On 11/27/2014 12:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 26 Nov 2014, at 23:34, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/26/2014 9:53 AM, John Clark wrote:
No that is not fine. I DEFINE intelligence just as everybody else does, the ability to
find novel solutions to new problems, the greater the variety of problems the greater
the intelligence. I DEDUCE that if intelligent beings can be non-conscious then
Darwin was wrong. My OPINION is that Darwin was not wrong.
I don't think that deduction is unqualifiedly valid. First, evolution permits what
Gould called "spandrels". I don't think human consciousness is a spandrel, but it's
possible. Second, there may be different ways of being intelligent (as game theorists
will play NIM differently from most people) and human consciousness necessarily
accompanied human intelligence because of the precursors (hominid intelligence) that
evolution had to start with. For example, I think human consciousness and intelligence
are both closely linked to language. Language is an evolutionarily useful adaptation
of social animals. But I see no reason that no-social animals cannot be intelligent
(e.g. ocotopi are solitary by are the most intlligent non-vertebrates). This implies
that there can be intelligent beings without language and therefore without anything
like human-consciousness; although they would have consciousness in Bruno's sense of
"being aware".
OK. I see consciousness being very close to the "simple" belief that there is a
reality.
Meaning that one perceives things that don't respond to one's will, things that constitute
an environment that is independent of self. This requires some sensors, some values to be
pursued, and the ability to form a model of self+environment+interactions.
This is equivalent to belief in self-consistency,
How so?
Brent
and by the second incompleteness, such a belief is not justifiable by the entity. So I
see consciousness as an elementary mystical state, where we have vision and interpret it
as showing the existence of something without being able to prove or justify that existence.
Yet this is what gives the meaning or the semantic of the proposition that the machine
can made.
Intelligence is more like a *disposition* making it possible to develop some competence
to act on, or change, that reality. A crow is said intelligent because they can use
tools to extract some food from a recipient, and adapt the tools with respect to the
recipient. But a bird which cannot do that intelligent task, can still be as much
conscious than the crow. It just does not get the right ideas, perhaps it has not the
patience, or it has not enough memories, but it believes as much as the crow in some
reality around them.
Bruno
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