Basal cognition (Evolution)
A friend has sent me a very long article from the February edition of Scientific American. “Basal cognition” is simply another name for cellular intelligence, and the article contains references to numerous experiments and observations involving worms, animals. insects, plants, slime mold etc. The researchers cover a variety of disciplines, and they work at different universities. They see their findings as being important for the future of medicine and AI. I’ll select a few quotes that make their conclusions clear:
“…regular cells – not just highly specialized cells such as neurons – have the ability to store information and act on it. […] Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence – learning, memory, problem-solving – outside brains as well as within them.”
"(Levin) doesn't deny that that brains are awesome, paragons of computational speed and power. But he sees the differences between cell clumps and brains as ones of degree, not kind."
“In recent years interest in basal cognition has exploded as researchers have recognized example after example of surprisingly sophisticated intelligence at work across life’s kingdoms, no brain required!”
“People are just another animal species. But real cognition – that was supposed to set us apart.
Now that notion, too, is in retreat as researchers document the rich inner lives of creatures increasingly distant from us. Apes, dogs, dolphins, crows and even insects are proving more savvy than suspected.”
“The bigger challenge comes from evidence of surprisingly sophisticated behaviour in our brainless relatives. ‘The neuron is not a miracle cell….It’s a normal cell that is able to produce an electric signal. In plants almost every cell is able to do that.’
“None of this implies that plants are geniuses, but within their limited tool set, they show a solid ability to perceive their world and use that information to get what they need – key components of intelligence. […]
“That’s not the situation for single-celled organisms, which have traditionally been relegated to the “mindless” category by virtually everyone. If amoebas can think, then humans need to rethink all kinds of assumptions. Yet the evidence for cogitating pond scum grows daily. Consider the slime mold… (dhw: David has drawn our attention to this example before.)
"What we are is intelligent machines made of intelligent machines made of intelligent machines all the way down."
“Levin sees this innate tendency towards innovation as one of the driving forces of evolution, pushing the world towards a state of, as Charles Darwin might have put it, endless forms most beautiful.” (dhw’s bold)
“Indeed, the very act of living is by default a cognitive state, Lyon says. Every cell needs to be constantly evaluating its surroundings, making decisions about what to let in and what to keep out and planning its next steps. Cognition didn’t arrive later in evolution. It’s what made life possible.”
Surprisingly, there is no mention of earlier champions of cellular intelligence such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and, especially Shapiro, since Levin’s comment (bolded) is a direct echo of Shapiro’s theory. But this “explosion of interest” certainly gives the lie to the idea that the theory is on its way out. It’s clearly gaining more and more support.
Basal cognition
by David Turell 
, Sunday, January 28, 2024, 18:37 (298 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: A friend has sent me a very long article from the February edition of Scientific American. “Basal cognition” is simply another name for cellular intelligence, and the article contains references to numerous experiments and observations involving worms, animals. insects, plants, slime mold etc. The researchers cover a variety of disciplines, and they work at different universities. They see their findings as being important for the future of medicine and AI. I’ll select a few quotes that make their conclusions clear:
“…regular cells – not just highly specialized cells such as neurons – have the ability to store information and act on it. […] Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence – learning, memory, problem-solving – outside brains as well as within them.”
"(Levin) doesn't deny that that brains are awesome, paragons of computational speed and power. But he sees the differences between cell clumps and brains as ones of degree, not kind."
“In recent years interest in basal cognition has exploded as researchers have recognized example after example of surprisingly sophisticated intelligence at work across life’s kingdoms, no brain required!”
“People are just another animal species. But real cognition – that was supposed to set us apart.
Now that notion, too, is in retreat as researchers document the rich inner lives of creatures increasingly distant from us. Apes, dogs, dolphins, crows and even insects are proving more savvy than suspected.”
“The bigger challenge comes from evidence of surprisingly sophisticated behaviour in our brainless relatives. ‘The neuron is not a miracle cell….It’s a normal cell that is able to produce an electric signal. In plants almost every cell is able to do that.’
