Which is the most 'intelligent' animal, in your opinion?

[dichotomy]

I can't think of any, but that's not really the point. The unconscious imagination of a human is wholly and fundamentally different than the ability of bacteria to mutate and be acted upon by the environment until they've evolved a symbiotic relationship with larger animals. If one is intelligence, the other is not. By all tenets of the English language, you just can't stretch a definition that much.

 

Fair enough.

 

It is my assumption (and others) that the intellect can be unconscious as well as conscious, not yours. I don’t think unconscious intellect differs that dramatically between species. After all, something like the Scottish thistle is bright enough to have developed a way of spreading it’s species around the world without anything that resembles a human brain. BTW. I am not a creationist. I'm agnostic. So I don't go for the intelligent design thing either.

 

Also our brain evolution is theorised to start at least with reptiles, in the Triune brain theory. If we started as reptiles then their brains must be pretty decent. In an unconscious way.

 

 

Here’s a dream discovery e.g. for you.

 

Taken from - TWELVE FAMOUS DREAMS. Creativity and Famous Discoveries From Dreams.

 

“Dream Leads to Nobel Prize

Otto Loewi (1873-1961), a German born physiologist, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. In 1903, Loewi had the idea that there might be a chemical transmission of the nervous impulse rather than an electrical one, which was the common held belief, but he was at a loss on how to prove it. He let the idea slip to the back of his mind until 17 years later he had the following dream. According to Loewi:

"The night before Easter Sunday of that year I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3 o'clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design."

It took Loewi a decade to carry out a decisive series of tests to satisfy his critics, but ultimately the result of his initial dream induced experiment became the foundation for the theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse and led to a Nobel Prize!”

 

Dr. Loewi noted: "Most so called 'intuitive' discoveries are such associations made in the subconscious."

 

Also some other famous science and inventions completed with the help of subconscious dreams –

 

Kekulé - Molecules & Benzene Structure

 

Elias Howe - The Sewing Machine

 

Srinivasa Ramanujan – analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptical functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.

 

BTW. I’m not trying to be ‘COOL’, ‘Combative’, or any other projection that you seem to be mysteriously attempting to label me with. I’m simply trying to discuss. I am completely open to other peoples ideas. I will look at others interesting ideas, research, compare, evaluate and then form an opinion on them, an opinion that can be again changed with the right evidence.

 

Cheers.

[SkepticLance]

The colonel said

 

So we end up with no 'good' objective measure for 'intelligence' whatever that is defined as. What a surprise

 

Not entirely correct. I claim EQ as the best objective method. it is not perfect, for reasons I stated, but gives an excellent indication. On this basis, I claim humans as the most intelligent.

 

If you doubt this logic, take another look at the list of species and their EQ. If we exclude the extreme giants, the EQ numbers correlated damn close with what we whould expect, from behavioural observation, to be relative intelligence.

 

Who would deny the intelligence of the bottlenose dolphin? Who would argue against high intelligence in chimps? Or that the lowly opossum is just plain stupid?

[CDarwin]

life is not an animal. an animal is a subcategory of life. all animals are life but not all life is animals. plus, life can be life without having any intelligence whatsoever.

 

I was being a bit tongue in cheek. Microbes aren't animals either.

 

Based on EQs, there is no doubt of which is the most intelligent animal. It is Homo sapiens.

 

Actually, capuchin monkeys have an EQ of 6 to 8. The EQ gives a good idea of how important a brain is to an animal's lifeway, but it's not all telling. The best anatomical correlates to cognitive ability are those that take into account both relative size (EQ) and absolute volume of the brain. Both seem to be important, and humans to have the perfect mean.

 

Brain size isn't the same as intelligence (meaning cognitive ability) though, it's only an anatomical correlate, a way to spot it.

 

So we end up with no 'good' objective measure for 'intelligence' whatever that is defined as. What a surprise

 

No, people just like being difficult about this. Intelligence in the zoological, evolutionary sense, is cognitive ability. How intelligent you are is how much you use your brain to survive. That's the only useful definition.

 

It is my assumption (and others) that the intellect can be unconscious as well as conscious, not yours. I don’t think unconscious intellect differs that dramatically between species. After all, something like the Scottish thistle is bright enough to have developed a way of spreading it’s species around the world without anything that resembles a human brain.

