what is intelligence?

[Athena]

#2 - When the Earth's eviroment is damaged or changed, in turn the Earth will react and adapt in order to keep everything balanced as possible. The Earth will increase/decrease temprature, increase/decrease water levels, etc. Us humans could be considdered the white blood cells of the Earth.... we just haven't figured out our roll yet.

Praxius, if you give what you thought a second thought, might it be possible that we are earth's consciouness? As I said in response to Kuldeep, our bodies function while we sleep. While we are awake our bodies do a lot we are not conscious of them doing. Even when our bodies begin responding to a virus, we are not aware of what our bodies are doing, until we "feel" sick.

Whoo, you all are causing my mind to melt down. My body has an intelligence far beyond the intelligence of my brain. If my body told me to take over and make it do all the things it has to do, I wouldn't be able to make my body work. I don't know enough to make my body work. This is an unnerving thought. Now what is intelligence, wisdom, consciousness?

Mental breakdown. I am going to soak in a hot tub and then walk the dog and ponder these thoughts I do not understand.

[Praxius]

ha ha... enjoy. It took me a head of LSD to figure it all out myself.

[WindWip]

I would say intelligence is simpler.

It's the capacity to retain or learn the knowledge of the consequences attached to certain actions... knowing both causes and effects.

Wisdom is knowing when to make the appropriate choice.

For example...

Knowing that the fire is hot and can burn is intelligence. Knowing how long you can put your hand in the fire and how far in until it burns is intelligence.

Choosing to act on that information is wise, or unwise, depending on the desired outcome.

That is almost exactly how I would describe intelligence.

My definition for wisdom would be: acquired knowledge and the good judgment to use it effectively.

[Athena]

That is almost exactly how I would describe intelligence.

My definition for wisdom would be: acquired knowledge and the good judgment to use it effectively.

Okay, is God or the ultimate consciousness, all knowing, or is God or the ultimate consciousness, intelligent and capable of wisdom?

[ZNFYRH]

Athena

Nice... you're like the anti-Zhavric... starting a thread about one thing and then making it about God.

[Technosoul]

I am in total awe at the philosophy being related in all the above texts, this is one of the best and more interesting topics that I have seen to date on Volconvo because of the ideas being related. My cup of "warm" tea.

I doubt if I can add anything worhty to this topic without messing it up but do feel the urge to add something.

The first thought that struck my mind in the title was due to the word "intelligence" My mind broke it down into four words.

In. Tell. I. Gence.

Now I did not confirm this with a dictionary but it seems to make a kind of sentence.... the Inside telling I the gence...and so I would have to find out what a gence is but it sounds a bit like gene, genetic ( a spin off of the name of the first chapter in the bible), consciousness. or along those lines. But in any case the information would unfold form within outwardly as part of our consciousness, or directly as a "automatic behavior pattern" (which you folks already went into).
AKA - timed harmone releases.

But I must take time to re-read what all was said again and then see if I can find something to add.

Not sure if I can pinpoint what intelligence is as it seems to be a process .... a kind of "floating process" that has no shape or form by which to point and say "that is it".

As new agers became more educated about some of the ideas from India, Tao, and the Mayan cultures (etc.) they came up with some para-scientific books that had a metaphysical touch to thier concepts. The webpage on this link does not go into detail but his basic idea is that that the earth is a thinking being - etc. Which is a repeat of some ancient philosophy but his background in techonlogy and science allowed him to give the idea a modern advantage in understanding it.

The Global Brain

[Technosoul]

I would say intelligence is simpler.

It's the capacity to retain or learn the knowledge of the consequences attached to certain actions... knowing both causes and effects.

Wisdom is knowing when to make the appropriate choice.

For example...

Knowing that the fire is hot and can burn is intelligence. Knowing how long you can put your hand in the fire and how far in until it burns is intelligence.

Choosing to act on that information is wise, or unwise, depending on the desired outcome.

And so I have a few questions that might be a bit irritating in nature.

