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Author | Topic: Higher Intelligence | |||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
What do you mean by 'intelligence'?
dictionary.com writes:
quote: How can evolution have a capacity for learning?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I feel ya....
Is Gaia supposed to be conscious too?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Maybe you will want to hold off until I start getting what we think we already know about stochastic process out into play though, that will be another post. Well get to it already.
And wouldn't that actually be an example of my theory in action, i e wouldn't that "intelligence" you attribute to Sacajawea actually be something larger than her, shared by her tribe, and originating not in her nervous system but rather in the process of evolution, the intelligence of life itself. Have you learned about superposition?
This just shines more light on the gist of the theory though. That spider is born with the knowledge to do those things. So they don't so much represent the intelligence of the individual spider, as they do the intelligence of the spider species? They are a result of an intense thinking process that Life itself has had going on, for a long long time, in which some ideas are represented as kinds of bugs. These ideas are very very succesful, they are good ideas. But are they "intelligent"? Its instinct. I see them more as robots than having some overarching intelligence.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I think of it with more of an evolutionary assumption.
Early spiders presumably didn't have as complex webs as they do now. Assuming the spiders just make random webs, the spiders with slightly more complex webs had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't. This web building ability is passed on genetically. As more and more complexity is added to the structure of the web over generations, more and more advantage is added to their survivability. This could yield very complicated webs that are created randomly from gentic information. The gentic info that they build their random webs (which happen to be very complex) is their instinct. This wouldn't reaquire any intelligence at all.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
But we may disagree on which organism is more "intelligent" than another. Uh-oh.... Quotation marks around a word
If you ever happened to watch the ciliate Epidinium under the microscope, you have to ask some hard questions about intelligence and complexity. I couldn't tell you how intelligent they are, although they do remarkable things I can't do, but they are "complex" in a surprising way. These single-celled organisms have mouths, anuses, skeletons, antennae, ecotoplasms, cilia, and so forth. I don't have a single cell in my entire body, excluding extraneous organisms from ambient sources, that is as complex as an Epidinium's. I don't think they are intelligent at all. I we use the definition of intelligence that I quotes in Message 3, then it requires mental activity. But those quotes around the word show that this isn't realy what you are talking about.
I don't know how to measure "higher" intelligence. I don't think my intelligence if "higher" than Google's, for example, and Google doesn't even qualify as a living organism. Or does it? No, and it doesn't have any mental activity so it doesn't have any intelligence at all. But again, you seem to be refering to something other than intelligence. I don't really know what it is or how to wrap my mind around it so there isn't much I can discuss about it.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
CS, please draw a line between two entries on my list that separates the “intelligent” creatures from the rest. Okay. HumansChimps Squirrels Parrots Turtles Sharks _____________ GrasshoppersFlatworms Coelenterates Protists Archaea Bacteria flatworms that learned to avoid electric shocks That's just a response to the environment, not an intellectual decision.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Everything that is done by all species is a response to their environment wouldn't you say? Nope. Well, maybe in a philosophical sense but not in a practical sense. I would divide responses from non-responses (to the environment) by whether or not it was a conscious decision. When I flinch, its a response. When I decide to not eat the cheesecake even though I'm hungry, its not a response to the environment. That's because I've made a conscious decision. That one was particularly against what my response to the environment would be.
In my opinion where the line can be drawn for intelligence, if we had to draw a line, is in the ability to learn from those you interact with, with the conscious awareness that its a benefit to you and that way its something you'd want to pass on to your child(I think its refered to as Memes). That's not a bad place to draw it, I guess. Honestly though, its all conjecture (mine too). I would draw it after the awareness for the benefit and before the want to pass it on.
As a species gets smarter due to its ability to raise its consciousness, it gives rise to what we refer to as intelligence. In that respect nothing under primate and some domestic animals seem to have this capacity; the capacity to learn with the intent to progress as a whole. Whales and Dolphins. Elephants. Lions.
In fact it could be argued that nothing under humans actually have full use of this ability. I used to think that but I now believe that non-human animals do have non-zero levels of intelligence. Our's is so exponentially higher that there's seems like zero, but they ehibit some characteristics of intelligence that I would put them at non-zero. Oh wait. You said full use. Hrm. Is our's even full use?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So an organism needs to be a chordate to be "intelligent"? Yeah, but not all chordates are intelligent.
How come? I think you need the highly developed brain for the higher brain function required for the mental capacity to make conscious decision to be intelligent.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I see them more as robots than having some overarching intelligence. Well that's fine, but we don't want to be calling them well-designed robots, that's right out the window! Why? Evolution designed them quite well.
So let's call it a different kind of intelligence, to start with. And see what blows up! Meh. I'm not that interested. Post something of substance so I have something to reply too.
I've seen some commentary here to the effect that people who can't understand evolution also don't seem to understand their own thinking process. If they are the same thing, or the same kind of thing, that would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it? Um, no... not really.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I wouldn't call that "intelligence" and it certainly doesn't fit the dictionary definition.
I think a different word for it would be better.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Yet, isn't the cuttlefish as intelligent as a dog? And some octopus are as intelligence. Those are not chordates Oh, good call! I hadn't thought of those. Thanks for the contribution. There's probably not some line we can draw that everything above is, and everything below is not, intelligient. Its fun to try though. At least, you need a well developed brain to have intelligence.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Early writes: spiders presumably didn't have as complex webs as they do now. This is one of the reasons I go with ID sudden biological creation. The species have a hard enough time surviving with all they have allegedly added bit by bit to become, the complex creatures thay are for survival. One wonders how they ever suvived when they first allegedly began developing primitive incomplete survival features. Lots and lots of them giving it a shot. Less competitive pressure. Less predatory pressure. Just to throw out some speculation to relieve the supposed impossibility. But regardless, what you have is fallacious reasoning.... You shouldn't take belief B because of a lack of evidence for belief A. You should take belief B because of the reason for taking that belief. Saying that spider web evolution seems too difficult, ergo spotaneous creation is bad reasoning. You should take spontaneous creation because of the evidence that suggests it happened. Which is?
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