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Quote from: another_someone on 01/03/2008 17:22:19I would disagree that any other definition is doomed to failure, but I am quite happy with the definition you have offered (it is actually not so far from the definition I proposed - I used the term 'problem solving', whereas you are using the term 'adaptive behaviour' - I don't see a huge gulf between them).There is no relationship between those two things! "Problem solving" is business-speak. It is like an executive/corporate buzzword. That's the way somebody who reads the Wall Street Journal would try to define intelligence in relation to an IQ test that they wholeheartedly believe actually measures something.Anyway.... I think in terms of a scientific/biological/neuroscience perspective, problem-solving would be subsumed under the behavior normally called PLANNING. What is the "problem" that intelligence provides a "solution" to? It's a failed way of looking at this. In any case, it is fine for a philosopher to look at the world as "problems" with "solutions" but in science no such claims can be made. We have to be a little more careful with our wording.
I would disagree that any other definition is doomed to failure, but I am quite happy with the definition you have offered (it is actually not so far from the definition I proposed - I used the term 'problem solving', whereas you are using the term 'adaptive behaviour' - I don't see a huge gulf between them).
QuoteThe problem I have is that you seem to be implying that collectives of individuals (societies, even species) do not exhibit collective adaptation behaviour. I cannot accept this assertion."Collective adaptation behavior" is a mental abstraction. The only reason you cannot accept the assertion is because you are inventing mental categories up in your own head and then demanding I cater to them. What you are probably going to do now is conflate "adaptive behavior" with something like BIOLOGICAL CHANGE, and then point at a tree that heals itself and demand I admit that its "adapting its behavior".
The problem I have is that you seem to be implying that collectives of individuals (societies, even species) do not exhibit collective adaptation behaviour. I cannot accept this assertion.
QuoteAs you say, homo sapiens have harnessed fire and developed complex language, but what you quite rightly did not say is that an individual homo sapien harnessed fire or developed complex language.I'm pretty sure what I wrote was that humans have the ABILITY to control fire, which is completely different from saying "fire was harnessed". I was not intending to point at technology and go "LOOK! Problem solving! Intelligence!". I think that's what your own mind read, but it's not what I wrote or intended to communicate. The use of fire is not in our genetics. It is culture and has to be picked up by watching someone else do it during our lifetime. That means that you have a suite of behaviors that you are born with, but using fire is not one of them. That particular behavior has to be learned. So the suite of innate behaviors does not contain those which you engage in now as an adult. It follows that your behavior changed. More accurately, it follows that your behavior adapted.
As you say, homo sapiens have harnessed fire and developed complex language, but what you quite rightly did not say is that an individual homo sapien harnessed fire or developed complex language.
At the top is homo sapiens that can change their behavior so rapidly and effectively that they have harnessed fire and developed complex language and use technology and drive cars etc etc.
QuoteThen again, we are not the only species to have developed language (in various forms), and there are species (such as bats and dolphins) that have learnt to use sound in ways that until the 20th humans had not learnt to master (and even then, they could only learn to master with the development of machines, and then the development was as a collective, since no individual could have made the development possible on their own).That's simply false, sir. Bats did not "LEARNT" to use sonar to navigate. Natural selection produced that ability in their genes. That is completely different from learning. Cats have much better reflexes than human beings. Birds of prey have much better vision than human beings. However, human beings are many orders of magnitude more intelligent than birds. What's the essential difference? The difference is that we can CHANGE our behavior, and they cannot.
Then again, we are not the only species to have developed language (in various forms), and there are species (such as bats and dolphins) that have learnt to use sound in ways that until the 20th humans had not learnt to master (and even then, they could only learn to master with the development of machines, and then the development was as a collective, since no individual could have made the development possible on their own).
Let me make an analogy. A computer can perform long division several million times a second, and do so for hours on end, without messing up a SINGLE DIGIT. Does this make your computer more intelligent than you? Of course not. They burn the circuitry into an integrated circuit during manufacture, and the entire behavior of that microchip can be completely described by a list of short machine code instructions. (The list is called the Instruction Set). The chip's behavior cannot CHANGE. In fact, if it does change, it is considered faulty. Again, you can change your behavior, and the long-dividing supercomputer cannot.
I don't mean to get personal here, but I'm looking at your other posts on this thread, and you are attributing intelligence to bacteria, which don't even have a central nervous system. I think you are trying desperately to define intelligence as some sort of ability to survive in an environment, and it's not working, and so you are posting ever more absurd sentences in this thread. Yes, if you look at an entire species of bacteria, some of them are very good at surviving. I just want to tell you, very clearly now, that intelligence is NOT "ability to survive in an environment". It has never meant that in any sense at all. Plants and bacteria are the stupidest forms of life possibly imaginable since they have no central nervous system.
Quote from: another_someone on 01/03/2008 17:22:19There is no relationship between those two things! "Problem solving" is business-speak. It is like an executive/corporate buzzword. That's the way somebody who reads the Wall Street Journal would try to define intelligence in relation to an IQ test that they wholeheartedly believe actually measures something. But are you sure you just don't have the right type of intelligence for business? I share your dislike for jargon and modish or inflated diction (only a bad writer uses modish or inflated diction), but that does not mean that business people don't have the right type of intelligence for the job. I've been working with creative people. They are very creative, as the type of intelligence they have leads them to be, but they went out of business.
There is no relationship between those two things! "Problem solving" is business-speak. It is like an executive/corporate buzzword. That's the way somebody who reads the Wall Street Journal would try to define intelligence in relation to an IQ test that they wholeheartedly believe actually measures something.