“None of this implies that plants are geniuses, but within their limited tool set, they show a solid ability to perceive their world and use that information to get what they need – key components of intelligence. […]“That’s not the situation for single-celled organisms, which have traditionally been relegated to the “mindless” category by virtually everyone. If amoebas can think, then humans need to rethink all kinds of assumptions. Yet the evidence for cogitating pond scum grows daily. Consider the slime mold… (dhw: David has drawn our attention to this example before.)
"What we are is intelligent machines made of intelligent machines made of intelligent machines all the way down."
“Levin sees this innate tendency towards innovation as one of the driving forces of evolution, pushing the world towards a state of, as Charles Darwin might have put it, endless forms most beautiful.” (dhw’s bold)
“Indeed, the very act of living is by default a cognitive state, Lyon says. Every cell needs to be constantly evaluating its surroundings, making decisions about what to let in and what to keep out and planning its next steps. Cognition didn’t arrive later in evolution. It’s what made life possible.”
Surprisingly, there is no mention of earlier champions of cellular intelligence such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and, especially Shapiro, since Levin’s comment (bolded) is a direct echo of Shapiro’s theory. But this “explosion of interest” certainly gives the lie to the idea that the theory is on its way out. It’s clearly gaining more and more support.
Read the entire article, and learned about the concept of bioelectricity and the created bots from living tissues. It is an atheistic view of the problem of the degree of consciousness in all forms of life. I've described much of it here in the past. The article did not change my viewpoint that God's coded DNA does it all.
Basal cognition
QUOTES:
“…regular cells – not just highly specialized cells such as neurons – have the ability to store information and act on it. […] Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence – learning, memory, problem-solving – outside brains as well as within them.”
"(Levin) doesn't deny that that brains are awesome, paragons of computational speed and power. But he sees the differences between cell clumps and brains as ones of degree, not kind."
“In recent years interest in basal cognition has exploded as researchers have recognized example after example of surprisingly sophisticated intelligence at work across life’s kingdoms, no brain required!”
“People are just another animal species. But real cognition – that was supposed to set us apart.
Now that notion, too, is in retreat as researchers document the rich inner lives of creatures increasingly distant from us. Apes, dogs, dolphins, crows and even insects are proving more savvy than suspected.”
“The bigger challenge comes from evidence of surprisingly sophisticated behaviour in our brainless relatives. ‘The neuron is not a miracle cell….It’s a normal cell that is able to produce an electric signal. In plants almost every cell is able to do that.’
“None of this implies that plants are geniuses, but within their limited tool set, they show a solid ability to perceive their world and use that information to get what they need – key components of intelligence. […]
“That’s not the situation for single-celled organisms, which have traditionally been relegated to the “mindless” category by virtually everyone. If amoebas can think, then humans need to rethink all kinds of assumptions. Yet the evidence for cogitating pond scum grows daily. Consider the slime mold…
(dhw: David has drawn our attention to this example before.)
"What we are is intelligent machines made of intelligent machines made of intelligent machines all the way down."
“Levin sees this innate tendency towards innovation as one of the driving forces of evolution, pushing the world towards a state of, as Charles Darwin might have put it, endless forms most beautiful.” (dhw’s bold)
“Indeed, the very act of living is by default a cognitive state, Lyon says. Every cell needs to be constantly evaluating its surroundings, making decisions about what to let in and what to keep out and planning its next steps. Cognition didn’t arrive later in evolution. It’s what made life possible.”
dhw: Surprisingly, there is no mention of earlier champions of cellular intelligence such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and, especially Shapiro, since Levin’s comment (bolded) is a direct echo of Shapiro’s theory. But this “explosion of interest” certainly gives the lie to the idea that the theory is on its way out. It’s clearly gaining more and more support.
DAVID: Read the entire article, and learned about the concept of bioelectricity and the created bots from living tissues. It is an atheistic view of the problem of the degree of consciousness in all forms of life. I've described much of it here in the past. The article did not change my viewpoint that God's coded DNA does it all.
Absolutely nothing to do with theism or atheism, totally dedicated to the concept of “basal cognition” (= cellular intelligence), with umpteen examples, plus its possible uses in medicine and AI. You have chosen to ignore every one of the above quotes, in which various scientists support the concept of cellular intelligence, and of course you cling to the preconception you wish to believe in. However, I trust you will now at least concede that the subject of cellular intelligence is not confined to the past but is being actively investigated and supported by a number of experts working in all the relevant fields.