A) Scottish thistle isn't an animal.

B) Scottish thistle didn't "develop" anything. Nature doesn't work like a research laboratory. Mutations happen and then those mutations are selected for or against by the environment. The organism has nothing to do with it. There's no place for "intelligence", conscious or unconscious to act in that process. It's all the blind action of nature.

 

That dream thing was pretty interesting. Thank you for posting that.

 

Also our brain evolution is theorised to start at least with reptiles, in the Triune brain theory. If we started as reptiles then their brains must be pretty decent. In an unconscious way.

 

Their brains served the purpose. That's why they were evolved. Were brains as important to early reptiles as they are to us? Obviously not as they were much, much smaller and simpler. By any meaningful definition of intelligence were they as intelligent as us? All the evidence says no.

 

BTW. I’m not trying to be ‘COOL’, ‘Combative’, or any other projection that you seem to be mysteriously attempting to label me with. I’m simply trying to discuss. I am completely open to other peoples ideas. I will look at others interesting ideas, research, compare, evaluate and then form an opinion on them, an opinion that can be again changed with the right evidence.

 

You associate adjectives oddly. I said that I was afraid I was being combative, and it's the microbes that elicit the "that's cool" factor, not you.

[someguy]

i think there is, or rather should be a perfect measure of intelligence. the problem is that psychology has not properly defined it yet. intelligence is such a vague term. nobody really knows what it is. we know what it can do though. there is somehow some structure of the brain that gives intelligence to beings and this structure can be measured. what we need to do is know what that structure is. what physical thing it is about the brains that allows for intelligence. there is something.

 

since we don't have such a definition when you're asking what is the most intelligent animal, in my opinion you would really need to go through the whole thing of properly defining intelligence and then you could come up with an answer. I'm pretty sure that some chimps or some dolphins are just as smart as some humans. when you think about it we are not really all that smart. sure we have technology and language, but very few of us are responsible for our discoveries and inventions. were it not for language, how much would we know? if you were born all alone in the middle of some forest somewhere, what would you know? probably not all that much. i would think an outsider would have trouble distinguishing whether you or the monkey is smarter. maybe the monkey would even look smarter, certainly dolphins would, since they have language and we on our own in the forest would probably not think of inventing it. we seem so smart, but look at how many generations we have lived through using written language and sharing information from one generation to the next. I find this, spoken and written language, is much more responsible for our difference in lifestyle compared to most animals. much more than our level of intelligence as a whole specie.

 

the EQ might be a good sort of trend indicator, but like you said it is kind of weak, more correlative than causal, and i think not highly correlatively accurate.

 

but one thing i could say is that intelligence and self awareness are definitely connected. i believe one is the product of the other. and many animals, most animals are not self aware. and this can be tested, they lack characteristics of intelligence. very few animals have any intelligence whatsoever. but i think when you want to compare one intelligent animal with another, now perhaps the definition of intelligence may not be quite precise enough to make that call.

[dichotomy]

 

 

A) Scottish thistle isn't an animal.

B) Scottish thistle didn't "develop" anything. Nature doesn't work like a research laboratory. Mutations happen and then those mutations are selected for or against by the environment. The organism has nothing to do with it. There's no place for "intelligence", conscious or unconscious to act in that process. It's all the blind action of nature.

 

I was just using an extreme example of life being unconsciously intellegent (not to be confused with divine intelligence). I still can't agree with you on - "There's no place for "intelligence", conscious or unconscious to act in that process. It's all the blind action of nature." Although I can see this as a possibility. I still think that 'blind action of nature' is actually unconcious intellect that can appear blind. But, of course, I am open to be persuaded otherwise with the right evidence.

 

 

That dream thing was pretty interesting. Thank you for posting that.

Your welcome.

 

 

 

You associate adjectives oddly. I said that I was afraid I was being combative, and it's the microbes that elicit the "that's cool" factor, not you.

 

I must apologise. I re-read your posts and it is indeed ME who was assuming.

 

 

cheers.

