[MD] expanded list Platt

[Arlo Bensinger]

[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.