Basal cognition
by David Turell , Monday, January 29, 2024, 16:48 (297 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTES:
“…regular cells – not just highly specialized cells such as neurons – have the ability to store information and act on it. […] Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence – learning, memory, problem-solving – outside brains as well as within them.”"(Levin) doesn't deny that that brains are awesome, paragons of computational speed and power. But he sees the differences between cell clumps and brains as ones of degree, not kind."
“In recent years interest in basal cognition has exploded as researchers have recognized example after example of surprisingly sophisticated intelligence at work across life’s kingdoms, no brain required!”
“People are just another animal species. But real cognition – that was supposed to set us apart.
Now that notion, too, is in retreat as researchers document the rich inner lives of creatures increasingly distant from us. Apes, dogs, dolphins, crows and even insects are proving more savvy than suspected.”“The bigger challenge comes from evidence of surprisingly sophisticated behaviour in our brainless relatives. ‘The neuron is not a miracle cell….It’s a normal cell that is able to produce an electric signal. In plants almost every cell is able to do that.’
“None of this implies that plants are geniuses, but within their limited tool set, they show a solid ability to perceive their world and use that information to get what they need – key components of intelligence. […]
“That’s not the situation for single-celled organisms, which have traditionally been relegated to the “mindless” category by virtually everyone. If amoebas can think, then humans need to rethink all kinds of assumptions. Yet the evidence for cogitating pond scum grows daily. Consider the slime mold…
(dhw: David has drawn our attention to this example before.)"What we are is intelligent machines made of intelligent machines made of intelligent machines all the way down."
“Levin sees this innate tendency towards innovation as one of the driving forces of evolution, pushing the world towards a state of, as Charles Darwin might have put it, endless forms most beautiful.” (dhw’s bold)
“Indeed, the very act of living is by default a cognitive state, Lyon says. Every cell needs to be constantly evaluating its surroundings, making decisions about what to let in and what to keep out and planning its next steps. Cognition didn’t arrive later in evolution. It’s what made life possible.”
dhw: Surprisingly, there is no mention of earlier champions of cellular intelligence such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and, especially Shapiro, since Levin’s comment (bolded) is a direct echo of Shapiro’s theory. But this “explosion of interest” certainly gives the lie to the idea that the theory is on its way out. It’s clearly gaining more and more support.
DAVID: Read the entire article, and learned about the concept of bioelectricity and the created bots from living tissues. It is an atheistic view of the problem of the degree of consciousness in all forms of life. I've described much of it here in the past. The article did not change my viewpoint that God's coded DNA does it all.
dhw: Absolutely nothing to do with theism or atheism, totally dedicated to the concept of “basal cognition” (= cellular intelligence), with umpteen examples, plus its possible uses in medicine and AI. You have chosen to ignore every one of the above quotes, in which various scientists support the concept of cellular intelligence, and of course you cling to the preconception you wish to believe in. However, I trust you will now at least concede that the subject of cellular intelligence is not confined to the past but is being actively investigated and supported by a number of experts working in all the relevant fields.
I agree.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence
by David Turell , Monday, June 17, 2024, 15:56 (157 days ago) @ David Turell
Difficult to define:
https://aeon.co/essays/why-intelligence-exists-only-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder?utm_sour...
"Instead of a measurable, quantifiable thing that exists independently out in the world, we suggest that intelligence is a label, pinned by humanity onto a bag stuffed with a jumble of independent traits that helped our ancestors thrive. Though people treat intelligence as a coherent whole, it remains ill-defined because it’s really a shifting array masquerading as one thing.
***
"Intelligence is not central to the success of most life on Earth. Consider the grasses: they’ve flourished across incredibly diverse global environments, without planning or debating a single step. Planarian worms regrow any part of their body and are functionally immortal, a trick we can manage only in science fiction. And a microscopic virus effectively shut down global human movement in 2020, without having any notion of what humans even are.
