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> we have no idea what intelligence is I wouldn't make so strong a claim in light of what philosophy has to say about intelligence. Relevant here also are cert

> we have no idea what intelligence is I wouldn't make so strong a claim in light of what philosophy has to say about intelligence. Relevant here also are certain metaphysical presuppositions made by fields like neuroscience that preclude that understanding. Furthermore, even knowledge of something does not necessarily entail ability to reproduce something.

dmreedy 7y ago
Philosophy absolutely has lots to say about intelligence, much of which is mutually contradicting. There are a lot of different models out there, based off of varying levels of cleavage to various priors, that all seem to have very little real explanatory (or, I should say, predictive) power. Approaches based off of current materialist, biology-based methods have a little more utility behind them as far as we can tell (some of our drugs seem to do something to the mind), but the furthest they've gotten so far is to be able to figure out some of the things that matter to intelligence, rather than a successful general model for what it is. And while I'll agree that this lack doesn't necessarily preclude the ability to reproduce intelligence, it does make it darn hard to recognize it.
RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe much of what philosophy has to say to say about what it thinks about intelligence is bull-hooky and actually holding us back. The 'understanding' we have feeds into our presumptions, so I agree in that regard. Arguably, the tangible limits experienced in our actual models of the world based on those presumptions are reflective of the validity of those assumptions. Clearly, in the case of modeling 'intelligence' and 'mind', they aren't that great, indicating we really don't understand the phenomena. I've made this argument repeatedly and before on this platform, but I think the biggest mistake we've made in this field is regarding the preeminence of what we experience as 'human' intelligence and our mental models for how that 'must' work. I'm going to catch all kinds of flack for this, but its my biased perspective that plants are just as intelligent as animal life, but because we use humans as a litmus for what intelligence must 'look' like; we have a very difficult time enumerating what intelligence a non-human organism must have. I think intelligence is reliant on two functions: complexity and connectivity. Plants (vascular) are far more highly connected than animals, and at a cellular level they are as, if not more complex then animal life in cell structure and tissue type. We just don't acknowledge intelligence when its considerations are so distant from our own concerns. I think a revised model where modes of intelligence are attributed starting at an individually cellular model, and build into more complex modes of computational complexity would really clear a lot of this up, and get different modes of intelligence into a singular framework.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> Furthermore, even knowledge of something does not necessarily entail ability to reproduce something. Well, since we're on a philosophical footing, I'll say that knowledge of what intelligence is does not entail the ability to reproduce it, but the ability to reproduce intelligence entails knowledge of what it is. (A |= B means that, whenever A is true, B is true, but not necessarily v.v.) You are right to say that knowledge of what intelligence is does not entail the ability to reproduce it, since for example there may be hard practical obstacles to realising the necessary technologies etc. But I would think the ability to reproduce intelligence entails knowledge of what it is, assuming intelligence is something very complex that we will not just spontaneously obtain by chance, for example by a lucky combination of various random elements. We have certainly been trying to reproduce intelligence on computers for a while now- and failed. So it doesn't seem to be something in the order of, say, coming up with a cure for some ailment by trying things that we believe "should work" and that works in a way we don't quite understand etc. All of which, given it's true, implies that we will not reproduce intelligence until we understand it.

dmreedy 7y ago

Philosophy absolutely has lots to say about intelligence, much of which is mutually contradicting. There are a lot of different models out there, based off of varying levels of cleavage to various priors, that all seem to have very little real explanatory (or, I should say, predictive) power. Approaches based off of current materialist, biology-based methods have a little more utility behind them as far as we can tell (some of our drugs seem to do something to the mind), but the furthest they've gotten so far is to be able to figure out some of the things that matter to intelligence, rather than a successful general model for what it is. And while I'll agree that this lack doesn't necessarily preclude the ability to reproduce intelligence, it does make it darn hard to recognize it.

RosanaAnaDana 7y ago

Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe much of what philosophy has to say to say about what it thinks about intelligence is bull-hooky and actually holding us back. The 'understanding' we have feeds into our presumptions, so I agree in that regard. Arguably, the tangible limits experienced in our actual models of the world based on those presumptions are reflective of the validity of those assumptions. Clearly, in the case of modeling 'intelligence' and 'mind', they aren't that great, indicating we really don't understand the phenomena. I've made this argument repeatedly and before on this platform, but I think the biggest mistake we've made in this field is regarding the preeminence of what we experience as 'human' intelligence and our mental models for how that 'must' work. I'm going to catch all kinds of flack for this, but its my biased perspective that plants are just as intelligent as animal life, but because we use humans as a litmus for what intelligence must 'look' like; we have a very difficult time enumerating what intelligence a non-human organism must have. I think intelligence is reliant on two functions: complexity and connectivity. Plants (vascular) are far more highly connected than animals, and at a cellular level they are as, if not more complex then animal life in cell structure and tissue type. We just don't acknowledge intelligence when its considerations are so distant from our own concerns. I think a revised model where modes of intelligence are attributed starting at an individually cellular model, and build into more complex modes of computational complexity would really clear a lot of this up, and get different modes of intelligence into a singular framework.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> Furthermore, even knowledge of something does not necessarily entail ability to reproduce something. Well, since we're on a philosophical footing, I'll say that knowledge of what intelligence is does not entail the ability to reproduce it, but the ability to reproduce intelligence entails knowledge of what it is. (A |= B means that, whenever A is true, B is true, but not necessarily v.v.) You are right to say that knowledge of what intelligence is does not entail the ability to reproduce it, since for example there may be hard practical obstacles to realising the necessary technologies etc. But I would think the ability to reproduce intelligence entails knowledge of what it is, assuming intelligence is something very complex that we will not just spontaneously obtain by chance, for example by a lucky combination of various random elements. We have certainly been trying to reproduce intelligence on computers for a while now- and failed. So it doesn't seem to be something in the order of, say, coming up with a cure for some ailment by trying things that we believe "should work" and that works in a way we don't quite understand etc. All of which, given it's true, implies that we will not reproduce intelligence until we understand it.