Consciousness and intelligence?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Dinosaur, Mar 18, 2003.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I never really thought about the relationship between consciousness and intelligence until Deep Blue beat Kasporov.

    Anyone who understands the software algorithms knows that Deep Blue is not an example of AI. However, it clearly shows that behavior suggesting intelligence is possible without consciousness.

    This leads to considering the following possibilities.
    • Intelligence is not possible without consciousness. I do not believe this, but it is a possibility. Deep Blue certainly suggests otherwise.
    • Intelligence cannot evolve without consciousness. I cannot think of any good arguments either way on this possibility.
    • Consciousness is an evolutionary accident due to the complexity of the human brain, but need not have developed. Intelligence could have evolved without consciousness. I do not see good arguments for or against this view.
    • Any high level of human-like intelligence will always be accompanied by consciousness, even though it is not necessary for intelligence. I do not see good arguments for or against this view.
    If this thread attracts any attention, I hope it is not interfered with by nit picking over definitions of intelligence and consciousness.

    There seems to be no current experimental evidence to help resolve the above, but perhaps somebody can come up with some reasonable arguments for/against one or more of the above views.
     
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  3. Allahs_Mathematics Mar'Ifah Ahl As-Suffah Registered Senior Member

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    Well , if u cant even define things as consciousness clearly , how will u ever theorize on their possibillities ?

    Thats why id like to ask u

    What is Intelligence ?
    What is Consciousness ?

    U tell me , cuz i wouldnt know
     
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  5. spacemanspiff czar of things Registered Senior Member

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    sorry

    "If this thread attracts any attention, I hope it is not interfered with by nit picking over definitions of intelligence and consciousness."


    yes, all of these ideas and theories depend on your definitions of intelligence and consciousness. neither of which have solid agreed upon definitions.

    I mean there are definitions out there, but they vary some what.

    but anyway i will try to say something towards the question regardless.

    I think intelligence and consciousness maybe related, but one does not require the other. certainly intelligent behaviour does not require consciousness. there are animals that act in very intelligent ways(in their given domain) that may not be very self aware. but i could be wrong. we don't really have a way to determine exactly how self aware animals are.

    so as you can see, it's difficult to find an asnwer to this problem. especially with such murky definitions.
     
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  7. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    It does not seem possible to discuss these issues without somebody wanting definitions. Do people really think that my concept of intelligence and consciousness is so far removed from theirs that we need a formal definition? Given ten intelligent people using the same language, do you really think they might have contradictory definitions for these concepts? Might their definitions be so different that they could not communicate on these issues?

    Frankly, I think those asking for definitions are either pedantic academics or people merely pretending to be sophisticated intellectuals. Asking for definitions is often a stratagem designed to mimic wisdom without expressing an opinion. Expressing an opinion might expose a person to be a fool.

    Just in case, they are sincere rather than intellectual phonies, I will attempt some definitions.

    First, I want to point out that dictionary-like definitions are useless for discussing complex concepts. A dictionary assumes that the reader has some context and pertinent vocabulary. For example, a valid dictionary definition of seven is “The number between six and eight; The word for numeric value 7.” A person who did not know how to count from one to ten and did not comprehend the digit 7 would learn nothing from such a definition.

    The dictionary assumes a lot of pertinent knowledge relating to each word it defines. Look up squeeze or gambit in a dictionary and then talk to a bridge player or a chess expert about these terms.

    The dictionary will give you a short sentence, assuming it gives you any definition of the bridge-play stratagem. A bridge player or a book on bridge play will give you almost a page of background defining several other words in order to provide a real definition. The definition would mean nothing to a person who never played bridge, due to his complete lack of relevant vocabulary. Similarly, a chess master will give you a far richer definition than the dictionary. Dictionary definitions are great for a Swahili or a Chinaman with a fair knowledge of English and who knows bridge or chess but is not familiar with the English term.

    BTW: Squeeze play in the game of bridge is a far more complex concept than gambit in chess play.

    If you do not any concept of the words intelligence and consciousness, I wonder why you bothered with this thread. If your view of the meaning of these terms is too far removed from mine, we cannot communicate on the subject.

    While the above might seem like an attempt to be insulting, it was really designed to provoke some critical judgment about the value of formal definitions when dealing with complex concepts.

    BTW: Are you aware that formal and mathematical logic require some undefined terms?

    Rather than attempting formal definitions, I will merely rant about intelligence and consciousness.

    Intelligence relates to general purpose problem solving ability in diverse fields. It suggests the ability to adapt to changing conditions, recognizing that the old way of doing something is not going to work in a new environment. Intelligence allows a person (or perhaps an animal) to over ride instinct in a situation for which a pertinent hard wired instinct is not applicable.

