[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[The Avantguardian]

--- John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
> 
> I think the Evolutionary record proves that
> conscious intelligence is easier
> to make than unconscious intelligence.

It all depends on your definition of intelligence. If
you assert that consciousness is a necessary
pre-requisite for intelligence, then by definition,
you are correct. But if you simply define intelligence
as the behaviorial trait of acting rationally (sort of
like the Turing test), then the evolutionary record
shows exactly the opposite. The whole of life behaves
rationally in a great deal many ways and most likely
always has or it would not have survived. GTS (sorry I
don't know your name) has often invoked the example of
animals running from a forest fire and this is
obviously a rational choice for the animals. Is this a
sign of intelligence? IMNSHO yes. A vacant automobile
with the engine running would not make this decision.
(I don't think that the grand challenge robot
automobiles would make this decision either unless
they were specifically programmed to do so.)

In fact it is this fundamental sort of rational
decision making that, after over a decade of dedicated
biology study by myself, is the only behavioriol trait
that to me truly distinguishes the behavior of
biological life from the flames of the forest fire.
(After all flames respire, metabolize, grow,
reproduce, and eventually die.) Moreover this rational
decision making exists at all scales of life from the
level of the simplest micro-organisms to entire
populations and ecosystems. For example a simple
flaggelated bacterium will swim away from a drop of
vinegar placed on a microscope slide, while predators
and prey in an ecosystem will spontaneously reach a
Nash equibrium with both species making the most
rational decision possible in light of their
opponent's strategy.

Thus if rationality is the criterion for intelligence
then all life can be said to be, to a lesser or
greater extent intelligent. Indeed such complex
rational behavioral traits as agriculture and animal
husbandry were practiced by ants long before Homo
sapiens came on the scene.
  
> I would go
> further, the fact that
> genetic drift has not eliminated consciousness (at
> least in my case, I don't
> know about you) would seem to indicate that
> unconscious intelligence is not
> just difficult but downright imposable.

No, it simply means that most people prefer conscious
mates to unconscious ones (except perhaps college frat
boys at a party) when the choice presents itself.
Remember that a lot more goes into human courtship
than purely rational behavior. Ergo there is a
positive selective pressure for consciousness in
humans. This however does not invalidate John's
contention that consciousness and intelligence are
observationally correlated. But neither does it
invalidate GTS's belief in pan-psychism, since there
is obviously a continuum of intelligence in nature
such that humans are more intelligent than birds which
are more intelligent than insects. Thus if the two
phenomena were 100% correlated, one would have to
admit that a bacterium was a tiny bit conscious.
I will have to think more about pan-psychism before I
can say much more about it other than it is not
inconsistent with pan-vitalism which I believe may be
the origin of life in the universe. 



The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"If you fear death, you are not living right; if you don't want to live forever, you are not living well." - a sparrow outside my window.


	
		
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