[foodchain]

I was just using an extreme example of life being unconsciously intellegent (not to be confused with divine intelligence). I still can't agree with you on - "There's no place for "intelligence", conscious or unconscious to act in that process. It's all the blind action of nature." Although I can see this as a possibility. I still think that 'blind action of nature' is actually unconcious intellect that can appear blind. But, of course, I am open to be persuaded otherwise with the right evidence.

 

If life per say down to the cellular level or even just the DNA had visibility of its surroundings I would think evolution to be a bit different. Now what’s being viewed as "networks" per say in the organism and the relationship from phenotype to genotype to ecotype or so on is not standing at 100% factual understanding. With that said though science does have a good grasp on phylogeny, and in that or studying such or studying biology in general you can see where terms like the blind watchman come about, because as is things go extinct, some things make it, and change such as the DNA with mutations does occur, it can be objectively viewed and is recorded even today. Such as in your own DNA, evolution is recorded.

 

Such as in Hanford Washington, a microbe or bacteria has become able to survive and maintain fitness is nuclear waste basically for one example, but if you view say population biology, or population genetics how this is done is mutations coming about that either survive by being advantageous, die out by reducing fitness, or basically having no impact overall, such as neutral. You can actually after a bit of study learn how to do this in a Petri dish really all on your own. The point being is that the life had to adapt to its surroundings to survive, in with no doubt I am sure not every individual made it say for those microbes. But genetics is just one part of a whole, and really you have to view the whole in essence to understand it all I would suggest, not just trying to deduce life from one angle. As in it becomes a rather complex issue, life that is and its structure, origin and function.

[dichotomy]

genetics is just one part of a whole, and really you have to view the whole in essence to understand it all I would suggest, not just trying to deduce life from one angle. As in it becomes a rather complex issue, life that is and its structure, origin and function.

 

I’m a big William of Ockham fan - 'What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more’.

Also, if it’s a choice between a government conspiracy, and government incompetence. I generally go with incompetence as the likely reality, and often find that this is sadly the case.

 

So, a simple theory that seems to makes sense is what I try to make my starting point. And intelligence to me is (until proven otherwise) both unconscious and conscious.

 

If a tree moves its way towards the sun, I’ll agree with most scientists on why, with the addition of assuming an unconscious intellect that sensibly drives it in the direction of the sun. An unconscious intellect that we ourselves would have had at some point in time, before we got to the point of an additional conscious intellect that asked - “what am I”. Our previous unconscious, then subconsious only intellects, have gotten us to this point today.

 

Cheers.

[foodchain]

I’m a big William of Ockham fan - 'What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more’.

Also, if it’s a choice between a government conspiracy, and government incompetence. I generally go with incompetence as the likely reality, and often find that this is sadly the case.

 

So, a simple theory that seems to makes sense is what I try to make my starting point. And intelligence to me is (until proven otherwise) both unconscious and conscious.

 

If a tree moves its way towards the sun, I’ll agree with most scientists on why, with the addition of assuming an unconscious intellect that sensibly drives it in the direction of the sun. An unconscious intellect that we ourselves would have had at some point in time, before we got to the point of an additional conscious intellect that asked - “what am I”. Our previous unconscious, then subconsious only intellects, have gotten us to this point today.

 

Cheers.

 

I favor empiricism and well if that reality for whatever it is you are studying happens to be complex or simple, that’s the reality of it. As for unconscious intelligence, to associate that with life is then to associate that with inorganic chemistry basically in my opinion. Simply put I can associate the title of life with bacteria, but I don’t necessarily attach consciousness with it in any form, more or less I look at it as a conglomerate of chemistry and physics trying to survive in forms of the same. Personally I dont even view humans as all that conscious, we think in our little boxes, organic, or learned, or inbetween.

 

Cheers back at you also!

[dichotomy]

I favor empiricism and well if that reality for whatever it is you are studying happens to be complex or simple, that’s the reality of it. As for unconscious intelligence, to associate that with life is then to associate that with inorganic chemistry basically in my opinion. Simply put I can associate the title of life with bacteria, but I don’t necessarily attach consciousness with it in any form, more or less I look at it as a conglomerate of chemistry and physics trying to survive in forms of the same.

 

Empiricism is solid when it's based on the correct variables. Identifying all correct variables is the tricky bit. As far as consciousness goes, applying empiricism to it would be very tricky.

