Evolution of Intelligence.

[praty]

This thought fascinates me. Would intelligence like ours(or advanced) always exist in the chain of evolution by natural selection?

 

If life arises somewhere else in the cosmos, which I'm very sure would move forward through similar variations of Darwinian evolution(needs discussion, I know), is it necessary that the life forms there develop consciousness like humans?

 

If it is hard to arrive at intelligence from single self replicating cell, then isn't it by sheer chance that we are here with our brains having capabilities it has?

Edited May 1, 2011 by praty

[insane_alien]

This thought fascinates me. Would intelligence like ours(or advanced) always exist in the chain of evolution by natural selection?

 

no, not always, intelligence on our level hasn't existed for most of the history of life on earth. it need not necessarily arise.

 

If it is hard to arrive at intelligence from single self replicating cell, then isn't it by sheer chance that we are here with our brains having capabilities it has?

 

no, not sheer chance.

 

randomness is involved in evolution but only at the mutation stage, the mutations are then selected for by natural selection.

 

what happened was we got in an evolutionary arms race and won by way of outsmarting everything bigger and stronger than us that would see us as food.

[immortal]

praty said

 

If life arises somewhere else in the cosmos, which I'm very sure would move forward through similar variations of Darwinian evolution(needs discussion, I know), is it necessary that the life forms there develop consciousness like humans?

 

To better understand what consciousness offers to biological entities let me introduce this new perspective of it. Let us assume that you and your mother are having a conversation with each other and suddenly your consciousness is lost, you don't know where you are, you have no experiences, what you see is total blackness and you know nothing of your body nor your surroundings, you are not aware of it. In the mean time you're brain has normally fired signals and your mother can see your body with your eyes blinking and even talking to her. Now after a while you regain your consciousness and you ask your mother where was I and what was I doing and your mother replies "Well my son you were talking normally to me and you were blinking your eyes". Now you were not aware of anything about this nor do you have any knowledge about the conversation that you had. This is how a biological organism will be with out consciousness and any tree which was falling when you were chatting with your mother while you were unconscious will not make any sound, however the brain still might fire a signal and move you out from there if it was falling on you. The main problem is why we have to be aware of what we are doing, what's the point of knowing all this when the body along with its brain can survive and have its own instincts why we should be aware of what it does. This is the biggest problem facing biology.

 

 

I think consciousness emerged when the brain was looking for some kind of feedback for its response something like an acknowledgement so that it can synchronize its firing more effectively. So the brain added this new element of reality so that when you spoke i.e when the brain fired a signal to contract and relax the vocal chords the brain added a qualia called sound so that it can get a feedback and learn or synchronize its firing. So just because sugar tastes sweet for us doesn't necessarily mean that it should taste the same way for an alien. It all depends on what kind of an element of reality their nervous system is projecting to them. It may be completely different compared to us.

 

So our ancestors could have been wandering in the forests and marking places of their routes from their hunting places to their shelter and this feeling of knowing which was ensured through feedback gave the brain a different plasticity to synchronize its firing and also planning as well as thinking and changing from machines to what we know as human beings with a coulorful world to see.

 

Therefore one can see that consciousness plays an important part in learning and syncronizing responses and the intelligence of a civilization might depend on the clarity of their consciousness. So yes an alien life if it is intelligent should atleast have some degree of consciousness. Due to the second law of thermodynamics any life of any form should try to reduce entropy with in its system and throw eat out to the surrounding environment. James Lovelock the founder of the Gaia theory hypothesized that we should look for alien life in the universe where there are points in which there is a considerable reduction of entropy. So the central dogma of life should remain the same.

 

As far as chances are concerned one has to include various factors and it may vary depending on how habitable the planet is but there is nothing that will prevent an intelligent life to evolve in the cosmos if it has the right conditions for it.

[Chalky]

There's a fascinating (and at times quite acrimonious) debate on this and related issues between Stephen J Gould of Harvard University, and Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University.

 

Gould argues that we arose completely by chance and that "if the tape of life were replayed" intelligence would not necessarily have arisen, because evolution is so random and easily influenced by minute events (i.e. the butterfly effect).

 

Conway Morris says that Gould is completely wrong and points to convergent evolution. This is the independent evolution of the same traits in completely separate lineages (for example, flight in insects, bats, pterosaurs and birds). He uses this (and quite a few other examples) to suggest that intelligence is a natural endpoint of evolution.

 

This debate is still ongoing and nobody really knows the answer. As with all endmember views, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

 

Would life have evolved on another planet? That depends on how similar you think alien life has to be to that on planet Earth. I've been reading a little about the subject recently and it basically comes down to how you define life.

[xxSilverPhinxx]

There's a fascinating (and at times quite acrimonious) debate on this and related issues between Stephen J Gould of Harvard University, and Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University.

 

Gould argues that we arose completely by chance and that "if the tape of life were replayed" intelligence would not necessarily have arisen, because evolution is so random and easily influenced by minute events (i.e. the butterfly effect).

 

Conway Morris says that Gould is completely wrong and points to convergent evolution. This is the independent evolution of the same traits in completely separate lineages (for example, flight in insects, bats, pterosaurs and birds). He uses this (and quite a few other examples) to suggest that intelligence is a natural endpoint of evolution.