***
"...intelligence is not and never has been a single entity. Instead, it is a hominin-shaped heuristic, a way for us to easily perceive valued characteristics in other people. Like beauty, it lies in the eye of the beholder...nothing in intelligence makes sense except in the light of humanity, and our own evolved perceptions.
***
"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.
***
"Our minds also have a set of alerts that can drag you out of cruise control. Predators trigger those alerts, as does a sudden loud noise, an unexpected fall, a delicious smell from a nearby bakery or hotdog stand, or a particularly attractive person walking by. What these events have in common is not their intrinsic nature, but what they elicit in us: surprise.
***
When an animal surprises us by achieving a goal, solving a problem, or enacting a successful strategy that we did not expect, we are primed to register the mismatch between the demonstrated behaviour and our expectations as intelligence. (my bold)
"This happens more than we might think, for example, when we mistakenly think that something is too simple or small to perform a complex sequence of actions. In this way, bees or bacteria can appear more intelligent the more we get to know them. However, we have inbuilt limits to how long we can remain surprised. Continued enquiry may ultimately set a new baseline of expectations, to the extent that we lose our surprise and dial back how much of their behaviour we label as intelligence, until eventually we come to see it as explicable evolutionary programming. We recalibrate our expectations, just in time to stop short of ascribing ‘true’ intelligence to nonhuman entities. (my bold)
***
"Moreover, when we describe other animals or things as having intelligence, we may inadvertently impute them with other human-like qualities. (my bold)
***
"Like life and time, intelligence is a helpful shorthand for a complex idea that helps us structure our lives, as people. It is primarily a synonym for humanness, and judging other animals by this metric does a disservice to their own unique sea otterness, worminess, or sharkfulness.
***
"A focus on behaviours that resemble ours often plasters over much more interesting questions. What might success look like to a tardigrade, or a pigeon, or a horseshoe crab? Would a peacock mantis shrimp, able to see an almost unfathomable array of colours (as well as polarised light) and strike with incredible force while generating ultrasonic cavitation bubbles, be moved by our ability to beat them at checkers?
***
"Eventually, instead of talking about how machines, animal collectives, or individual birds and bugs exhibit intelligence, we should be better prepared to investigate how they evolved or iterated those actions in their own evolutionary spaces, unshackled from human-shaped standards... A planet full of problem-solving life exists apart from humans, and none of it is obligated to fit neatly into our subjective, self-serving mindset. We need to avoid the real risk that we will miss animal or machine (or plant, fungal, bacterial, or even extraterrestrial) ways of succeeding just because they are fundamentally alien to our conceptual toolkit.
***
"What may change is our capacity to appreciate other kinds of life on their own terms, divorced from anthropocentric box-checking. What we hope our suggestion does is prevent any one limited metric from skewing or obscuring the diverse kinds of success that exist in our world, including those we have yet to discover. We won’t just see more clearly, we’ll see more than we did before. If intelligence is no longer a default metric for species’ worthiness, how might our value judgments shift? Would we be more inclined toward wonder, and might this wonder impel us to conserve the other wondrous creatures with whom we share this planet, and the environments in which they evolved their own flavours of success? We think that would be the smart thing to do.
Comment: What looks like intelligence evolved survival techniques. dhw take notice.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”
I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements, and at the assumptions that underlie the whole article. You are quite right to say that intelligence is difficult to define. “Behaviours and capacities” are what provide evidence, and if you start out with “traits”, you need to establish what those traits are. In your excellent book The Atheist Delusion, you quote James A. Shapiro, a champion of cellular intelligence, who pinpoints some of those traits: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.”
Do you or do you not accept that these are traits denoting intelligence? And do you or do you not accept that non-human life forms demonstrate these traits.
QUOTE: A planet full of problem-solving life exists apart from humans, and none of it is obligated to fit neatly into our subjective, self-serving mindset.
An excellent observation! Problem-solving is another trait that denotes intelligence. and our author seems to have realized that the first quote above is a load of nonsense, engendered by his own subjective, self-serving mindset.