 

I do think that Humans are the most conscious of all life. The most intelligent in all respects? Only time will tell. My money's still on microbes as the ultimate survivors. I think this is very clever of them.

 

Personally I dont even view humans as all that conscious, we think in our little boxes, organic, or learned, or inbetween.

 

Speak for yourself... nah, your right!

 

cheers.

[CDarwin]

I was just using an extreme example of life being unconsciously intellegent (not to be confused with divine intelligence). I still can't agree with you on - "There's no place for "intelligence", conscious or unconscious to act in that process. It's all the blind action of nature." Although I can see this as a possibility. I still think that 'blind action of nature' is actually unconcious intellect that can appear blind. But, of course, I am open to be persuaded otherwise with the right evidence.

 

"Intelligence" implies that you have the action of an individual organism working working within its lifetime that makes the difference. That simply isn't the case with your thistle for example. A plant is born with a phenotype and prospers or fails because of it.

[someguy]

i don't think there is such a thing as unconscious intelligence. unless you mean ability to be conditioned but that's not intelligence. intelligence i think IS consciousness. those animals that are not conscious have zero intelligence. most animals. intelligent doesn't mean most likely to survive. it doesn't even mean acting the most intelligently. i can certainly see evolution guiding animals to act much smarter than we do. most animals on the planet would not ruin themselves as we have done in many civilizations before us and as we are doing to our planet right now. intelligence is quiestions, reasoning, understanding, learning, not conditioning, a dog gets conditioned it doesn't learn. you need to teach a dog with food, with conditioning. you cannot reason with it. it's more than a lack of language, it is the cause of a lack of language.

[pioneer]

The one animal, besides humans, that has the most impact on the environment is called the beaver. They are excellent lumber jacks, often able get trees to fall where they are easier to use. Their dam and home building skills can alter entire eco-systems, permanently. Sometimes the beaver community gets really carried away and they undergo massive construction projects, with dam/condos hundreds of meters long, with running water and traps to catch fish much easier. They have even devleoped their own type of morse code, with their tails, that works both above and below water so they can keep in touch. The beaver is nature's engineer. They are not smart in the same way as an ape, just far more able to generate practical and tangible output of epic proportions.

[dichotomy]

i don't think there is such a thing as unconscious intelligence. unless you mean ability to be conditioned but that's not intelligence. intelligence i think IS consciousness. those animals that are not conscious have zero intelligence. most animals. intelligent doesn't mean most likely to survive. it doesn't even mean acting the most intelligently. i can certainly see evolution guiding animals to act much smarter than we do. most animals on the planet would not ruin themselves as we have done in many civilizations before us and as we are doing to our planet right now. intelligence is quiestions, reasoning, understanding, learning, not conditioning, a dog gets conditioned it doesn't learn. you need to teach a dog with food, with conditioning. you cannot reason with it. it's more than a lack of language, it is the cause of a lack of language.

 

Humans literally dreaming of scientific and artistic ideas that come to a useful reality. Is this not the unconscious intellect at work? The conscious intellect merely watches the unconscious going about its brilliant work and on waking, puts the dream into action. Bees are absolutely amazing with their unconscious ability to build honey cones. They engineered these sophisticated things a very long time before humans had any idea about complex engineering. Beavers too, as pointed out by pioneer, are amazing engineers. The difference in my opinion between humans and animals (including microbes) is the level, or levels, of consciousness available to them.

 

Also there is a resent case (this year) I saw of a normal young child in FIJI who was orphaned and left with an ignorant uncle. The uncle, who didn't know what to do with him, left him to live with the chickens he kept. This boy was only found by outsiders to be living in this condition about 20 years later. This now young man behaves as the chickens he was kept with, no language skills, no human social skills, he walks almost chicken like. In effect the chickens where his role models. So, how far does human intellect, reason, logic, etc. get you if you are not conditioned by caring parents? a caring society?

 

I'll try to dig up some more info on him if anyone is interested.

 

cheers.

[iNow]

The one animal, besides humans, that has the most impact on the environment is called the beaver.

I'd counter this claim with a suggestion that ants and worms and other such critters do FAR more to impact their environment than any tribe of beavers ever could.

 

 

Maybe they're classified differently though... Insects... animals... whatever.

