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I don't think that there is any philosophical difficulty in distinguishing an animal from a coffee table. Intelligence is a broad concept which can be defined o

• AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  > the ability to act upon the environment to achieve one's goals. Prove that the animal has a concept of goals and is not simply a complex arrangement of reactions environmental conditions, like a coffee table moving when you bump into it.
  • sinemetu11 9y ago
    I think what you're asking about is Efference copy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efference_copy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efference_copy Other animals do this. They perceive their own movements as different from an others.
  • naasking 9y ago
    Goals are a complex arrangement of environmental conditions. But not all such conditions are equal. It's perfectly sensible to classify arrangements of matter that have self-awareness and learning behaviour as distinct from those that do not exhibit such behaviours.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      We have computers that demonstrate such behavior, but few would refer to them as intelligent or grant them higher moral worth than even animals.
      • mannykannot 9y ago
        > Few would refer to them as intelligent. Few would refer to a coffee table as intelligent. You seem to be inconsistent in what sort of arguments you will accept.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
          I'm not the one trying to use intelligence as a metric for the moral worth of animals. My argument is that intelligence is a much fuzzier thing than people like to admit. Usually though they're using it as a stand in for "consciousness", or the ability to experience the world as we do.
          • mannykannot 9y ago
            Your inconsistency is more straightforward than that: you started by writing "it isn't clear that a coffee table isn't intelligent on some level", but it is if the "few would regard..." form of argument is acceptable. You are also demanding proof from allenz while presenting a "few would regard.." argument for your own position. I agree that intelligence is largely mysterious at this point, but I think you are pushing it too far in the unknown-and-unknowable direction. A debate in which the intelligence of coffee tables is an issue is not likely to provide much enlightenment about intelligence.
            • AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
              > You are also demanding proof from allenz while presenting a "few would regard.." argument for your own position. "few would regard" isn't my argument though. It is an assumption of the other poster's position. I suppose I could have phrased it as "I would assume you wouldn't regard...". This was done to point out the inconsistency in their reasoning (which is admittedly assumed, if they had responded otherwise then we probably wouldn't actually be disagreeing). >but I think you are pushing it too far in the unknown-and-unknowable direction Actually where I'm going with this is that intelligence isn't actually what we care about re: morality, it's just a metric sometimes used because people haven't thought it through.
  • mannykannot 9y ago
    An obsession with proof leads to the sort of sterile, unresolvable discussion that you describe in your first post. It is much more productive to make some defeasible assumptions and then look for evidence one way or another.
  • allenz 9y ago
    If you're a behaviorist, you would define intelligence as "demonstrates problem-solving behavior". If you're not a behaviorist, then it's perfectly reasonable to presuppose some definition of intent. You could further debate how I would define the coffee table itself (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/), but that's the wrong level of analysis.