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This is all fascinating, and I learned quite a bit from this article, but it seems to conflate intelligence and consciousness repeatedly. It isn't at all clear

This is all fascinating, and I learned quite a bit from this article, but it seems to conflate intelligence and consciousness repeatedly. It isn't at all clear to me why the former implies the latter.

quercusa 5y ago
The novel Blindsight, by Peter Watts, explores exactly your quandary. Highly recommended.
- ilikecode 5y ago
  Thanks for that. It's exactly what I've been looking for. My mind has been on this whole topic for the last year. Even the name is a big hint I'll like it as blindsight is fascinating.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Strongly seconding the recommendation. You'll probably also like the references to scientific studies included at the end of the book. The book has a sequel, Echopraxia, which I also recommend. It's a novel based around the argument that consciousness is not only unnecessary, it's actually an evolutionary disadvantage.
  - kanzenryu2 5y ago
    Don't be put off by the bit about vampires.
whateveracct 5y ago
> It isn't at all clear to me why the former implies the latter. nor the latter implying the former :D
gerbilly 5y ago
The only reason we think animals are stupid automatons is because in our culture we don't observe them very closely. Like the article says, every time we bother to look we are _surrpised_ to find abilities in all sorts of animals. Maybe we should just cut to the chase and admit the obvious, that ants, bees, octopi, monkeys and fishes are both conscious (whatever that word even means for humans is up for grabs) and intelligent. My opinion: Intelligence is not rare, we are surrounded by it. Animals communicate with each other all day in say a forest, but we just hear it as random noises because we've stopped listening hundreds of years ago.
- nabla9 5y ago
  Scientists have spend enormous amount of time and effort studying animal communication and behavior and it mostly contradicts what you believe. With the exception of octopi, primates, birds and cetaceans, animals that do extremely intelligent actions turn out to be automatons. Usually when observing and experimenting animals closely, especially insects, they are just state machines. Very complex sequences are often executed from start to finish blindly. You can reveal how ants, bees or flies are automatons by making little changes to their environment. They do the sequence from start to finish. If you interrupt them, they can't start from where they ended. They start the sequence from the start.
  - gerbilly 5y ago
    > by making little changes to their environment. [...] If you interrupt them, they can't start from where they ended. They start the sequence from the start. Who says we do any different? Also there's a huge difference between proving something scientifically, and 'knowing' something. It is a hugely useful distinction, but science operates in it's own domain. To insist that only scientific knowledge is true knowledge is a form of solipsism. Scientifically, even if we met face to face, you couldn't 'prove' that I am intelligent, or conscious. It's just a bias that we consider ourselves to be these things and not other animals.
    - nabla9 5y ago
      > Who says we do any different Experiments. You are taking this too philosophically. >To insist that only scientific knowledge is true knowledge is a form of solipsism. I don't insist. It's just that there has not been demonstrated any other form of knowledge that could be accepted as evidence that things are different. > you couldn't 'prove' that I am intelligent, or conscious. Proving is *never* natural science. Science never proves outside "formal sciences" like mathematics. Science can only show that hypothesis is wrong conditionally. In science you can only say you have evidence supporting hypothesis and evidence falsifying it.
  - wcarss 5y ago
callesgg 5y ago
Consciousness being something like having thought processes that model other thought processes. Finding a hole in a piece of plastic does not require that. Or so it seams to me.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Yeah, I think it has something to do with a brain that has enough complexity that it can begin to model itself and others' brains, allowing self reflection. A dog can think, I think, but I don't think it can think about its own thoughts. But this may be unknowable.
- incompatible 5y ago
  It seems to be possible to be in a conscious state without consciously thinking about anything at all. Presumably consciousness is created by a subconscious process. I can't say much more than that it's possible for information-processing systems (such as the human brain) to be conscious. My guess is that consciousness is a non-physical, emergent property, that only exists while a certain component of the information processing system is operating in a particular way.
pdonis 5y ago
> it seems to conflate intelligence and consciousness repeatedly It seems to consider them to be the same thing. Which is a common viewpoint. Basically, the idea appears to be that, in order to display all those intelligent behaviors, the animal must be aware of them just as we are (or think we are) aware of what we're doing when we display such behaviors. Of course my parenthetical qualifier there is the key point: actually, we humans are often not aware of what we're doing when we display behaviors that, to an outside observer, would appear to be intelligent. We perform all kinds of complex tasks on autopilot, while our conscious awareness is elsewhere. If we can do it, we should expect that other animals can do it, too. And that at once raises the question, how do we know when we are consciously aware of intelligent things we are doing? The only answer we have, at least at our current level of understanding, is that we can talk about the things we are consciously aware of. We can report what we did and why we did it, and can answer questions about it. Which, if we take this at face value, means that without such evidence from animals, the default assumption should be that they do all their intelligent behaviors on autopilot--they are never consciously aware of what they are doing. I think that claim, as it stands, is too strong--for example, anyone who has cats or dogs as pets would probably say that their cats or dogs give plenty of nonverbal evidence of being aware of things they are doing (and I include myself in this category)--but it should at least make clear that intelligent behavior and consciousness are not the same thing and do not have to go together. Which in turn means that our scientific efforts should be focused on figuring out what kinds of nonverbal evidence would count as indicating, not just intelligent behavior, but consciousness.