[fattyjwoods]

chimps, whales, dolphins

[lucaspa]

It is my assumption (and others) that the intellect can be unconscious as well as conscious, not yours. I don’t think unconscious intellect differs that dramatically between species. After all, something like the Scottish thistle is bright enough to have developed a way of spreading it’s species around the world without anything that resembles a human brain. BTW. I am not a creationist. I'm agnostic. So I don't go for the intelligent design thing either.

 

I submit that you have mixed up two separate ideas: intelligence and adaptations.

 

Adaptations -- like the Scottish thistle -- isn't "intelligence" because individual thistles never decided to "spread its species around the world". Instead, a few individuals were lucky enough to be born with the alleles (forms of genes) that allowed them to survive in many environments. The unlucky individuals died. There was no "intelligence" -- unconscious or otherwise -- involved on the part of the individual plants.

 

However, "intelligence" can be unconscious. Forager ants in Africa basically do complex spherical trigonometry to figure out where they are and the shortest path back to the nest -- but don't do so consciously. Instead, the intelligence to do those calculations is embedded in their genes. Humans can do spherical trigonometry, but we have to do so "consciously".

 

Someone mentioned beavers as changing the environment. Making a dam is fairly "intelligent" behavior, but it appears to be unconscious for the beavers. That is, their genome makes a brain such that it has modules on how to make a dam, but they don't sit down like human engineers and think thru the placement of the dam, the thickness of the logs needed, their individual placement, etc. Instead, it is all programmed at the genetic level.

 

Again, those individual beaver ancestors lucky enough to have the alleles to build successful dams did better and had more offspring. Those individuals unlucky not to get those alleles had their dams fail, failed to get food and/or mates, and died.

 

The closest thing we have in science to an objective measure of intelligence is the encephalisation quotient (EQ). This is the ratio of brain mass to body mass. This is not, of course, perfect. It is, in fact, a rather crude measure. However, it is a better and less subjective measure than any other I have seen.

 

The result varies a lot from individual to individual. Think of how the EQ of Einstein would be quite different to that of a human moron. This gives a range of EQs for humans from 5 to 8.

 

As I recall, Einstein's brain was not that large. Therefore your comparison of EQ within a species doesn't seem to work. Also, for humans, EQ is going to vary with obesity, isn't it? So the EQ of Neil De Grasse Tyson is going to be much smaller than for Stephen Hawking, but is that really a measurement of their relative intelligence? After all, Hawking's body mass is low due to Lou Gehrig's disease while Tyson is a healthy eater.

 

EQ also does not work as a measure for very large animals. The Blue Whale has an EQ of only 0.15, and is undoubtedly more intelligent than this indicates.

 

How about for small animals? In your list the oppossum is a lot smaller than the others, but you claim the EQ is accurate for it.

 

Here are some EQs

 

Bottlenose dolphin 3.6

Chimpanzee, and our ancestor, Australopithecus 2.7

Proboscis monkey 1.11

Ringed seal 1.37

Caribou 0.78

Opossum 0.39

 

For those who are dinosaur freaks, their EQs varied from 0,05 to 5.8. The beast so well portrayed in Jurassic Park - the Velociraptor - had the 5.8.

 

BTW, didn't we already show that your EQ of Australopithecus was wrong in another thread? Why did you repeat the same flawed data in this one?

 

Based on EQs, there is no doubt of which is the most intelligent animal. It is Homo sapiens.

 

Now, is it possible that the EQ was set up to get this result? IOW, are you touting the reliability of EQ because it seems to give intelligence to the species you think have it? As you admitted, it doesn't work for whales. It may not work for smaller animals, either. What is the EQ of mice and rats, for instance?

 

Much of the brain of the bottlenose dolphin is devoted to echolocation. Does EQ take that into account?

 

What might be a better indication of conscious intelligence (between species) is the size of the frontal lobes.

 

So we end up with no 'good' objective measure for 'intelligence' whatever that is defined as. What a surprise

 

Correct. "Intelligence" is one of those concepts that we have an intuitive feel for, but no precise definition. There's a good (small) book entitled The Origin and Evolution of Intelligence edited by AB Scheibel and J W Schopf that is very good at illustrating this.