Does intelligence and knowing come into existence because of a felt experience? Or does intelligence pre-exist the experience for the purposes of processing the information collected as experience?

Now the brain plays some role in this topic as being perhaps the center for human intelligence. Composed of chemcials and electronic networks and who knows what all. Is the brain intelligent of it's self? How could an organism evolve or develepe a brain especially for the purpose of computing data and creating an intelligent reaction in the mind and body.

The mind.... is that the brain or something different?

Of course these questions are for anyone to answer or speculate upon and not just for the poster who I replied too.

Or is intelligence the collective combination of many cells in the body that have a whole network of communication? Plants do not have heads and brains and yet they can do things that require intelligence.

A flower reacting to the heat of the sun is like the example of the hand reacting to the heat of a fire. And as the flower peddles fold up at night when it is cool they often act like blankets for bees that go to "bed" on the flower that covers it so it (bee) is safe for the night. A tree animal might get food and safe harbor in the tree but it might also bury the nuts so the tree can populate the forest to make more trees for more tree animals. All that teamwork seems to have some sort of "overhanging" intelligence surrounding both the tree and the animal in question.

It is said that rocks can absorb as a memory things that have happened in their location for generations. A sensitive person can "feel" that wisdom I was told. So I got together a small collection of pet rocks and put them in my room and they did seem like "friends" after a while, and it seemed like they were communicating somethiing ancient yet too mystical to discribe logically. Later on when I started buying antique glassware I got to where I could feel if the item was old or just a new reproducton, because the older antiques can communicate a history of being as if containing a resonating "story" about the homes it had been in for it's existence as that object. That "sense" about those items was normally correct when I had it inspected by an expert on antiques and faked reproductions.,

This gives me the speculation that everything is part of some massive network of communication and it is all tied together as one big intelligence rather then the "other ways" we sometimes view life and the universe.

[ZNFYRH]

Does intelligence and knowing come into existence because of a felt experience? Or does intelligence pre-exist the experience for the purposes of processing the information collected as experience?

Intelligence, in the way I perceive it as meaning awareness of causes and effects, can only be acquired through experience. The nice thing about this is that humans possess the ability to learn from the experiences of others.

As far as the brain is concerned...

I don't think anyone is any more or less intelligent than any other person.

People are smarter. Smarts, as I see it, are the speed with which you access the causes and effects... the speed with which you access information.

[Technosoul]

So then "awareness" can exist at birth and then as "it" becomes aware of it's surroundings (experienced in time) then it becomes intelligent and then remembers knowledge that can be used later for the next experience. So - the combination of "something" aware and memory produces intelligence and a way to interpret knowledge.

Is that sort of where we stand now on this topic? Still the riddle about that factor called "awareness" unless you assume it is the biological evolution of the physical properties of the organ we call our brain?

Intelligence might be evolved if it is just about evoling a more complex brain that developed skills at learning knowledge. Plus that fact that one generation can write knowledge books for the next generation to study, and we write ones for a future generation. And so no one starts from the beginning each generation because of recorded information. So we can be smarter knowledge wise then ancient people. But animals of the "lower intelligence" kind are still very aware of their surroundings and often have better sensorary in-put (better smelling or hearing) and so that makes me think I would need to think much deeper about any idea that "awareness" is evolving.

I do not think my brain really wants me to know the answer anyway because it seems to offer only a "maze" to follow that does not really even have an exit.

[Athena]

So then "awareness" can exist at birth and then as "it" becomes aware of it's surroundings (experienced in time) then it becomes intelligent and then remembers knowledge that can be used later for the next experience. So - the combination of "something" aware and memory produces intelligence and a way to interpret knowledge.

Is that sort of where we stand now on this topic? Still the riddle about that factor called "awareness" unless you assume it is the biological evolution of the physical properties of the organ we call our brain?

Intelligence might be evolved if it is just about evoling a more complex brain that developed skills at learning knowledge. Plus that fact that one generation can write knowledge books for the next generation to study, and we write ones for a future generation. And so no one starts from the beginning each generation because of recorded information. So we can be smarter knowledge wise then ancient people. But animals of the "lower intelligence" kind are still very aware of their surroundings and often have better sensorary in-put (better smelling or hearing) and so that makes me think I would need to think much deeper about any idea that "awareness" is evolving.

