Horse and Arlo, I'm gonna tackle you two birds here with one stoner.
Horse says: An amoeba or a plant is no more intelligent than a spring that expands when you attach a weight or atoms of hydrogen and oxygen displaying 'intelligence' by combining to form a water molecule. John: Don't you believe in the laws of biology Horse? Don't you believe in natural selection? If life has no choices, then natural selection makes no sense. Everything would just evolve mechanistically and identically. That's at least as foolish as moRonism because look around you. Life obviously exhibits variety and choice. Choice can only be instantiated by intelligence. Horse: Part of the reason for saying that a cell or whatever having intelligence is to muddy the waters between intelligence and intellect which is part of the mangling of the MoQ necessary to substantiate the idea that SOM is the entirety of the Intellectual level. John: I have no idea to whom you are imputing some sort of ulterior motive of "water muddying", but it ain't me babe. I'm what you call your "pure enquirer". I just wanna know. I enjoy finding out. But it has to make sense. Horse: Notice how some folks that attribute intelligence to a cell will also hotly deny group intelligence. John: Nope, never noticed that. "Some folks" is too vague a term for me. I know what I think. I think both cells and groups exhibit forms of intelligence. Did you know your own immune system is practically a "floating brain"? Capable of creating chemical reactions to subliminal stimuli, communicating with the environment on levels not understood, and taking action in response to subconscious emotional/social input. Sounds intelligent to me. But NOT intellect. Horse: The same will also deny that a machine could ever become intelligent but if they're composed of intelligent components then they must also be intelligent. Just because something appears to learn because we anthropomorphise it's behaviour doesn't mean it's intelligent. John: Agreed. Horse: Intelligence is a characteristic of intellect which is attributable to Intellectual patterns of value John: Ok, the part about "is a characteristic of" while simultaneously being "attributable to". That confuses, but otherwise, clear as muddy waters indeed. Horse: and is part of a hierarchical system we discuss here called the MoQ. Odd that some people tend to forget this when it suits! John: Ok, here we go again with the nebulous "some people". And I don't know what suits you, but what suits me if the non-dogmatic pursuit of reasonable explanations. Which you'd think would proliferate on a forum dedicated to the same! But man, there're a lot of axes to grind out there, eh? On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 2:31 PM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [John to Platt] > If you define intelligence as purposive behavior, then all life has > intelligence. Plants are smart enough to turn toward the sun, so in some > ways > smarter than lotsa people I know! > > [Arlo] > Why stop there? Don't protons and electron exhibit "purposive behavior" > when > they form an atom? > > John: Well Arlo, there are theories of all being contained within a matrix of intelligence and they seem at least plausable enough to investigate. > [John] > But really the good question is where do we draw the line at intellect? > > [Arlo] > Yeah, one I've asked Platt several times in a row. He's already says "cells > have intelligence", so I ask what about the smaller things inside the cell. > Do > Ribosomes have intelligence? Or does intelligence appear at the cellular > level? > If so, where does it reside? > > John: I think we need a plain distinction between intelligence and intellect for this dialogue to make sense. Arlo: Importantly as well, ask what are the characteristics of intelligence that > make > such a statement plausible. Is an amoeba "intelligent" because it pulls > away > from acid? What about a sunflower that turns to the sun? (As you say). If > one > but not the other, why? > > As I said to Adrie, I think conflating "intelligence" with "able to respond > to > its environment" is quite a untenable morass. > > John: Whereas I see it as exactly that and no more. Life is defined as that which can react to its environment creatively - choice being the magic word. If there is no choice in the matter, there is no life. Intelligence is what life uses to make choices. True, some "lower life forms:" don't make good choices and they die. The more sophisticated the choices, the more intelligence possessed by the life form. And then intellect is a completely new form of intelligence that operates on principles of self/other awareness and arises with those life forms pre-disposed to creating intellect through the mechanism of infant nurture. LIfe is obviously a morass, but it's also obviously tenable. It must be, there's so much of it! Springtime! John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