 

BTW, what we have been calling "unconscious" intelligence they call "prerational" intelligence.

[iNow]

It seems like posters are skewing their definitions of intelligence to better ensure humans can maintain a status of *most* intelligent.

[pioneer]

Let me build upon the beaver's unique ability, among animals; built huge structures and alter the environment by making lakes/ponds. Humans are presumed to originate from apes. What that means is we have a stake in making the ape number two. If it wasn't number two, than it would hurt our sense of pride. So we need to slant the standards to make that a sure thing. If an ape learns to use a stick to catch ants down an ant-hole, then that is celebrated as the proof. But what about the massive building projects of the beaver and the lake they made? That doesn't count, the stick in the hole is far mare advanced. I am messing with you.

 

Actually apes are at the top of the animal intelligence chain. But if you look at ape behavior, they sit around, play and groom each other. If the apes become more dynamic at all, they either what to have sex, eat or fight to establish pecking order. The bottom line is, apes may be very intelligent for an animal, but they are basically lazy.

 

The beaver, although not as intelligent, is highly motivated. He is essentially a workaholic. What he lacks in book smarts, he makes up with with his motivation. The beaver would make a good motivational speaker at an ape convention. If apes were as motivated and got off their butts and used their higher intelligence, with the motivation of a beaver, they would become something that is much closer to the missing link.

 

If we look at this in the opposite direction, if the workaholic beaver suddenly got the intelligence of an ape, they may decide they need to build a second floor on their dam/condo. Maybe they also need to use mud for insulation, etc. They are workahilics and would be constantly pushing the envelope using their boosted intelligence to a higher degree.

 

If you look at the advancement into civilization, one can see a sudden rise in motivation. Larger public works projects become the norm. Humans become driven to push the envelop of skills in all directions. Science won't like this, but the early motivating factor for civilization was religion.

 

An analogy in modern times are the Muslim extremists or terrorists. Their behavior is not too intelligent, since they can never beat the extensive logistics of the western world. But what they lack in clear sighted rational vision or intelligence they make up with via their determination and their motivation. This is driven by their connection to a sort of twisted version of the Muslim religion.

 

The adaptation needed for the last ice age played a role in forcing the lazy pre-human apes to get off their butts and use their intelligence. But the real quantum boost into civilization was during good times. The natural human tendency is to rest on your laurels during good times. But they suddenly had this strong motivation that went beyond adaptation.

 

The gods of their imagination, were both their fears and their desires. Farming was not just based on the advantage of food (desire) but it was also based on what the gods would do if they screwed up (fear). But if they were succesful, the gods would also bless them with fertility (desire). The motivation was both the push of fear and pull of desire. These are still the strongest motivating factors that drive human motivation.

 

I am not getting religious on you, but the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, tells of the shift from lazy paradise. It began with the motivation of bad judgement desire that ended in fear. Fear took over as the primary motivation with desire slowly returning. When the desire gets too strong the gods (motivation) became fear again. The reason for this is that fear is the strongest motivator. Desire ends when the goal is reached and then you smoke a cigarette and sleep. But even if one escapes the fear, there is no permanent rest because the fear is still out there ready to get you another day. Early religion was perpetual fear and a desire that was out of reach in this life. Day-to-day desire to forget about the fear was regulated by law, which then used fear. The lazy human apes had little time to be lazy but were pushed and pulled. The beaver cultures were the ones that built empires. Within the logistics of those empires intelligences also grew. Roman was motivative intelligence.

[dichotomy]

I submit that you have mixed up two separate ideas: intelligence and adaptations.

 

Adaptations -- like the Scottish thistle -- isn't "intelligence" because individual thistles never decided to "spread its species around the world". Instead, a few individuals were lucky enough to be born with the alleles (forms of genes) that allowed them to survive in many environments. The unlucky individuals died. There was no "intelligence" -- unconscious or otherwise -- involved on the part of the individual plants.

 

As far as we can see, at this point in time, with the evidence at our disposal, yes, this is the best assumption. If I where a betting man I would go with this probability (Ok, you got me I agree ).

 

But, I still think there is ample room to examine the unconscious intellect of LIFE. Again, I say this because we evolved from unconscious life, and unconscious energy and matter. To me adaptation can only occur if there is some form of unconscious smarts occurring to force these adaptations into action. So, I think possibly that adaptation is triggered through the unconscious intellect of life. But like any other intellect, it can be wrong at times.

