Hi Arlo
On 04/05/2010 19:09, Arlo Bensinger wrote:
[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").
I'll go along with that as it doesn't exclude everything that isn't
human - or even carbon-based.
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".
Yeah, or smart or cunning or one of a number of other words that show
that life can do all sorts of amazing things but that it's not
necessarily intelligence that's involved. I was watching a program on
the box the other night about lions and how they hunt. Watching the
lionesses herd a group of animals they were hunting and separate one
from the group was really clever. Now if they'd have shown that same
trio of lionesses beforehand and one of them was drawing pictures of the
hunted animals in the sand with a bunch of symbols to represent them and
their potential dinner to illustrate what they were going to do I'd have
called that intelligent.
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.
Just calling them "Biological" doesn't tell us too much about how
complex they are and the different degrees to which they are able to
respond to their environment. It's like calling inorganic patterns
"matter" or "stuff" - there are many different types from hydrogen to
extremely complex molecules and groups. Having a grading maybe gives us
some idea about their evolution and potential.
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.
Yep.
"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.
Using the term "intelligence" for every action that makes life different
from a rock is a complete waste of a word which has specific and higher
evolutionary connotations. Like using the word "big" about the universe
or "cold" about absolute zero. We have lots of words and phrases to
describe the world so why not use them selectively and apply them where
they're most appropriate.
Horse
--
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines
or dates by which bills must be paid."
— Frank Zappa
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