[John]
Yes you would. I wouldn't. I'd say the difference is that the fruit
fly is alive and the pebble is not.
[Arlo]
Well, we're arguing semantics here. I'd simply say "alive" means
"biological", and hence that is exactly what I said ("I'd say the
difference you are seeing is the expanded repertoire of
response-possibilities the fruit fly has [via its biological foundation]").
[John]
That's because I'm un-sophist-icated.
[Arlo]
No, you're not. You just like to pretend you are. :-)
[John]
Well quoting Platt might not win too many points with you Arlo, but
he's quoting pirsig in a post here:
[Arlo]
I don't discount anything Platt says just because he says it. In this
case, however Horse already pointed out that this is not a Pirsig
quote. But introducing the term "thinking", like "intelligence", is
something we need to approach cautiously.
Does a cell "think"? Does Quality "think"? Do Ribosomes "think"?
If by "thinking" you mean as I've already said "the ability to
encode, manipulate and communicate abstract symbols representing
experience" then I'd say this has a foundation in the complex neural
structures of certain biological patterns, but it wouild not apply to
amoebas, cells, ribosomes or protons.
That is, "thinking" is a very specific way certain complex species
have to respond to their environment. I'd further argue that this is
enabled by the sociality of the species. Animals, for example, that
evidence greater social participation also evident greater
"thinking". Dogs, dolphins, apes, etc. all appear to "think" more
robustly than fruit flies. This is an interesting tangent, which
would take us into "bee-think" (since bee populations have been
mentioned here).
And if you're suggesting that "Quality thinks", then you've just made
Quality directly into Platt's Qualigod.
[John]
We see other animals like your dog, and Bo's raven doing it. Where
does it stop? That's an open-ended question, in my book.
[Arlo]
Well that's my point. "Thinking" is not a synonym for "biological",
it is a specific response afforded to species with the greater neural
capacity to enable social participation.
[John]
But it's a valuable distinction to assert that only biological beings
possess intelligence, not their individual constiuent parts.
[Arlo]
Aren't cells a constituent part of human beings? Of course, you
*could* just simplify this to say "only sufficiently complex
biological beings possess intelligence", and be done with it. :-)
[John]
If we're going to "go there", then I'd say we have to attribute the
intelligence of particles to a cosmic background intelligent matrix
of being. This isn't a far-fetched way of looking at it from the
perspective of eastern ways of liberation or QM, but this is also an
area I assign to that which I deem investigation rather than definition.
[Arlo]
Well, saying "everything is intelligent against an intelligent
matrix" just makes the distinction of intelligence meaningless. At
the point where everything is intelligent what does it even mean? Its
like saying "everything is purple". If that's so, then "purple" is a
distinction without a difference.
Of course, you could introduce some sort of scale, which I had
already done in discussing the evolutionary trajectory of
response-repertoires. Cells are "more intelligent" than protons, and
humans are "more intelligent" than cells, etc. But since
"intelligence" has already been reduced to "response", what's the
point of the term?
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