QUOTE: If intelligence is no longer a default metric for species’ worthiness, how might our value judgments shift? Would we be more inclined toward wonder, and might this wonder impel us to conserve the other wondrous creatures with whom we share this planet, and the environments in which they evolved their own flavours of success? We think that would be the smart thing to do.
What does he mean by “worthiness”? If his own value judgments would shift, he might realize that the intelligence of our fellow creatures would make us more inclined to wonder, and more inclined to support conservation.
DAVID: What looks like intelligence evolved survival techniques. dhw take notice.
The ability to survive by solving problems, taking decisions etc., based on the ability to process information, is as close as we can get to a definition of intelligence. David take notice.
Ant intelligence:
DAVID: Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.
And anyone who knows anything about ants would say that their ability to communicate, solve problems, build complex structures, assign different roles within their societies, devise strategies to overcome obstacles and defeat predators etc. demonstrates intelligence.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 21:04 (156 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements, and at the assumptions that underlie the whole article. You are quite right to say that intelligence is difficult to define. “Behaviours and capacities” are what provide evidence, and if you start out with “traits”, you need to establish what those traits are. In your excellent book The Atheist Delusion, you quote James A. Shapiro, a champion of cellular intelligence, who pinpoints some of those traits: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.”
dhw: Do you or do you not accept that these are traits denoting intelligence? And do you or do you not accept that non-human life forms demonstrate these traits.
What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
QUOTE: A planet full of problem-solving life exists apart from humans, and none of it is obligated to fit neatly into our subjective, self-serving mindset.dhw: An excellent observation! Problem-solving is another trait that denotes intelligence. and our author seems to have realized that the first quote above is a load of nonsense, engendered by his own subjective, self-serving mindset.
QUOTE: If intelligence is no longer a default metric for species’ worthiness, how might our value judgments shift? Would we be more inclined toward wonder, and might this wonder impel us to conserve the other wondrous creatures with whom we share this planet, and the environments in which they evolved their own flavours of success? We think that would be the smart thing to do.
dhw; What does he mean by “worthiness”? If his own value judgments would shift, he might realize that the intelligence of our fellow creatures would make us more inclined to wonder, and more inclined to support conservation.
Worthy of being thought of as intelligent.
DAVID: What looks like intelligence evolved survival techniques. dhw take notice.dhw: The ability to survive by solving problems, taking decisions etc., based on the ability to process information, is as close as we can get to a definition of intelligence. David take notice.
Repeat: "What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment."
Ant intelligence:DAVID: Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.
dhw: And anyone who knows anything about ants would say that their ability to communicate, solve problems, build complex structures, assign different roles within their societies, devise strategies to overcome obstacles and defeat predators etc. demonstrates intelligence.
OR, intelligently designed instincts.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 21:10 (156 days ago) @ David Turell
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements, and at the assumptions that underlie the whole article. You are quite right to say that intelligence is difficult to define. “Behaviours and capacities” are what provide evidence, and if you start out with “traits”, you need to establish what those traits are. In your excellent book The Atheist Delusion, you quote James A. Shapiro, a champion of cellular intelligence, who pinpoints some of those traits: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.”
dhw: Do you or do you not accept that these are traits denoting intelligence? And do you or do you not accept that non-human life forms demonstrate these traits.
You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities.
What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
QUOTE: A planet full of problem-solving life exists apart from humans, and none of it is obligated to fit neatly into our subjective, self-serving mindset.
dhw: An excellent observation! Problem-solving is another trait that denotes intelligence. and our author seems to have realized that the first quote above is a load of nonsense, engendered by his own subjective, self-serving mindset.
QUOTE: If intelligence is no longer a default metric for species’ worthiness, how might our value judgments shift? Would we be more inclined toward wonder, and might this wonder impel us to conserve the other wondrous creatures with whom we share this planet, and the environments in which they evolved their own flavours of success? We think that would be the smart thing to do.
dhw; What does he mean by “worthiness”? If his own value judgments would shift, he might realize that the intelligence of our fellow creatures would make us more inclined to wonder, and more inclined to support conservation.
Meaning: Worthy of being thought of as intelligent.
DAVID: What looks like intelligence evolved survival techniques. dhw take notice.dhw: The ability to survive by solving problems, taking decisions etc., based on the ability to process information, is as close as we can get to a definition of intelligence. David take notice.
