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I think we're well aware that systems without intelligence can act as-if they have it. It is on this basis humans have been superstitiously imparting souls to any-old-thing for thousands of years.
What makes you say that an amoeba doesn't have intelligence?
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What makes you say that an amoeba doesn't have intelligence?
intelligence, if it is to mean anything, is a property of agents who act guided by explicit interior representations of their external environment
I would be very hard to do what they do without one.
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There's no reason to believe this is true about the universe, but it is a fun idea to think about. We know so little about consciousness, intelligence, and the brain in general. It is amazing how much insects seem to accomplish with so little.
For sure. The significant point is we just don't know much about consciousness. Given that state of affairs, I find it useful to be aware of the various major, core ideas. Anything could lead us to some greater understanding. It is a fun idea to think about, like a field of sorts that can be tapped into.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
intelligence, if it is to mean anything, is a property of agents who act guided by explicit interior representations of their external environment
Are you implying ameobas don't have some sort of interior representation of their external environment? I would be very hard to do what they do without one.
The question is whether the system is able to perform any explicit inference with those representations. Ie., is the representation explicit available, as a representation, eg., that this representation can be employed to imagine the world being a different way (the heart of solving problems using intelligence).
It's worthwhile distinguishing a certain pun on the word "intelligence". We don't call gangster's intelligent, and physicists dumb -- despite gangster's being much more adept at most "physical skills". The esteem for "intelligence" comes from its association with The Intellect (ie., cognition and imaginative simulation, the place of explicit representation). Not from adept procreation, at which the cornavirus is presumably then almost "the most intelligent lifeform".
An amoeba doesnt represent the world to itself. It's an interesting biochemical system which interacts with its environment in a way which seems as-if intelligent. Digital computers likewise seem as-if intelligent. Ie., they seem as-if they explicitly represent the world to themselves -- but they dont.
Many things seem to be doing what we do, many things which dont, can (ie., we can automate some problem solving so that it doesnt need intelligence). But this is only seeming. These systems are nothing like us at all, they are radically alien -- they're, in any sympathetic sense, dead. There is "nothing that they are doing" -- there's no "they" there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure. The significant point is we just don't know much about consciousness. Given that state of affairs, I find it useful to be aware of the various major, core ideas. Anything could lead us to some greater understanding. It is a fun idea to think about, like a field of sorts that can be tapped into.
It's a fun idea, but a big stretch to imagine we're tapping into some field where that takes place completely outside the realm of the forces and particles we understand (but initiated from us in the realm of forces and particles we do understand.) Not impossible, just very, very unlikely.
For all we know there are new physics out there.
The other idea that I find compelling, and this is my own idea, is get consciousness of some kind the organism or mechanism must be complex enough to differentiate itself very fully from the world around it.
We may end up making a smart brain in the box, but I don't think it will become conscious, unless it is complex enough to be aware of itself completely. And I'm sorry I'm having a hard time articulating this this morning, but just think about your fingertip we've got nerves and everything going all the way down there so that the whole mechanism is a closed loop it's kind of like we're built to know what is us what is not us completely with high fidelity.
I think we're going to find that is a requirement for a self to manifest or in some way defines a being from a mechanism.
Mechanisms will not be conscious, beings will.
In any case we're pretty ignorant right now, meaning that Consciousness is Magic, and we can talk about all sorts of stuff and not be out of bounds.
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Or they are a case for this idea of the universe itself being conscious and beings tap into that via neurological mechanisms we do not understand well. It may be a base level of complexity / capability is needed to tap into the "field of consciousness", which could explain bees, these things, and other seemingly too small living systems doing more than their apparent weight class would indicate is possible.
There's no reason to believe this is true about the universe, but it is a fun idea to think about. We know so little about consciousness, intelligence, and the brain in general. It is amazing how much insects seem to accomplish with so little.
There is no reason to believe...
I'm not sure what context you were speaking in, but I have a fairly conservative frame I work with, and that is we know almost nothing. The scientific method does bring us understanding and that's basically a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing where we understand doing a is going to yield b.
Understanding is predictive to a point, and at that point, error exceeds understanding for whatever reason, and we simply don't understand enough to proceed, which drives new science and ultimately, new and improved understanding.
None of that actually invalidates prior understanding. Where understanding is predictive, and it has been validated against the authority; namely, mother nature, it's good understanding! And that all means knowing the limits of understanding is as important as the understanding itself is. Applying our understanding outside it's scope can be worse than ignorance.
Perhaps this is all well trodden ground for you, and I apologize in advance, but it did also highlight "reason to believe", and I just generally don't. For me, there just isn't a lot of room for "believe" in all this. Knowing things is a tall order. Confidence in understanding may just be a technical, formal expression of believing too.
Where we lack understanding, it's a guessing game. We may make pretty good guesses, depending on what understanding we do have and our own nature, intuition and such, and that's fine, even ideal depending on what the scenario is.
Maybe I would go down this road saying something more like, "I suspect" or "these ideas are suggestive", hinting at whatever basis I might have to give an idea greater weight or worth, but indeed! There is no reason to believe anything is true about the universe on basic principle, knowing our current limits and how we arrive at pretty much anything useful.
Later, below you used "unlikely" which suggests to me we get after thoughts like this in a similar way, and it's OK if not, but somehow I felt compelled to just get these reasoning basics out there, out of my head.
Happy New Year, and thanks in advance for entertaining me.