 

I

However, "intelligence" can be unconscious. Forager ants in Africa basically do complex spherical trigonometry to figure out where they are and the shortest path back to the nest -- but don't do so consciously. Instead, the intelligence to do those calculations is embedded in their genes. Humans can do spherical trigonometry, but we have to do so "consciously".

 

Thanks for this, incredible. I still think honey bees are the most sophisticated insect, but those ants sound like they're not far off.

 

 

I

Someone mentioned beavers as changing the environment. Making a dam is fairly "intelligent" behavior, but it appears to be unconscious for the beavers. That is, their genome makes a brain such that it has modules on how to make a dam, but they don't sit down like human engineers and think thru the placement of the dam, the thickness of the logs needed, their individual placement, etc. Instead, it is all programmed at the genetic level.

 

 

Ok, if beavers (my other favourite animal for obvious reasons:-p ) unconsciously have engineering skills, that would mean you should be able to take a newborn beaver, raise it to adulthood by human hand only, return it to the wild in a location without other beavers about. And it should go into auto engineer mode. Is this really the case?

 

Cheers.

 

It seems like posters are skewing their definitions of intelligence to better ensure humans can maintain a status of *most* intelligent.

 

 

Yep, we have a monopoly on what constitutes intelligence. This makes it pretty tough for other species to get a toe in the door.

[smarty_pants]

Ants and their way to cooperate together and not try and kill each other likes us humans

[CDarwin]

It seems like posters are skewing their definitions of intelligence to better ensure humans can maintain a status of *most* intelligent.

 

It seems that posters are trying their very hardest to skew their definitions of intelligence so that humans won't be the most intelligent in the face of all conventions of the English language.

[iNow]

I should have used the word "some." Mea Culpa.

[foodchain]

It seems that posters are trying their very hardest to skew their definitions of intelligence so that humans won't be the most intelligent in the face of all conventions of the English language.

 

I will admit to some guilt of this but first of all I mean we are typically engaging intelligence by nothing more then a human standard. TO get more to the point we have organisms or specialized populations of such that have managed to survive far longer then humans have been around. Giving the scope of environmental issues that humans are bring to bear combined with our supposed conscious and intelligent minds we might not last near a speck of the time some living things have, and in regards to that what do you say? To simply do a compare and contrast of drama which leads to death or mutilation as a standard, humans would actually rank quite low I think in contrast to our supposed conscious intellects. Sure chimps wont nuke the planet to death because they cant, but on that note I don’t see how us endowing the planet with massive extinction rates maybe if our own is somehow putting us above everything in regards to intelligence.

 

As for what I base my opinion on, well a majority of it is very real. Environmental issues are becoming worse, that alone should be enough. I mean we need the earth to be habitable for life for us to exist, and to knowingly go about destroying such, well I don’t know what else you would call the pinnacle of stupidity besides that. I mean I have viewed video of a hippo protecting an member of an alien species from predators and of course nursing such a creature, I don’t think people know as much about life as half of them claim most the time.

 

Lastly, the definition simply ignores so much including evolution. We may be able to build nukes, but who is to say really how reality looks in the eyes of a dolphin for instance, we cant do that really. So for however intelligent we might be in regards to survival, how a dolphin survives to me would just be such applied in a different light.

[dichotomy]

Ants and their way to cooperate together and not try and kill each other likes us humans

 

I don't know what the species were. But in my childhood I used to pit black bull ants against red bull ants. The black ones would generally win. So, point being. They do indeed kill each other.

 

cheers.

 

I mean we need the earth to be habitable for life for us to exist, and to knowingly go about destroying such, well I don’t know what else you would call the pinnacle of stupidity besides that.

 

Not all humans 'knowingly' destroy their enviro beyond repair. Many are just too unenlightened to see that their impacts can become irrevesible, or economically short sighted, or just plain old disastrous to our species.

I have no idea really, of what actual irreversable damaging ecological footprint I'm leaving this world with, and I doubt that anyone really does. In this respect we are no different to elephants that blindly tear down forests.

 

cheers.