Repeat: "What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment."
Ant intelligence:DAVID: Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.
dhw: And anyone who knows anything about ants would say that their ability to communicate, solve problems, build complex structures, assign different roles within their societies, devise strategies to overcome obstacles and defeat predators etc. demonstrates intelligence.
OR, intelligently designed instincts.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”
dhw: I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements, and at the assumptions that underlie the whole article. You are quite right to say that intelligence is difficult to define. “Behaviours and capacities” are what provide evidence, and if you start out with “traits”, you need to establish what those traits are. In your excellent book The Atheist Delusion, you quote James A. Shapiro, a champion of cellular intelligence, who pinpoints some of those traits: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.”
dhw: Do you or do you not accept that these are traits denoting intelligence? And do you or do you not accept that non-human life forms demonstrate these traits?
DAVID: You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities. What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
This is not anthropomorphizing. The above attributes would have been present long before we came on the scene, as far back as organisms such as bacteria. Even you, in your more enlightened moments, put the odds at 50/50, which means it is perfectly possible for organisms that behave intelligently actually to be intelligent. Please tell us what attributes you would regard as indicative of autonomous intelligence.
Ant intelligence:
DAVID: Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.
dhw: And anyone who knows anything about ants would say that their ability to communicate, solve problems, build complex structures, assign different roles within their societies, devise strategies to overcome obstacles and defeat predators etc. demonstrates intelligence.
DAVID: OR, intelligently designed instincts.
Once a problem has been solved, or a system or strategy works, then it will be passed on and repeated indefinitely and instinctively. I agree completely that all of these will originally have been intelligently designed. I just can’t understand why you think your God must have preprogrammed all of them 3.8 billion years ago, or must have been constantly training his crystal ball on every organism that ever lived and giving them all new instructions, or popping in to perform operations. The very fact that this process covers the whole of evolution (99.9% of which had no connection with your God’s one and only purpose) makes far more sense if – still in the context of theism – we assume that the intelligent design was done by the organisms themselves, and your God only provided the original ability to design. This would also explain why the 99.9% appeared and disappeared: their intelligence was not sufficient to overcome new requirements when conditions changed.Only 0.1% had enough (see Raup, who apparently calls them the lucky ones).
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 19, 2024, 17:52 (155 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”DAVID: You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities. What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
dhw: This is not anthropomorphizing. The above attributes would have been present long before we came on the scene, as far back as organisms such as bacteria. Even you, in your more enlightened moments, put the odds at 50/50, which means it is perfectly possible for organisms that behave intelligently actually to be intelligent. Please tell us what attributes you would regard as indicative of autonomous intelligence.
The author warns of anthropomorphizing in analyzing possible intelligence. You have given the proper list and i agree to it with the proviso that it equally be all from intelligent design, in which I believe.
Ant intelligence:DAVID: Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.
dhw: And anyone who knows anything about ants would say that their ability to communicate, solve problems, build complex structures, assign different roles within their societies, devise strategies to overcome obstacles and defeat predators etc. demonstrates intelligence.
DAVID: OR, intelligently designed instincts.
dhw: Once a problem has been solved, or a system or strategy works, then it will be passed on and repeated indefinitely and instinctively. I agree completely that all of these will originally have been intelligently designed. I just can’t understand why you think your God must have preprogrammed all of them 3.8 billion years ago, or must have been constantly training his crystal ball on every organism that ever lived and giving them all new instructions, or popping in to perform operations. The very fact that this process covers the whole of evolution (99.9% of which had no connection with your God’s one and only purpose) makes far more sense if – still in the context of theism – we assume that the intelligent design was done by the organisms themselves, and your God only provided the original ability to design. This would also explain why the 99.9% appeared and disappeared: their intelligence was not sufficient to overcome new requirements when conditions changed. Only 0.1% had enough (see Raup, who apparently calls them the lucky ones).