    An intelligent person can deal competently with mathematics, grammar, history, languages, and other subjects taught in school as well as being able to learn how to fix automobiles, do carpentry, brick laying, and other practical functions.

    Intelligence requires memory and a knowledge of factual information, but such mental abilities are only some of the tools of intelligence, not intelligence itself. A highly intelligent person learns quickly without doing rote work, while a not so intelligent person might take twice as long and require a lot of simple practice problems to learn the same subject matter. An intelligent person can often seem to know a bit about the next chapter in a text book because he has obtained a good conceptual knowledge of the concepts being taught.

    50 years ago, an intelligent doctor whose computer guru friend explained a coincident core memory is likely to apply the concept to radiation therapy, inventing the idea of sending radiation to a tumor from many directions. This technique applies an intense dose of radiation to the tumor and relatively harmless amounts of radiation to surrounding tissue. This paragraph might give an intelligent person some idea of how the now obsolete core memories worked, even though he might never have been told about the technology. A person with a lower level of intelligence would never recognize the analogy relating the two very different applications of a fundamental principle.

    Consciousness is self awareness. If your life is thought of as a motion picture, consciousness is that part of your mind which is watching (or commenting on) the movie, in contrast to the person or functions which perform the actions experienced in your life. When a human plays chess, there are thoughts like the following interspersed with efforts to play the game.
    When Deep Blue played Kasparov, there were no such mental activities, only number crunching operations relating to the game. Deep Blue proved that an electronic device without consciousness can mimic intelligent behavior.

    To a person not familiar with the algorithms used, computers sometimes seem to display intelligent behavior. Hardly anybody gives them credit for consciousness.

    Rocks have neither consciousness nor intelligence. Ditto for plants. Chimpanzees seem to have both, but not as much of either as humans. I think dogs, cats, squirrels, and various other mammals have consciousness and a bit of intelligence, but I consider this to be more like an opinion than a scientific fact.

    Various aspects of intelligence can be measured. Consciousness is an entirely subjective phenomenon. I cannot conceive of a test which would show that others have it. I must rely on what others tell me about their inner thoughts, and assume that they have consciousness because I have it and they share measurable traits and abilities with me.

    Does the above prose convey some idea of my concept of intelligence and consciousness?
     
  8. Allahs_Mathematics Mar'Ifah Ahl As-Suffah Registered Senior Member

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    No it is not . How can u start about aspects of X when u do not even know what X is ? And what people think will be quite different , it werent "thinking people" who responded to this matter , it was I . People have oftenly not the slightest clue of what they speak of , its a typical thing really .....

    I dont even know for sure myself how to understand such complex concepts as intellect or consciouseness , how could I expect U to , and how could i EVER expect ours to be the same ?

    A proper definition is therefor at its place .

    I bet we couldnt even agree on those ten "intelligent" people to name , based on the fact that our concept of intelligence might differ immense ? Please name 3 even , I am sure we wont agree on perhaps even 1 of those . Even then we'd have to decide what category's exactly of the most intelligent ones are counted to be "intelligent"...i mean what , top 20% ?

    Man i dont even know what pedantic means......can u imagine my academical level ?
    But sophisticated , as in those of who one was Socrates ? That would be a compliment even coming from such a insulting remark as yours could be understood .

    But please man , dont tell me we're all smart , or dont bitch on intellectuals . If u have in your mind todays idiots that r hot in the philosophy fields , then i understand your point , but dont exclude a possibility of a higher intellectual class than your own .

    say what ?

    a person with an opinion that is based on NOT knowing something , is called foolish in my book .

    oh..its getting interesting even

    dictionaries are hilarious mostly , yes .

    i dont wanna break ur bubble but.....ANY definition in ANY language assumes vocabulkary knowledge to some extend .
    Even yelling oe oe ah ah , implies u knowing what oe and ah means .....

    pretty good examples i would say

    correct

    yes , but then again , ANYTHING does .

    yes.......your point remaines the same , a dictionary is often incomplete or hilarious even .

    btw...its interesting to c such long describings of definition , that thing that wasnt tha big of a deal .

    perhaps to find a new understanding of the concept , so that it perhaps would be acknowledged .
    But...nobody spoke of not acknowledging .........

    ha , couldnt u have said before u started , i was pretty sure i wouldnt agree on many things u would wite , howd i suppose to know now u wont bother to communicate ?
    Silly
    well.......lets continue for ignorance's sake .

    Hilarious is what i call dictionairies . But i must say , that those 2 definitions u gave were pretty nice , and the argument about using lingual context and knowledge of vocabulary , it was pretty lame when u look back at it from here , wouldnt u say ?

    I am , and thats precisely their problem . Logics relies on the validity of its premisses , who are "assumed" to be true , just as X is assumed to be a value , i am perfectly aware of this , and it a very strong argument pointing towards to thats whats missing in math and logics .