 

This debate is still ongoing and nobody really knows the answer. As with all endmember views, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

 

Would life have evolved on another planet? That depends on how similar you think alien life has to be to that on planet Earth. I've been reading a little about the subject recently and it basically comes down to how you define life.

 

I think the brains of marine mammals such as whales and dolphins are interesting because though they're separated from our lineage by a few million years, they've evolved a similar brain cortex.

[Ophiolite]

I think the brains of marine mammals such as whales and dolphins are interesting because though they're separated from our lineage by a few million years, they've evolved a similar brain cortex.

However a few million years in the context of 3.5 billion years is nothing. Further, you are working - in each instance - with the same basic DNA and genes. It's not surprising that given a similar problem the solution would look similar.

[Maximus Semprus Veridius]

Hmmm, i think most of what is valuable to this point has been said already, i.e. "randomness" is only present at the mutations phase in cell division (meiosis - crossing over etc) then the natural selection takes over. The word selection is important because it denotes a systematic method through which evolution occurs. But that needn't mean that intelligence WILL arise. I mean we (H. sapien) only got intelligent because I presume we needed to. If the need for change/evolution is not there then that change will not occur (evidence from earth are the kakkapo and the dodo and many other island creatures, insulated from predation in which their visible characteristics (phenotypes) that help them escape from danger have disappeared).

 

I don't know enough about the evolution specifically of intelligence to say if it is more or less likely for another, different planet to have advanced denizens in terms of intelligence however, but i do know its by no means a fore-gone conclusion.

 

(It goes without saying that there almost certainly are intelligent life-forms other than ourselves in the universe though )

 

EDIT: I just thought of something though. Maybe after billions of years of evolution on a planet so many niches are filled that intelligence is, in a sense, the last "thing to do" (or evolve). It seems that intelligence is undoubtedly going to be an adaptation that takes many many genes to code for (I can only speculate at how many polypeptides code for just the creative aspect of the brain, not to mention the logical and everything in between). So in that sense intelligence could be an "end-point" of evolution, but I don't agree which Morris theory because we don't really have any evidence, other than human kind being the dominant species, which may sound hypocritical but we don't know what the future holds so it seems unwise, in my mind, to say that "the currant dominant species is the 'end-point' of evolution".

Edited July 8, 2011 by Maximus Semprus Veridius

[CharonY]

Note that selection is not the only mechanism shaping a population. Depending on the actual history (and that was what Gould argued, IIRC) different stochastic events may have changed the pool to an extent so that selection would result in a different outcome.

[DrakeCennedig]

There's a fascinating (and at times quite acrimonious) debate on this and related issues between Stephen J Gould of Harvard University, and Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University.

 

Gould argues that we arose completely by chance and that "if the tape of life were replayed" intelligence would not necessarily have arisen, because evolution is so random and easily influenced by minute events (i.e. the butterfly effect).

 

Conway Morris says that Gould is completely wrong and points to convergent evolution. This is the independent evolution of the same traits in completely separate lineages (for example, flight in insects, bats, pterosaurs and birds). He uses this (and quite a few other examples) to suggest that intelligence is a natural endpoint of evolution.

 

This debate is still ongoing and nobody really knows the answer. As with all endmember views, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

 

Would life have evolved on another planet? That depends on how similar you think alien life has to be to that on planet Earth. I've been reading a little about the subject recently and it basically comes down to how you define life.

 

 

Somewhere in the middle? Middle-of-the-road is a good general strategy, but in this case, I think the answer is clear in favor of Morris.

 

While it is true that minute events can radically alter a particular given series of events, minute events are happening constantly, and there is a general pattern to how each one of these minute events play out. No particular butterfly that flaps its wings in the Amazon will probably ever have a chance to start a tornado in Texas, because there are so many other butterflies flapping their wings and causing opposing cascades that might... you see where I'm going with this? Random potential stimuli happen constantly, so large scale events are very VERY rarely changed by any particular small scale event. Even if one particular ball doesn't fall into one particular place in the bell curve, the overall shape of the curve is not threatened. And with evolution, we're talking about A LOT of balls in the bell curve.

 

More concretely, however, Morris is right because for any given set of conditions, there can only be one most fit answer. On planet Earth, for our global average temperature, and our gravitational force, and our abundance of water and carbon and et cetera, there can only be one set of most fit life forms. Large lumbering plant eaters wouldn't have had to evolve from archosaurs in particular; but as soon as there were plants which grew taller than the animals of the day, some creature would logically start to grow taller to feed on that new source. If life on Earth were replayed, the Mesozoic might have included giant pillbugs instead of Ankylosaurs; large land-dwelling squid instead of Diplodocus; or mammalian fliers instead of Archaeopteryx. But one thing I think is fairly certain: all of those forms would have existed at the same time as that particular environment.

 

Intelligence, it would seem to me, must follow the same principle; that whenever intelligence becomes a major advantage, it will arise. The branch it comes from is irrelevant. (Just think; If it had evolved in troodontids, Dragon-Men! In ants, Hive-Minded Bug People! etc.) But if conditions are such that a trait is an advantage, it will arise, no matter how many butterflies say otherwise. And the macroconditions of the planet are not easily changed.

[kitkat]

I agree that when intelligence arises at the conscious level then most will evolve to possess it too. The problem is humans tend to think they are the only ones who have it.

[Ophiolite]

The problem is humans tend to think they are the only ones who have it.

Only that subset of humans who don't.