Basal cognition: what is intelligence? (Evolution)

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.