Thanks for sharing these ideas, which, for me, raise a long standing
problem.
The concept of 'intelligence' emerged as an ascription of a quality to
humans and other animals who are capable of certain capabilities. That
is to say, the starting point was the behaviours, and this led to the
definition of the concept which charactarised those behaviours. This
seems to be what you are describing in your section 1. The Concept of
Intelligence, with the list (a) to (m).
In section 2, on the other hand, you speak of 'problem solving' as 'the
major embodiment of intelligence'. In this case, 'intelligence' is no
longer a description of behaviours, but rather the entity which makes
those behaviours possible.
There is nothing wrong with hypothesising that an ascribed quality is in
fact a verifiable entity. We can go and look for evidence that the
entity exists, and that is often how science moves forward. But in the
present case the concept of general intelligence (G), as a causal force
rather than a statistical tool, is open to doubt. If there is a general
intelligence (as opposed to a collection of capabilities) which can be
'embodied' in problem solving, then a number of difficult problems are
raised. Where does this general intelligence reside? What is it composed
of? How is it deployed in our problem solving and other aspects of our
living?
Our understanding of this is complicated by our experience of day to day
interactions, in which we interact with people as wholes rather than a
collection of individual capabilities. This gives us the intuition that
some people have more of the quality of general intelligence about them
than do others. And in our language it is reasonable to have a word
which refers to that impression which we have, and that is how we use
the word 'intelligence'. But in our scientific endeavours we need to be
more cautious and critical, and aspire to making a distinction between
observable mechanisms and ascribed qualities (not that this is
necessarily easy to achieve in methodological terms). Because of this I
am sympathetic to Steven's request for differentiation of the topics and
types of inquiry. If we do not go down this road then we should
recognise the possibility that we will end up with a theory which is the
equivalent of the phlogiston explanation for combustion.
My background is in education, not in intelligence research, so I am
happy to be corrected by those with greater expertise!
Dai
On 07/03/15 03:53, 钟义信 wrote:
Dear Pedro,
Thank you very much for recommending Ms. ZHAO's good topic, intelligence
science, for discussion at FIS platform. I think it very much valuable that Ms.
ZHAO put forward to us the great challenge of methodology shift. The attached
file expressed some of my understanding on this iuuse that I would like to share
with FIS friends.
Best regards,
Yixin ZHONG
----- 回复邮件 -----
*发信人:*Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>
*收信人:*fis <fis@listas.unizar.es>
*时间:*2015年03月04日 19时58分15秒
*主题:*Re: [Fis] THE FRONTIERS OF INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE--Zhao Chuan
Dear Chuan and FIS colleagues,
The scientific study of intelligence is quite paradoxical. One is
reminded about the problems of psychology and ethology to create
adequate categories and frameworks about animal and human intelligence.
The approaches started in Artificial Intelligence were quite glamorous
three or four decades ago, but the limitations were crystal clear at the
end of the 80's. It marked the beginning of Artificial Life and quite
many other views at the different frontiers of the theme (complexity
theory, biocybernetics, biocomputing, etc.) Also an enlarged
Information Science was vindicated as the best option to clear the air
(Stonier, Scarrott... and FIS itself too). In that line, Advanced
Artificial Intelligence, as proposed by Yixin Zhong and others, has
represented in my view a bridge to connect with our own works in
information science. That connection between information "processing"
and intelligence is essential. But in our occasional discussions on the
theme we have always been centered in, say, the scientific
quasi-mechanistic perspectives. It was time to enter the humanistic
dimensions and the connection with the arts. Then, this discussion
revolves around the central pillar to fill in the gap between sciences
and humanities, the "two cultures" of CP Snow.
The global human intelligence, when projected to the world, creates
different "disciplinary" realms that are more an historical result that
a true, genuine necessity. We are caught, necessarily given our
limitations, in a perspectivistic game, but we have the capacity to play
and mix the perspectives... multidisciplinarity is today the buzzword,
though perhaps not well addressed and explained yet. So, your
reflections Chao are quite welcome.
best--Pedro
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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-----------------------------------------
Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Educational Cybernetics
Institute for Educational Cybernetics (IEC)
The University of Bolton
http://www.bolton.ac.uk/IEC
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