    Sure , u do tour thing mister

    Intelligence relates to general purpose problem solving ability in diverse fields. It suggests the ability to adapt to changing conditions, recognizing that the old way of doing something is not going to work in a new environment. Intelligence allows a person (or perhaps an animal) to over ride instinct in a situation for which a pertinent hard wired instinct is not applicable.

    Yes intelligence indeed relates with problem solving ability . This way also changing conditions/recognizing improvement/etc is recognized . But the overriding of instict , is perhaps a question more directly related with consciousness .
    I also want to say it is pretty inefficient to start out defining the big thing before u do the little thing , like consciousness is to intelligence . Consciousness might be an intelligent state of mind , but Intellect might just as well be a conscious proces , as u describe with your own example of "overriding instinct" whitch implies becoming conscious .


    well , as far as the task is related to the relevant form of intellect .......or obviously u believe in only one intellect system i understand ? But lets say thats so for the sake of whatever your point is .

    agreed

    Not necesarrily , but i understand your point of potential relevant intellect relation .

    Yes this system may be called intelligent as well i completely agree .

    It is awareness indeed , but is more than only aware of self .
    And its a nice distinction u make between the person physically acting and the movie commentor , its interesting

    would u agree with me if i said this is a person of medium intelligence ?

    To great examples of how consciousness is an intelligent state of mind , rather than intellect to be a conscious action , as u tried to proove with your example before .


    true

    O they do have intelligence , they self-develop do they not ?
    Is self-development not part of an intellectual proces ?

    id say ur right on that

    Consciousness can be measured just as easy if intelligence can .
    In the human mind where consciousness exists , it is a part of the intelligent proces . How could U measure Intelligence if u cant even measure a part of it called conscience .

    Well , i must say you pleasently surprise me , i have misjudged you .......we are closer in agreeing than i thought we would be .

    However there are some errors i believe . U claim consciousness to be a subjective unmeasurable different from intellegence phenomeno , while i say it is part of intelligence .

    The thing is , such explenation u gave , and how i commented , are way to big and unorganized .

    It simply gives a good overview , in order to understand the aspects asked in the first place .

    But , id say there is enough of stuff to answer the primar questions with

    I agree with U , i have little knowledge of Deep Blue , but thats irellevant . Consciousness is a not-necesarry part of intelligence .

    oh yes it would . I cant come up with theoretic arguments either , but there are practical ones though . I consider self-development to be an intelligent proces . A plant is self-developping for instance (so is an animal but there is consciousness involved , this example is easier) . A plant made unconscious intellectual choices how it would develop itself , as everything what is "alive"" does , since life is nothing but self-development .
    Obviously the choices were genetically made(the seed) , but could adapt due to external factors . Either way , choices have been made , there is proof of multiple possibillity by the existence of multiple kinds of plants (same with some animals) .
    Concludiong > There has been evolving (the proces of natural selection) , while no consciousness was involved .

    Id say this view pretty much contradict the above one i quoted , at least the 'could have evolved without" part .
    Was it necesarry.......obviously , evolutionairy accidents dont exist do they ?
    It would seem unlogical , and the human creation is far from that (in great contrast with his psyche) .
    An extra-effect , and thus not intentional would indeed be the only option left then , in such a way accidents do happen , when they were not naturally selected .
    That could be possibly........but what an amazingeffect i would say , hard to coprehend it was by accident.....well chance oftenly does a better job than we do .

    I wouldnt know if that would necesarily be so , i see quite some options in out-smarting a human with non-conscious machines .......if it to be human like , i believe that has more to do with emotions thatn actual intelligence , unconscious machines have gone beyond average human intelligence a long time ago .

    thats all folks
    :m:
     
  9. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    2,671
    I'm just going to respond to this one:
    quote:
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Consciousness is an evolutionary accident due to the complexity of the human brain, but need not have developed. Intelligence could have evolved without consciousness. I do not see good arguments for or against this view.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    if this is the case, the how is it that apes and some other 'higher intelligence' mammels (dolphins) have been shown to recognise themselves in a mirror, while Rams and other 'lower intelligence' mammels (dogs) do not?

    There certainly seems to be a division line wherein intelligence leads to consiousness.

    Machines, while able to compute data very fast, are really not at all aware of what they just did, or what they are about to do: they are completely oblivious to the overall picture of what is going on. for that reason, I would say they are no intelligent at all. just really fast at certain things (multiply, add, divide, subtract, shift, rotate, etc)
     
  10. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Allahs_Mathematics I disagree with the following, although otherwise, we seem to have similar opinions on this subject.
    Various special purpose machines and computers are capable of outdoing humans in limited ways. No human can solve 100 simultaneous equations in 100 unknowns faster than a computer, and most human beings would not know how to begin the task. At most one or two (if any) humans can beat the best chess playing computer. For general purpose problem solving and learning ability, a mildly retarded human can out do the best machine yet built.
     
