Thursday, April 2, 2009

Intelligence - an introduction to defining the intelligence

Defining intelligence it's not easy at all. May be every body thinks he/she is familiar with it. When you hear about intelligence what comes to your mind? for example when a web page or search engine suggests you a new feather or result, that may causes you wonder and you think how wise it is, wow omg! or when a software recognizes your voice and by the means of that you can do jobs just ordering by saying the commands, or when you see a dog solving a certain problem to get what it desired, for example get inside the house by opening the door by pooling the handle, or so on, Such things sounds smart things. But defining intelligence it's not as easy as this examples are. The phenomena such as memory, problem solving, originality, talk ( using a certain language to transmit a message), inference, abstract thinking, even thinking by itself, Creativity, Knowledge, learning, reasoning and planing are ale aspects of the intelligence or the wisdom. A creatures must be intelligence at first to be able make civilization, so the foreign life must be intelligent so it can create it's own civilization. How a living thing could be called intelligence? this is a primary question. So in next issues I'll try to explain the intelligence. Hope you would help me by your discussions and criticism.

2 comments:

  1. Good Subject!
    I suggest everybody, specially you, who wants to have an aspect of creature's intelligence to watch "Animal Mind" videos.

    I'll share my opinion about "What intelligence is?" in your future posts...

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  2. Think of intelligence by a microscopic approach. It's a neuro-kinetic interaction of brain with the environment. You don't call the automatic reaction of your hand to a hot surface intelligent. So not all stimuli-action mappings are called intelligent in general. In detail, the brain is made of similar neurons, which hardly differs from each other by itself, but are different in behavior group-wise. As you sure know, the formation and interaction of them make them vary and specialist in different skills. I use this example to justify that the intelligence is the art of ordering. Order to make a brain out of neurons, life supporter water cycle out of simple chemical molecule H2O, solar heat control system out of simple rule of gravity and center-oriented forces, and so on.

    I believe that the intelligence lies beneath order, and evolution is to construct more and more order due to permutation.

    On the other side, the chaos is the essence of balance. You see, every thing in this world has a negative, an opposite, a reverse. Love versus Logic is the most symbolic dilemma in our Iraninan culture. Another example is mutation vs. combination is evolution. In the world, the order comes along with chaos to keep the balance. If we call order as intelligence, the chaos is the random factor that tries to balance it, to compensate what intelligence lacks. One way to understand a meaning is to study it's opposite. (By the way studying chaos follows some orders and studying orders results in some chaos. It's the problem of hen and egg I guess)

    To tailor my discussion more to your post, I want to ask some questions, your answer to them can define your point of view to intelligence:

    1- Are instincts a form of intelligence, at least in primitive tasks?

    2- Can intelligence be harmful to it's own being?

    3- Does finding the signs of intelligence mean that there is a life out there?

    4- Do you believe in soul? (vaghan miporsam, bitarbiat nistam! ;) )

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