[MD] expanded list Platt

[Horse]

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


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"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
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