  11. Allahs_Mathematics Mar'Ifah Ahl As-Suffah Registered Senior Member

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    True
    Brings to the distinction , machine more advanced than man concerning special intelligence . Man more advanced by machine concerning general intelligence .
    But its a good thing (is it really?) ,because if machines would actually coprehend the problem solving concept itself (general intelligence) , people are done for .
     
  12. spookz Banned Banned

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    allah

    what do you mean by special intelligence. is general intelligence common sense? for instance, if you reason out a problem logically, would that constitute general intelligence? where does creativity and intuition fit it

    a machine is only as good as the algorithms that power it. you cannot program creativity or intuition into a machine. for instance in chess a technique is utilized where one sacrifices a piece in order to gain an advantage later. is it possible to for machine to do that
     
  13. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Spookz: As far as I know, Deep Blue played very much like a human, even though the program was basically a number cruncher.

    Kasparov expressed amazement at some of the moves. I am certain that Deep Blue would find worthwhile sacrifices of material.

    Deep blue would pass the Turing Test if chess was the only behavior involved. A person with no knowledge of the Position Evaluator Function and the Mini-Max strategy used would consider Deep Blue to be using human-like intelligence.

    common sense and general purpose problem solving ability are aspects of intelligence. As mentioned in previous posts, intelligence is a complex concept not amenable to a dictionary like definition.
     
  14. Allahs_Mathematics Mar'Ifah Ahl As-Suffah Registered Senior Member

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    well.....to be honest i do not agree on the concept of special intelligence , since its nothing more the specific results of general intelligence . Logic for instance would definetly be a general intelligence , and there are specified things flowing from or rather influenced (heavy) by logics .

    the creation of these algorithims would be the general part , while the results in a specific direction would be "special" .

    so thats a yes

    intuition is a different kind of intelligence , it is unconscious intelligence , comparable to the special intelligence of the machine in this way : Developped ,but it does not coprehend itself .
    Creativity on the other hand is perhaps nothing more than a sort of high quantity logical applications in various directions related to the purpose the entire creative system is active for .

    Like i said , actually this way viewing it , a machine is nothing BUT intuition . It cant coprehend itself .
    Creativity might be programmed , but the problem lies in creativity somehow giving good results , because each time the various creative logical processes are relevant toward the purpose , this proces is consciously decided . (One chooses what to be creative about, as in ...he ponders consciously some problem ) . Because consciousness isnt possible yet , it couldnt decide so perfectly what is needed for what (perhaps if aspects could be recognize u might get somewhere , but not as far as with conscious deciding) .

    Sure , its simply a matter of finding the right premisses . The only problem might be making a differences between some premisses (few mught look alike but might differ alot) .
    For instance , when A happens u do B (sacrificing as u say) .
    The problem is identifying A in a perfect way , but im sure that can be solved , if it isnt solved already .


    I could never understand what common sense means . The popular use of the word rather points to normativity than logics , perhaps somebody could explain me the intelligence in this system ?
    And problem solving ability , i believe intelligence IS problem solving ability . I could not mention one intelligent proces that doesnt deal with the purpose of solving whatever problem .
    I mean it would be pretty useless if its not solving some problem , wouldnt it ?
     
  15. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Current AI is pretty dumb and cannot think out of the box, although there are some so-called expert systems (not AI) that do a fair job with specific tasks.

    Who knows what AI will do in the future? Perhaps not much, perhaps enough to be astonishing.

    I expect AI to be possible in 50-500 years, but do not expect anything really good sooner than that. There is always the possibility of a break through by some genius, which could speed it up.

    There is very little good work being done with new architectures, and current Computer design does not seem to be the right way to go. Quantum computing seems like a different mechanism used to do the same type of procedure oriented algorithm processing done by current systems. I am a bit skeptical about it. I would like to see it do more than factor 15 into 3X5 before I jump on this band wagon.

    I remember cryogenic computers being touted as the wave of the future, but that fizzled out long ago. The prototypes of that technology seemed very promising and did a lot more than factor a simple number.
     
  16. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Next time I am at Barnes & Noble, I will check for a copy of the following.
    If it really explained intelligence and consciousness in detail, why has nobody built an AI device with consciousness? Or at least an AI device.

    BTW: If I were given a huge budget and a staff and told to attempt to create an AI device, I would spend a lot of the money and effort on trying to build the equivalent of the brain of a fetus, and hope to let it learn the rest of what is required. It has to be easier than attempting to build the equivalent of an adult brain.
     
  17. iggit Registered Member

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    You must not have read the material.
    So tell me. How does the same system in small form have anything different than the same system in larger form?
     

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