so perdition, when, in your POV, does intelligence begin?
Is it when volition takes place? at what point of volition? Does a creature have to have brain? of what size? how do you measure it? How do you define it? Is that your opinion or scientific fact?
Intelligence requires a mind. It requires the ability to understand, to make decisions, and yes, to have volition. In short, it requires a brain or other similar apparatus.
And that's just based off the DEFINITION of intelligence. It doesn't have to be a scientific fact that circles have a round shape...it's part of the definition of the word circle. I could say that a block of wood displays circularity because it sits there doing what blocks of wood does. This would be wrong though, because a block fo wood sitting there does not show any aspect of what being a circle means, I'm just redefining a word that everyone already knows the original definition for.
There have been experiments where a cell in an embryo was moved from one point in the embryo to another. Because this cell had the "programming" to become a brain cell or a heart cell, the cell moved back to its natural position in the embryo, where it could form the basis of similar cells. Is this intelligence? Is it volition? Did some outside agency move it back?
No, it's not intelligence, it's programming, it's natural laws. It's a predictable reaction caused by a known stimulus.
Please note that this is least as important, as nebulous, and as open to personal opinion as the question of when life begins to the abortion/choice debate.
No it's not. Life has an ambiguous definition that allows many people to make a judgement call on the exact point. Intelligence, has a much more rigid definition than you're employing. While there are reasons to question what actually displays intelligence in the animal world, that does not mean you can jump to the complete other end of the spectrum and say, maybe there's intelligence here, too. There can be honest debate about which point in the light spectrum orange becomes red, but you can't go to blue and say, there's red here because we don't know exactly where orange stops and red begins.