[John]
If you want to offer "clever" as a signpost of sufficient
intelligence between simplistic organisms like amoeba and more
sophisticated ones like worms, I'll go along with that. But I
couldn't buy the wholesale semantic replacement of one with the other. Arlo?
[Arlo]
Unsure. There are two issues here as I see them. (1) We are talking
about a scale; from simple to sophisticated responses, and (2) We are
how far down to extend words we apply to these responses.
We disagree on point (2), I'd reserve "intelligence" for those
responses made capable by sufficiently-complex neural biology paired
with some early (proto) form of social behavior. (This avoids the
unnecessary and burdensome distinction between "intelligence" and "intellect").
If I understand Horse correctly, he is suggesting we keep the line
here (or around here), but label the responses of simpler biological
organisms "clever".
I guess I just don't understand what's the problem with just calling
them "biological". So when the wings of a butterfly adapt to blend
into its environment, it is a particular biological response afforded
to this creature by its particular composition and complexity.
When an amoeba pulls away from acid, or a proton pulls towards a
neutron, both happen because of the root "value response" of patterns
to their environment, but the complexity and sophistication of their
response is marked by their biological and inorganic repertoires accordingly.
"Intelligence" is an even higher, much more sophisticated, repertoire
of responses enabled by a neural complexity able to support
proto-social symbolic encodings.
I will say, too, that in consideration of point (1), dragging
"intelligence" down to describe the secretions of an earthworm leaves
very little in regard for meaningful understandings of a scale of
intelligence. The earthworm simply acts "biologically", within a set
of possibility enabled and constrained by its particular complexity
and construction. "Intelligent" behavior comes later, an evolutionary
facet of a complex biology supporting social participation.
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