Back you go to secondhand designing. God must give organisms a full course in intelligent design so He can just sit back and watch, stepping in stop and correct mistakes. Fully inefficient and more cumbersome than direct designing.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”
Dhw: I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements. […]
DAVID: You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities. What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
I went on to list the attributes that most of us would regard as signs of intelligence.
dhw: This is not anthropomorphizing. The above attributes would have been present long before we came on the scene, as far back as organisms such as bacteria. Even you, in your more enlightened moments, put the odds at 50/50, which means it is perfectly possible for organisms that behave intelligently actually to be intelligent. Please tell us what attributes you would regard as indicative of autonomous intelligence.
DAVID: The author warns of anthropomorphizing in analyzing possible intelligence. You have given the proper list and i agree to it with the proviso that it equally be all from intelligent design, in which I believe.
Your response is ambiguous. I’m quite happy to accept the possibility that all these attributes were designed by your God if he exists. But do you agree that such God-designed attributes enable organisms to take their own decisions and solve their problems AUTONOMOUSLY?
Ant intelligence:
dhw: The very fact that this process covers the whole of evolution (99.9% of which had no connection with your God’s one and only purpose) makes far more sense if – still in the context of theism – we assume that the intelligent design was done by the organisms themselves, and your God only provided the original ability to design. This would also explain why the 99.9% appeared and disappeared: their intelligence was not sufficient to overcome new requirements when conditions changed. Only 0.1% had enough (see Raup, who apparently calls them the lucky ones).
DAVID: Back you go to secondhand designing. God must give organisms a full course in intelligent design so He can just sit back and watch, stepping in stop and correct mistakes. Fully inefficient and more cumbersome than direct designing.
The only “course in intelligent design” is your alternative to your 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every design, which is courses or dabbles whenever there is a new problem. And the only “stepping in” is done by your version of a dabbling God, who either corrects his own mistakes or deliberately culls the 99.9% of species which he inefficiently designed although they were irrelevant to his purpose. The theory that organisms do their own designing does indeed leave your God setting up the system and then sitting back and watching, or possibly abandoning us altogether. That’s called deism. Totally efficient and not in the least cumbersome, if that was what he wanted to do. (He could also dabble if he felt like it.) And since his reasons are unknowable, please don’t pretend that you know what reasons he couldn’t have had. A free-for-all (like my experimentation alternatives) is just as feasible as your messy, inefficient blunderings, solves the problem of the irrelevant 99.9%, and even solves the problem of theodicy. As Doris Day once sang to us: “Que sera sera.”
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
by David Turell , Thursday, June 20, 2024, 23:48 (154 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE:"Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history...No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”Dhw: I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements. […]
DAVID: You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities. What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
dhw: I went on to list the attributes that most of us would regard as signs of intelligence.
Yes, anthropomorphized intelligence the author warns against.
dhw: This is not anthropomorphizing. The above attributes would have been present long before we came on the scene, as far back as organisms such as bacteria. Even you, in your more enlightened moments, put the odds at 50/50, which means it is perfectly possible for organisms that behave intelligently actually to be intelligent. Please tell us what attributes you would regard as indicative of autonomous intelligence.DAVID: The author warns of anthropomorphizing in analyzing possible intelligence. You have given the proper list and i agree to it with the proviso that it equally be all from intelligent design, in which I believe.
dhw: Your response is ambiguous. I’m quite happy to accept the possibility that all these attributes were designed by your God if he exists. But do you agree that such God-designed attributes enable organisms to take their own decisions and solve their problems AUTONOMOUSLY?
At a simple day-to-day adaptation of action level. My dog shows purposeful activity all of the time.
Ant intelligence:dhw: The very fact that this process covers the whole of evolution (99.9% of which had no connection with your God’s one and only purpose) makes far more sense if – still in the context of theism – we assume that the intelligent design was done by the organisms themselves, and your God only provided the original ability to design. This would also explain why the 99.9% appeared and disappeared: their intelligence was not sufficient to overcome new requirements when conditions changed. Only 0.1% had enough (see Raup, who apparently calls them the lucky ones).
