Intelligence does not exist in a void. If you distill it to the core, intelligence is about manipulating the environment in order to gain an advantage. You want

Intelligence does not exist in a void. If you distill it to the core, intelligence is about manipulating the environment in order to gain an advantage. You want to gain an advantage to maximize your chances of survival and reproduction. To me: we cannot talk about intelligent without talking about the environment. Also being intelligent in an environment is worthless unless there is competition. Reproduction/replication is also key IMHO. No matter how intelligent you are entropy is going to take over eventually. Reproduction is life's way of cheating entropy. Consciousness may be just an emergent property of really complex organisms. Everything may be intelligent and conscious to a certain degree.