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From: JAY%USC-ECLC@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re:  Parallelism & Consciousness
Message-ID: <13169@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Oct-83 17:56:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13169
Posted: Sun Oct 30 17:56:00 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Nov-83 05:39:19 EST
Lines: 44

From:  Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>

    From: RICKL%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA

                ...
    the question we are really discussing seems to be: ``can an entity be
    said to be intelligent in and of itself, or can an entity only be said
    to be intelligent relative to some world?''.  I don't think I believe
    in "pure, abstract intelligence, divorced from the world".
                ...
    another question we have been chasing around is: ``can intelligence be
    regarded as survivability, (or more generally as coping with an
    external environment)?''.  [...]

  I believe intelligence to be the  ability to cope with CHANGES in  the
enviroment.  Take  desert tortoises,  although  they are  quite  young
compared to  amobea,  they  have  been  living  in  the  desert  some
thousands, if  not  millions  of  years.   Does  this  mean  they  are
intelligent? NO! put a freeway through their desert and the  tortoises
are soon dying.  Increase the rainfall and they may become unable  to
compete with  the rabbits  (which  will take  full advantage  of  the
increase in vegitation and produce  an increase in rabbit-ation).   The
ability to cope with  a CHANGE in  the enviroment marks  intellignece.
All a tortoise need do is not  cross a freeway, or kill baby  rabbits,
and then they could  begin to claim  intellignce.  A similar  argument
could be made against intelligent amobea.

  A posible problem with this view  is that biospheres can be  counted
intelligent, in the desert an increase  in rainfall is handled by  an
increase in vegetation, and then  in herbivores (rabbits) and then  an
increase in carnivores (coyotes).  The end result is not the end of  a
biosphere,  but  the  change  of  a  biosphere.   The  biosphere   has
successfully coped  with  a  change  in  its  environment.   Even  more
ludicrous, an argument  could be  made for an  intelligent planet,  or
solar system, or even galaxy.

  Notice, an  organism  that  does  not  change  when  its  environment
changes,  perhaps  because  it  does  not  need  to,  has  not   shown
intelligence.  This is,  of course,  not to say  that that  particular
organism is  un-intelligent.   Were  the world  to  become  unable  to
produce rainbows, people would change little, if at all.

My behavioralism is showing,
j'