Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: intelligence is what?
Message-ID: <1990Oct13.194921.7745@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 13 Oct 90 19:49:21 GMT
References: <1990Oct11.195803.18308@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <26@tdatirv.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 41

In article <26@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
>However I would say that consciousness cannot exist without self-awareness.
>Whether self-awareness can exist without consciousness is difficult.
>[Actually, as I think about it, I realize I have not always distinguished
>between these last two].
>
  The original latin meaning of 'conscious' was something like "a shared
knowlegde" or interestingly, "a feeling of guilt or responsibility".  In
other words, it described how one's knowlegde related one to others and
vice versa.  While the romans don't have to have the last 'word' on this
(har har), I do like the outward direction of its sense and would 
generalize it to mean knowlegde of one's relation to the world.

  Then, I could characterize self-awareness as a similar knowledge that
one is different from those others, and that the differences can be
identified.

>Could it be that self-awareness plus intelligence generates consciousness??

  I don't see how, in the senses given above, one could really exist without
the other.  They are complimentary but simultaneous, like mass and velocity.
Incidently, I don't see a reason for assuming that they are absolute, ie.
that something is 'conscious' or 'self-aware' or not.  There is nothing
I can see that would exclude degrees of them.

>Tentative Definitions:
>
>Intelligence:	the capacity to use models and patterns to reason about and
>		make decisions with incomplete or distorted data.
>
  How about the ability to completely ignore data, or to act unreasonably?
Several postings have pointed to the predictable stimulus-response 
behaviour of 'lower' species as proving them to be less intelligent, and
I quite agree.  Doesn't the ability to be 'irrational' only arise with
intelligence?
--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Saw, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb. 
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu|  So called because it makes its way into a
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 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce