Instinctual Behavior Vs Intelligent Decisions

Perhaps it is too broad to simply label an action as 'intelligent'.For this thread, at least, it seems important to examine behaviors in light of the physical actions taking place. So we look at the spider spinning a web as a specific behavior: web spinning; or the beaver building the dam as a specific behavior: dam building; or the person building a sky-scraper as a specific behavior: sky-scrapper building.From this level, it is clear that the first two behaviors are hard-wired and instinctual, the third one seems less so.It's pretty clear that 'intelligence' itself is innate in human beings, but all specific behaviorsor manifestations of that intelligenceare not. Some seemingly intelligent behaviors are innate, of course, such as Language.Using Crash's criteria, all [normal] humans utilize the Language behavior, and so we can say it is innate; but not all humans utilize the English behavior, or the Swahili behavior, or... etc, so we would not say 'speaking English is an innate human behavior'. We would, however, say that 'speaking/using language (in general) is an innate human behavior'.Thus, the issue at hand here seems to be figuring out how we can distinguish between behaviors that are instinctual at their base and behaviors which are merely the manifestations of some form of intelligenceeven if the intelligence itself is innate.Admittedly I don't see the higher purpose in doing this, except in allowing folk to classify things as either intelligent or not intelligent based on some arbitrary criteria so that they can feel as if their application of the word 'intelligent' is more meaningful and less arbitrary than it really is and less so than the nature of this whole exercise reveals it to be.But Wolly seems interested in it...JonEdited by Jon, : clarity

Do you have some examples to go with that?Sounds like a good start, for sure, but it would be dishonest of us to conclude the search for an answer over so soon and without any investigating.Jon

What types of things specifically? For example, I mentioned language in my earlier post, claiming that the use of language in general is an innate behavior in humans, but that the use of any one language in particular is not.How can we filter this situation through your criteria of novel solution vs. unadaptable behavior?Further, defining intelligence as 'the ability to solve novel problems in novel ways' seems only to address things on a species-wide level, and doesn't look at the behavior itself to determine whether the critter is exhibiting evidence of intelligence or not.How can we use your filter with specific behaviors?If we want to get general, we can simply mark off finding new solutions as 'business as usual' for us H. sapiens and so conclude that there's little novel about it.Why can't we do that?Jon

How is this any different than what Crashfrog mentioned back in Message 6?