- #71
apeiron
Gold Member
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Kajahtava said:I believe that if you experience a certain concept but cannot come to a definition of it in hard terms that can be objectively tested and verified you most likely deal with a concept that has no place in serious naturalistic science and instead deal with a concept that human beings subconsciously invent to better deal with the complexity of the world around them, you know, like 'chair' or 'evil'.
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The problem is that a word like intelligence seems like a thing rather than a process. Like consciousness, goodness and other troublesome word, it makes the mistake of "entification" - turning processes (which operate in contexts) into entities (which simply exist, entire unto themselves).
Which is why I suggested shifting the discussion to words like anticipation which are clearly processes. Intelligence leaves an ambiguity over what should be measured, in a way that anticipation doesn't.
Kajahtava said:Then there's also stuff like the mirror test which is really nazi science and as shaky as Hitler's attempts to prove the superiority of the German people. If people being able to recognise themselves in the mirror is a proof of their 'self awareness' then likewise it's a proof that humans are not self aware but dogs are because they can recognise themselves from the scent of their piss while humans can't.
The mirror test actually involves animals noticing a red dot or something similar marked on brow and ear. So it is not about recognising self, it is recognising that something has changed about their appearance.
Nothing shaky about the test itself. How it should be intepreted is another matter. But it does produce repeatable data.
For your dog example, what would happen if they were fed asparagus? Humans often notice something has changed.