quercusa 5y ago

The novel Blindsight, by Peter Watts, explores exactly your quandary. Highly recommended.

ilikecode 5y ago
Thanks for that. It's exactly what I've been looking for. My mind has been on this whole topic for the last year. Even the name is a big hint I'll like it as blindsight is fascinating.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Strongly seconding the recommendation. You'll probably also like the references to scientific studies included at the end of the book. The book has a sequel, Echopraxia, which I also recommend. It's a novel based around the argument that consciousness is not only unnecessary, it's actually an evolutionary disadvantage.
- kanzenryu2 5y ago
  Don't be put off by the bit about vampires.

whateveracct 5y ago

> It isn't at all clear to me why the former implies the latter. nor the latter implying the former :D

gerbilly 5y ago

The only reason we think animals are stupid automatons is because in our culture we don't observe them very closely. Like the article says, every time we bother to look we are _surrpised_ to find abilities in all sorts of animals. Maybe we should just cut to the chase and admit the obvious, that ants, bees, octopi, monkeys and fishes are both conscious (whatever that word even means for humans is up for grabs) and intelligent. My opinion: Intelligence is not rare, we are surrounded by it. Animals communicate with each other all day in say a forest, but we just hear it as random noises because we've stopped listening hundreds of years ago.

nabla9 5y ago
Scientists have spend enormous amount of time and effort studying animal communication and behavior and it mostly contradicts what you believe. With the exception of octopi, primates, birds and cetaceans, animals that do extremely intelligent actions turn out to be automatons. Usually when observing and experimenting animals closely, especially insects, they are just state machines. Very complex sequences are often executed from start to finish blindly. You can reveal how ants, bees or flies are automatons by making little changes to their environment. They do the sequence from start to finish. If you interrupt them, they can't start from where they ended. They start the sequence from the start.
- gerbilly 5y ago
  > by making little changes to their environment. [...] If you interrupt them, they can't start from where they ended. They start the sequence from the start. Who says we do any different? Also there's a huge difference between proving something scientifically, and 'knowing' something. It is a hugely useful distinction, but science operates in it's own domain. To insist that only scientific knowledge is true knowledge is a form of solipsism. Scientifically, even if we met face to face, you couldn't 'prove' that I am intelligent, or conscious. It's just a bias that we consider ourselves to be these things and not other animals.
  - nabla9 5y ago
    > Who says we do any different Experiments. You are taking this too philosophically. >To insist that only scientific knowledge is true knowledge is a form of solipsism. I don't insist. It's just that there has not been demonstrated any other form of knowledge that could be accepted as evidence that things are different. > you couldn't 'prove' that I am intelligent, or conscious. Proving is *never* natural science. Science never proves outside "formal sciences" like mathematics. Science can only show that hypothesis is wrong conditionally. In science you can only say you have evidence supporting hypothesis and evidence falsifying it.
- wcarss 5y ago

callesgg 5y ago

Consciousness being something like having thought processes that model other thought processes. Finding a hole in a piece of plastic does not require that. Or so it seams to me.

kbelder 5y ago
Yeah, I think it has something to do with a brain that has enough complexity that it can begin to model itself and others' brains, allowing self reflection. A dog can think, I think, but I don't think it can think about its own thoughts. But this may be unknowable.
incompatible 5y ago
It seems to be possible to be in a conscious state without consciously thinking about anything at all. Presumably consciousness is created by a subconscious process. I can't say much more than that it's possible for information-processing systems (such as the human brain) to be conscious. My guess is that consciousness is a non-physical, emergent property, that only exists while a certain component of the information processing system is operating in a particular way.

pdonis 5y ago

> it seems to conflate intelligence and consciousness repeatedly It seems to consider them to be the same thing. Which is a common viewpoint. Basically, the idea appears to be that, in order to display all those intelligent behaviors, the animal must be aware of them just as we are (or think we are) aware of what we're doing when we display such behaviors. Of course my parenthetical qualifier there is the key point: actually, we humans are often not aware of what we're doing when we display behaviors that, to an outside observer, would appear to be intelligent. We perform all kinds of complex tasks on autopilot, while our conscious awareness is elsewhere. If we can do it, we should expect that other animals can do it, too. And that at once raises the question, how do we know when we are consciously aware of intelligent things we are doing? The only answer we have, at least at our current level of understanding, is that we can talk about the things we are consciously aware of. We can report what we did and why we did it, and can answer questions about it. Which, if we take this at face value, means that without such evidence from animals, the default assumption should be that they do all their intelligent behaviors on autopilot--they are never consciously aware of what they are doing. I think that claim, as it stands, is too strong--for example, anyone who has cats or dogs as pets would probably say that their cats or dogs give plenty of nonverbal evidence of being aware of things they are doing (and I include myself in this category)--but it should at least make clear that intelligent behavior and consciousness are not the same thing and do not have to go together. Which in turn means that our scientific efforts should be focused on figuring out what kinds of nonverbal evidence would count as indicating, not just intelligent behavior, but consciousness.