Defining intelligence

[Magical Realist]

How do we distinguish a person of average intelligence from one of greater intelligence? What behavior/personality traits qualify someone being regarded as intelligent? To what extent is intelligence a social construct? Is intelligence something we are born with or something that is achieved over the years? Does being intelligent always make one more successful in life? Can someone who is not intelligent become a success in life? (see Donald Trump). Does natural selection favor the survival of the intelligent over the survival of the non-intelligent? Are we evolving into a more intelligent species?

[Magical Realist]

“I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.”
― Susan Sontag

Hmm.. intelligence as a "distributed" and situational property. An interactive and emergent phenomenon that arises from good conversation and a shared love for ideas? Perhaps a better word for this is "enlightenment"..

[C C]

Similar to consciousness, the opposite of intelligence might be easier to answer. Then just a matter of inverting that to get a basic answer.[1]

But instead of contrasting animals with plants (or rocks), it's probably often the comparison between human intelligence and the sapience level of lesser creatures. Obviously what the difference is there is that people can break out of innate programming and try different approaches and arguably progress, including adapting to new environs without need of their bodies mutating radically.

Since some primitive degree of information processing and intercommunication or signaling seems entailed by life itself (even with respect to bacteria), the distinction between "non-intelligence" (no significant measurement whatsoever) and intelligence (of any magnitude) may overlap with or parallel somewhat the distinction between non-living and living. AI doesn't elude that since it's a product of biological intelligence -- not an actual example of "non-life" sporting sapience. Plus, over time machines can be fully developed into technological-based life forms that can replicate, seek resources to sustain them, etc.

- - - footnote - - -

[1] For instance, non-consciousness (death) is simply the absence or lack of manifestation of everything -- including the world, personal thoughts, and even displays of nothingness, silence, etc. Flipping that, consciousness (or phenomenal consciousness at least) is thus the presence or presentation of anything. Adding memory-based cognition to that bare experience would supply an identification of the "anything" and acknowledgement that the "anything" is indeed there.

[confused2]

I've recently spent (wasted) several hours 'chatting' to an AI (artificial intelligence) 'information assistant'. In the nature of giving answers the program only operates when asked a question. It does 'wake up' with complete knowledge and understanding of the preceding chat but for it no time has passed. If you pulled the plug out between questions you wouldn't be stopping anything because it is already stopped - I think that's kind of stretching sentience to suit humans because we like to think we're still 'here' even when asleep. As an ex (somewhat) trained electrical engineer and computer programmer I can say that it can do everything I have ever been able to do - in a fraction of a second. My rich friend has stopped asking me to do bits of programming - ChatGPT does it for him in a fraction of a second. Structural engineers, tax consultants, architects .. loads of 'professions' all pointless now. Can it tell you how deep you need to dig the foundations in Bulwash county - it surely can - and if it can't the next one will be able to.
Is it intelligent? I don't know - it's certainly smarter than me.

[Yazata]

I'm skeptical about 'intelligence', as with so much else.

I doubt very much whether there is any single quality, ability, or whatever, that intelligence tests successfully measure. Instead, I see intelligence more as an average of sometimes very different abilities.

Some people are very good at linguistic skills. I may or may not be one of them, ranking in the 99th percentile in some tests. Yet I have never in my life successfully completed a crossword puzzle. I just don't access my vocabulary that way, a bit of an idiot-savant in that regard, perhaps.

I'm probably well below average at literary appreciation or creativity. I'm clueless about poetry. The literary qualities of writing that so interest English teachers mean nothing to me. In fact, if the English teachers like a novel, I can be pretty sure that I won't.

That being said, I'm extraordinarily good at conceptual reasoning. I've always been able to impress professors and earn A's in philosophy courses, even at the graduate level, without really trying all that hard. It was just easy and intuitive. But unlike some philosophers (that's you, Quine) I don't philosophize formally in terms of mathematical logic. I play to my strengths and think linguistically/conceptually. (I'm inclined to think that normal conceptual reasoning is a much more powerful instrument than formal logic. The latter is constantly playing catch-up, trying to model everyday reasoning.)

I found that conceptual skill carried over to being a biology major (very conceptual) after I left my original engineering major (because I just couldn't get my mind around solving calculus problems). I love science-fiction, but not because of any literary qualities it might have but because of the imaginative concepts that I find there. (Precisely the reason the English teachers sneer at sci-fi.)

Sad to say, I'm probably well below average in the general population when if comes to abstract mathematical skill. I'll just never be a mathematician, a computer scientist, a physicist or an engineer. Mathematics does interest me, but in a conceptual philosophy-of-mathematics way.

I'm above average in those spatial reasoning tests where you imagine folding a piece of paper like origami.

When it comes to art, I'm ok (just kinda average) at visual art, but I don't have any musical talent to speak of. I'm not even all that interested in music, I prefer silence or white-noise. (I wonder how/if musical talent and mathematics skill are related.)

I can't dance. At all.

But my music appreciation and interest increases really dramatically when I smoke marijuana. I don't know why that is. When I'm stoned, I like old 50's cool jazz the most. I start to hear all the time and pitch intervals.

So bottom line, I think that different individuals can share the same "intelligence" score, but have totally different strengths, weaknesses and talents.

[Magical Realist]

I think intelligence is too often used as a label applied to people to please them and flatter their egos. It smacks of a socially constructed class or vocational distinction designed to pigeon hole people. In reality everybody is probably intelligent at some time about something according to the circumstances. I can elaborate on Jungian psychology for example, but fix a car? I'm as dumb as a rock!

Intelligence in the sense of a human property distinguishing it from animals is otoh perhaps best defined as the ability to consciously process information. I say consciously to distinguish it from AI which isn't true intelligence in the sense of being a mentally phenomenal property. Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment sort of demonstrates that. But then what do I mean by "process information" if not an ability to acquire actionable understanding of a situation. Processing sort of assumes mentality iow. So I am better confined to the acquisition of an understanding or comprehension of a situation or state of affairs. It assumes a consciousness or awakenness and as such contains an element of phenomenal irreducibility.

Are we evolving into a more intelligent species? I'd say so in that we have more access to processible information. The ability to understand and comprehend one's situation seems to suggest enhanced survivability in terms of financial stability, social status, and sexual viability. In that sense it is naturally selected over other less marketable skills.