Here's something for you all to ponder... consider an AND gate; a solid-state logical device consisting of two input streams and a single output stream. The truth table for the mapping of inputs to outputs is the usual AND function (1 if both inputs are 1, 0 otherwise).

Now, many philosophers and most computer scientists would accept that there is a kind of intelligence displayed in the ability to produce this logical output given the input. But here's the question... where is the intelligence? Is it in the inputs? Or perhaps in the little bits of hardware that make up the gate? Or is it only in the output? The generally accepted answer is that the intelligence is in the union of the inputs and the hardware. The hardware has a specific design that can process the information content of the inputs to produce an 'intelligent' output. Sound familiar? This is also a good description of what the brain does and what thousands of other 'intelligent' machines do.

There is no need to posit consciousness to explain intelligence and indeed, if you talk to any neuroscientist or neuropsychologist, they'll make sure you don't talk about either of these in the same sentence!

Cheers,

Timkin

Quote: Original Post by Timkin
There is no need to posit consciousness to explain intelligence

I agree with you with no doubt Timkin. As i said before i think we humans arent born with intelligence and yet we intelligently learn conciousness and inteliigently cry so our parents can attend our needs, because we see this is the way theyll come to us

timkin:

considering the general belief in the field of neuroscience and neuropsychology is that there is no such thing as a hard problem in consciousness, of course they would see it as a wrong proposal. as for a logic gate being intelligent, you can certainly say that, but this definition makes the whole word intelligent superfluious, since just what process cannot be described by logic and thusly be reconstructed by the gates? i.e. what is not intellegent then? this is not just a matter of complexity (which many seems to have reduce this to), but our distinction between accidents and intentional action before complexity would even be contextually relevant. and i'll add that, as many philosophers accept the definition of intelligence you mentioned, there are also many that rejects it.

actually, let me ask all of you this:
is a bug in a logic circuit as intellegent as the logic circuit itself?

Intelligence is something we claim to have in order to feel superior to other entities that we claim not to have it.

See previous page [\quote]

You're kind of missing the point here.In case you forgot,we we discussing my definition of intellegence.In it i said that it deipends on past experience and current knowledge.In your example of a person born blind the past experience and the current knowledge are different,which is why he cannot point out to a color or a picture for that matter.But the thing is this case is similar to Tarzan seeing a car!HE JUST NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.This is in no way linked to consciousness.You see all you did in your post is talk about past experence,over which we never where in conflict.Thus you're deaf person learning music is also a bad example in this case since.....the past experience is different.
I never said instinct was intellegence,I just said that consciousness and intelligence aren't related.

Peace.

PS: Read Timkin's post ;-)

Original post by ilavos

Quote: See previous page [\quote]

You're kind of missing the point here.In case you forgot,we we discussing my definition of intellegence.In it i said that it deipends on past experience and current knowledge.In your example of a person born blind the past experience and the current knowledge are different,which is why he cannot point out to a color or a picture for that matter.But the thing is this case is similar to Tarzan seeing a car!HE JUST NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.This is in no way linked to consciousness.You see all you did in your post is talk about past experence,over which we never where in conflict.Thus you're deaf person learning music is also a bad example in this case since.....the past experience is different.
I never said instinct was intellegence,I just said that consciousness and intelligence aren't related.

i think you've missed my point. i have tried to stress just one single point throughout all my posts - it's that experience is what makes consciousness, and without consciousness, there is not such thing as experience. no experience means no knowledge, and no knowledge means no intelligence. your tarzan example just showed that you didn't understand the subtle differences. but no matter, this isn't called the "hard" problem for nothing.

btw, your tarzan example is wrong because it's not just past experience that matters it _the ability to have experience_ that matters, i.e. consciousness. something which your definition must assume to begin with but also which something you have completely ignored.

and just to be sure you don't mistakenly read it as me condesending to you (that's not my intention): it's called the "hard" problem because historically, this problem has eluded many people even in the field of the philosophy of mind. people seem to just take the ability to experience, for example the red colour (as oppose to just responding to 650 nm wavelength of light without even knowning what you responded to) for granted and never even know that there is something more to just the wavelength when we say something is "red". but this very experience that forms our basic impression which allows us to form more complex ones like conceiving something as a car (here you see why your tarzan example were off the mark) that makes knowledge - which is the very basis of intelligence.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
but this definition makes the whole word intelligent superfluious,

No, it only does this if you consider the naive interpretation of what I wrote (I'm not suggesting you're naive, just that there is a LOT more to what I wrote then 99.9% of people will ever realise). Indeed, by your discussion just above about qualia is actually handled by my definition. Qualia is certainly an aspect of both the environment and the observer. It is impossible for it not to be and both are needed for the experience of qualia in objects.

My description of the logic gate was not to posit that intelligence is found in such simple objects... it is... but we must obviously understand that such a logic gate is akin to the simplest intelligence. In that way, it is perfectly reasonable to call the electronic thermostat in your house intelligent... but not reasonable to say that it is as intelligent, as say, yourself.

One final comment... you need to be careful with the use of the word experience when discussing this topic because it has two possible meanings and they can very easily be confused. The first is obviously experience as a set of past events or history that defines a path through the temporal and spatial domain to the current state of the agent; and the second is experience in the sense of what is being experienced now... the qualia or informative content of observations. I agree conditionally that the latter is necessary for intelligence... I definitely do not agree that the former is needed; nor is it needed to explain consciousness... people with retrograde amnesia are still intelligent and conscious (and aware)... although it is certainly arguable that people who have no sensory input or experience no qualia from their interaction with their environment are not conscious... and indeed, they're probably flat on a slab with no brain function at all! ;)

Personally, I dislike the use of the word consciousness, since it has so many different meanings to so many different people... and I see no evidence to suggest that we need to speak of consciousness when we speak of intelligence. This is just an unfortante binding to the 19th century past when 'men' wanted to justify their destruction of nature in the industrial age... by positing that other animals were not intelligent they were not conscious and hence it didn't matter if we, as a society, destroyed them. This view still continues in modern times for many people, unfortunately.

Anyway, I've gone on for longer than I wanted to. My point is that yes, qualia are important, but not in the way that many philosphers have held to for so long (see above)...and people should stop and think about the definition I gave above for a good long period. There is a lot more depth to that comparison of the logic gate to the brain beyond the simplistic view that I was saying the brain is a bunch of complex logic gates (which I wasn't, actually)!

Cheers,

Timkin