I do not think my brain really wants me to know the answer anyway because it seems to offer only a "maze" to follow that does not really even have an exit.

I have post trauma syndrome from being put in a body cast at age 1. At this age I lacked the language essential to understanding what was done to me in a nice way. I would not call the impression this experience made on my mind, intelligence. It was raging, choatic terror. With no words to explain this experience, later in life, when the memory recorded only as feeling was triggered, I experienced what I think most people would call insanity. It took me several years to work my way through this insanity. At this time, the only talk of post trauma syndrome was the trauma caused by war. The condition was not applied to average citizens, however, when I saw a discription of the condition, while cleaning a VA office, I knew I was suffering from the condition. This lead to reading a book about traumatized children, and doing research about "normal" development. Since I have worked through the whole thing, I don't think I will ever again experience the insanity that I did experience in the past. My words and intelligence have filled out the memory and changed the dyamics of it. It can never again will be that raging, choatic terror that it was.

My full experience, leads me to believe our justice system is unjust in its reaction to people who do regretable things as a result of a trauma they might not even remember. People who have not experienced the insanity, lack vital information to judging those who do experience the insanity. Anyway, we are not simply accumulating information and gaining intelligence, and just about everything we consider to be human intelligence is dependent on words. Memories recorded as feelings, may be a long ways from what we call intelligence.

[Athena]

Is that sort of where we stand now on this topic? Still the riddle about that factor called "awareness" unless you assume it is the biological evolution of the physical properties of the organ we call our brain?

Still chewing on your thought technosoul, much of our lives are stored in what we call the subconscious. Remember Fraud and the subconscious? We may or may not become aware of what is in our subconscious. Want is stored there can bleed through into our present consciousness, such as feelings of terror, and get all confused with our present reality, and this can happen without present awareness of the original cause of the terror, or whatever other subconscious thing that is coming through. Make sense? Yeah, does insanity make sense?

[Athena]

Here technosoul, you made me think of memes as the organized intelligence to which you refered....

Meme
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For other uses, see MEME.
The term "meme" (IPA: /miːm/, rhyming with "theme"), coined and popularized in 1976[1] by the biologist Richard Dawkins, refers to a "unit of cultural information" which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information).

Dawkins gave as examples of memes: tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothes fashions, ways of making pots, or of building arches. A meme, he said, propagates itself as a unit of cultural evolution and diffusion — analogous in many ways to the behavior of the gene. Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or meme-complexes.

The idea of memes has proved a successful meme in its own right, gaining a degree of penetration into popular culture which relatively few modern scientific theories achieve.

Proponents of memes suggest that memes evolve via natural selection — in a way very similar to Charles Darwin's ideas concerning biological evolution — on the premise that variation, mutation, competition, and "inheritance" influence their replicative success. For example, while one idea may become extinct, other ideas will survive, spread, and mutate — for better or for worse — through modification.

Meme-theorists contend that memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes which replicate the most effectively spread best; which allows for the possibility that successful memes might prove detrimental to their hosts.

At the time of the American Revolution memes for democracy were dominate. Christian and capitalist memes now dominate and the ones for democracy are pretty well forgotten. This means, I talk a lot about democracy, and what I am saying doesn't relate to what people want to talk about. Even the discussion on Natural Rights was completely disassociated with the philosophy that goes with the concept of Natural Rights, making the meme of Natural rights a broken and useless meme.
That is, we no longer organize our thoughts about democracy, as thoughts of democracy were organized when our nation was started.

Now Christians will have you believe they are responsible for democracy, and all our human progress, which is an opinion so disconnected from history and the philosophy behind democracy. The Christian memes are much stronger than the democracy memes right now. Makes us want to question intelligence, doesn't it? As we war with Muslims and Muslim memes, we better question intelligence.