Basal cognition: what is intelligence? (Evolution)

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.