DAVID: Back you go to secondhand designing. God must give organisms a full course in intelligent design so He can just sit back and watch, stepping in stop and correct mistakes. Fully inefficient and more cumbersome than direct designing.
dhw: The only “course in intelligent design” is your alternative to your 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every design, which is courses or dabbles whenever there is a new problem. And the only “stepping in” is done by your version of a dabbling God, who either corrects his own mistakes or deliberately culls the 99.9% of species which he inefficiently designed although they were irrelevant to his purpose. The theory that organisms do their own designing does indeed leave your God setting up the system and then sitting back and watching, or possibly abandoning us altogether. That’s called deism. Totally efficient and not in the least cumbersome, if that was what he wanted to do. (He could also dabble if he felt like it.) And since his reasons are unknowable, please don’t pretend that you know what reasons he couldn’t have had. A free-for-all (like my experimentation alternatives) is just as feasible as your messy, inefficient blunderings, solves the problem of the irrelevant 99.9%, and even solves the problem of theodicy. As Doris Day once sang to us: “Que sera sera.”
Again, you struggle to sneak in an overly humanized God. God in no sense is human.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
QUOTE:"[…] "No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”
dhw: I’m aghast at the sheer arrogance of these statements. […]
DAVID: You are so aghast, because there are others unlike you who do not share your love of intelligence in lower forms. I am one of them. Beware of anthropomorphizing others' mental capacities. What looks intelligent can be the result of intelligent design providing intelligent responses to needs or changing environment.
dhw: I went on to list the attributes that most of us would regard as signs of intelligence.
DAVID: Yes, anthropomorphized intelligence the author warns against.
Cognition, sentience, and sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities are not anthropomorphized. You have agreed that other life forms have all these capabilities:
DAVID: You have given the proper list and i agree to it with the proviso that it equally be all from intelligent design, in which I believe.
dhw: Your response is ambiguous. I’m quite happy to accept the possibility that all these attributes were designed by your God if he exists. But do you agree that such God-designed attributes enable organisms to take their own decisions and solve their problems AUTONOMOUSLY?
DAVID: At a simple day-to-day adaptation of action level. My dog shows purposeful activity all of the time.
Nobody would claim that the intelligence of our fellow animals extends to human levels. You agree that solving problems, taking decisions etc. denote autonomous intelligence in our fellow animals. Thank you.
Ant intelligence:
This subject somehow morphed into discussion of your illogical theory of evolution and my logical alternatives.
DAVID: Again, you struggle to sneak in an overly humanized God. God in no sense is human.
Once again, you tell us your God is unknowable, but you know that he has no thought patterns or emotions like ours, although a short time ago he probably and then possibly had thought patterns and emotions like ours.
Basal cognition: what is intelligence?
by David Turell , Friday, June 21, 2024, 20:21 (153 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE:"[…] "No surprise, then, that the traits recognisable to us as intelligence co-occur almost exclusively in modern humans.”
And later: “It is primarily a synonym for humanness.”
dhw: I went on to list the attributes that most of us would regard as signs of intelligence.
DAVID: Yes, anthropomorphized intelligence the author warns against.
dhw: Cognition, sentience, and sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities are not anthropomorphized. You have agreed that other life forms have all these capabilities:
DAVID: You have given the proper list and i agree to it with the proviso that it equally be all from intelligent design, in which I believe.dhw: Your response is ambiguous. I’m quite happy to accept the possibility that all these attributes were designed by your God if he exists. But do you agree that such God-designed attributes enable organisms to take their own decisions and solve their problems AUTONOMOUSLY?
DAVID: At a simple day-to-day adaptation of action level. My dog shows purposeful activity all of the time.
dhw:Nobody would claim that the intelligence of our fellow animals extends to human levels. You agree that solving problems, taking decisions etc. denote autonomous intelligence in our fellow animals. Thank you.
I'm sure they have some simple solutions to simple challenges.
Ant intelligence:This subject somehow morphed into discussion of your illogical theory of evolution and my logical alternatives.
DAVID: Again, you struggle to sneak in an overly humanized God. God in no sense is human.
dhw: Once again, you tell us your God is unknowable, but you know that he has no thought patterns or emotions like ours, although a short time ago he probably and then possibly had thought patterns and emotions like ours.
The issue remains, God is unknowable, but we can guess at His purposes from His creations.