Comment by kylecazar
1 day ago
"Intelligence" = vessel or color in your example
There are words that distinguish between types/degrees of intelligence. Basal/proto intelligence applies to cells and bacteria. Somatic intelligence is a level higher at tissue. Superintelligence you've no doubt heard of.
It's true that "intelligence" is general/umbrella and doesn't have much meaning, but more specific terms do exist.
So intelligence is an intrinsic property of matter then? It's not a mainstream view now, but who knows.
I personally don't think it's an intrinsic property of all matter, but an emergent one with interaction specifically. Systems have intelligence, not particles, and to be a system, you must have constituent parts (which may not be intelligent themselves). That's why they say it 'emerges'.
A cell is a system, as is a virus, a tucan, a human and an LLM. They exhibit different levels and brands of intelligence, hence continuum.
That's the popular view among scientists/philosophers/my podcasters, at least, and it makes sense to me!
Yes, I think, emergence is the currently prevailing view.
I was thinking more that something like this:
> any system capable of doing an if-else is intelligent to a certain degree
could probably be getting quite broad in terms of things covered (chemistry, physics), hence making it much more intrinsic.
No, intelligence is a description of behavior, not stuff.
As a crisp example: a newly dead person is almost exactly the same stuff as an alive person, but has no intelligence at all. Not a little less, as the difference in stuff would suggest.
I reckon there would probably still be some if else system going on the body of a newly dead person.
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