[lucaspa]

I will admit to some guilt of this but first of all I mean we are typically engaging intelligence by nothing more then a human standard. TO get more to the point we have organisms or specialized populations of such that have managed to survive far longer then humans have been around.

 

But now you are saying "intelligence = survival time". That isn't true, either. Survival time for a species or a lineage is not linked at all to intelligence, but adaptation to an environment and the available competition for that ecological niche. Intelligence, OTOH, is something conscious. It may be the result of adaptation but it does not follow that adaptation = intelligence since adaptation occurs without conscious thought.

 

I don’t see how us endowing the planet with massive extinction rates maybe if our own is somehow putting us above everything in regards to intelligence.

 

That is simply a byproduct of technology, which in turn is a byproduct of what we consider intelligence: the ability to manipulate abstract thoughts and the ability to communicate those thoughts to others thru the use of language.

 

It is entirely possible that sapience is NOT a long term adaptation. That doesn't make the intelligence any less "intelligent".

 

As far as we can see, at this point in time, with the evidence at our disposal, yes, this is the best assumption.

 

As you noted, it's not an "assumption". It's a conclusion. Natural selection does not happen at the will or desire of the individual. If it did, there would be a LOT more deer born with longer fur in a climate getting colder. Instead, what is observed is that just as many deer are born with shorter fur than longer fur. It's just that survival is selective.

 

But, I still think there is ample room to examine the unconscious intellect of LIFE. ... To me adaptation can only occur if there is some form of unconscious smarts occurring to force these adaptations into action. So, I think possibly that adaptation is triggered through the unconscious intellect of life.

 

Again, the data is against some form of "unconscious smarts". People -- particularly population genetecists -- have tracked variations in wild populations and populations subjected to selection pressure in the lab. As you noted at "looking at the odds", if there were an unconscious smarts we would see more favorable variations than the "odds" would predict. But that isn't what is observed. Remember: hypothesis, deductions, testing. You hypothesis of "unconscious smarts" has deductions that we can test. When we find results to the contrary of those deductions, then the hypothesis is refuted.

 

Thanks for this, incredible. I still think honey bees are the most sophisticated insect, but those ants sound like they're not far off.

 

The forager ants are what I mean by "unconscious intelligence". They do what, in humans, is regarded as very difficult mathematical calculations requiring a high degree of intelligence -- in humans. Yet the ants do so with the most primitive of brains. So, this type of ability can be unconsciously developed by natural selection. Remember, natural selection is an algorithm to get design. It is so good at it that humans use natural selection when the design problem is too tough for them.

 

Ok, if beavers (my other favourite animal for obvious reasons:-p ) unconsciously have engineering skills, that would mean you should be able to take a newborn beaver, raise it to adulthood by human hand only, return it to the wild in a location without other beavers about. And it should go into auto engineer mode. Is this really the case?

 

As far as I know. Do you have any data to the contrary?

 

Yep, we have a monopoly on what constitutes intelligence. This makes it pretty tough for other species to get a toe in the door.

 

We don't necessarily have a monopoly on "intelligence". Monkeys, chimps, orangutuans, etc. are very "smart":

9. E Linden, Can animals think? Time 154: 57-60, Sept 6, 1999. (the "prison breaks" from zoos are as clever as anything humans have come up with to break out of prison)

 

However, we do have the combination of intelligence and technology such that it is going to be impossible for any other species to break into our particular ecological niche. But that applies all across evolution: it would be impossible for any fish to challenge sharks in their ecological niche. Sharks are simply very good at that niche. That's why you see widespread adaptation only when species invade an ecology with lots of empty niches: such as the tortoises and finches on the Galapagos or the mammals after the KT extinction. As a population adapts to a niche, of course they are not going to be as good at it as a species that has already adpated to the niche.

 

When we see a replacement of a species, it is when species B has evolved in some other location and is now invading the area of species A. For whatever reason at the other location, species B is better at filling the niche than species A. But you don't see species B evolving in the same area and trying to replace species A. That doesn't work. This replacement is what happened as H. sapiens migrated out of Africa. It was better at filling the niche of Homo than either H. neandertals in Europe or H. erectus in Asia and therefore outcompeted them for the niche.

 

Of course, H. sapiens is now all over the planet.