mooka -
Point taken. But perhaps we should end this debate here and let the thread get back on topic. Cheers.
I disagree, you are restricting the definition of intelligence too much. Is the ability to learn not a form of intelligence?
Goldfish are sentient? In what sense? They clearly have no intelligence or self-awareness to speak of.
While I agree that the ability to plan ahead suggests that thinking is occuring, measuring the number of steps only tests “working memory”, which is requried to imagine moves in advance. True, working memory is often a part of cognitive abilities, but it is only one aspect. So-called “savants” (formerly called “idiot savants”) may possess an amazing memory for specific things, and yet function at a low level in other ways.
See this short MIT site for a review of working memory.
"The fact that an organism can perform very intelligently in one sphere says nothing about how it may perform in another. For Gould this implies that one can be intelligent in many relatively independent different ways. " from a psych class overview of theories of intelligence.
On the mirror test:
“But how can you tell if an animal is self-aware? In the late 1960s Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., devised a now classic test using mirrors. Gallup painted a red dot on the faces of anesthetized animals and then observed them when they awoke and noticed themselves in the mirror. An animal that would start poking at the red spot on its face seemingly indicated an awareness that it was seeing itself in the mirror, not another creature. Of all the animals tested in this way, only humans, chimpanzees and orangutans pass.” from Scientific American Quarterly article.
How do you know this? Have you observed their behavior in the wild?
I mean, if you were put into a bowl with nothing to do, how intelligent would you look?
Consider the quote below from an interview in The Atlantic with author Stephen Budiansky about his book If a Lion Could Talk
"…But the more I look into it, the more I’m sympathetic to a controversial view held by the psychologist Euan Macphail, among others, that all nonhuman vertebrates are equally intelligent. Now, that sounds like a ridiculous statement at first, but when you start trying to strip away all the species-specific characteristics and get to the core cognitive abilities – certain problem-solving, list-making, pattern-recognizing skills – you are very hard-pressed to find many differences between species. People say that sheep are really dumb, but sheep are clearly capable of recognizing individuals by their facial characteristics, and they can learn feeding schedules very quickly and very efficiently. So can goldfish. You can train a goldfish to choose this spot versus that spot in its tank to get fed. A lot of times when you do find apparent differences in learning ability, it’s really that the experiments were not designed very well. The classic case is that rats did not do well on a visual-discrimination test in which they had to pick certain visual patterns to get a food reward. People took this to mean that rats aren’t as good at learning as monkeys are. Well, it turns out that rats don’t have very good eyesight, but if you give them the same test using different odors instead of different visual stimuli, they learn just as quickly as any other animal does. Why should this be? There are certain things that develop pretty early on in the course of evolution, that are so fundamental and so universally useful that they’re very widespread. It may well be that the basic mechanism of learning is one of those things. "
So you’re implying chess is really a memory game? Interesting. I enjoyed chess in my youth but didn’t consider myself very good. I used to beat the top players in HS by simply making random moves about ever 3rd move. They would lose by the most obvious set-ups. Eventually they figured it out (was that higher thinking on their part?)
No, chess is not just a memory game. A good memory is required in order to be a top player, but it also requires the ability to imagine spatial relationships. Cognitive psychologists study chess as a model of intelligence, but it’s not easy to figure out what a human is doing. Even the chess players are notoriously bad at knowing how they do it.
Chess is a peculiar task. To be a top player you have to memorize dozens (hundreds?) of opening moves and counter-moves. Your third random move would take them immediately out of their memorized plan. And, yes, it could be argued that they then had to think in new ways rather than rely on memory.
Off topic but, I’m always amazed at how fast the brain can work. I often “see” a solution to a problem but have a heck of a time getting it on paper. It’s as if the opposite side of the brain does all the work and the speaking side translates it.
I imagine that’s how squirrels work together so well. I get the feeling they are wired so close together that they see solutions as a pair, and act without communicating.
Kind of reminds me of my days in soccer. How do 2 people pull off a never-before-attempted play without any communication? The processing time is so quick that you couldn’t possibly relay the information.
My definition of intelligence: someone who realizes how stupid they are.