have no problem with your definition, it is far more pragmatic or useful in someways - especially when dealing with human affairs. But I suspect it is not an accurate representation of reality.
 
> 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, 
This is quite often people's deduction of the deterministic premise. When we think carefully about determinism it shows us whatever it is, we or any part of the universe is ultimately unpredictable. Two caveats of course, one, we can predict trajectories of billiard balls etc in isolated systems etc. Two, magical demons that are oblivious to cause and effect may be able to theoretically predict our 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? 
Agree
> 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.-Yep